Page 190 of The Dragon and the Dove

The thorn that followed plunged deep into her heart.

Sera swallowed her scream.

Andreas did no such thing. As his magic was ripped from the tapestry of fate, he howled and howled and howled. The sound of his agony was so loud it drowned out the rush of soldiers returning to their own minds and the shouts of Seraphine’s friends across the rubble.

Soon, the clamour was replaced by the slowing drumbeat of her own heart.

This is it, Maker.

We have come to the end.

Darkness crept in.

As a terrible coldness spread through her body, Sera was struck by sorrowful mourning. All her life, death had nipped at her heels. It had sat in black vials in her garden shed, taken her mother from her at eighteen, then her father in the dark of the catacombs, and Bibi, poor innocent Bibi. Sera had spent so much of her life running from death, she’d forgotten to live. Now there would be no life. No love. No future. The cliff edge she’d walked on for eighteen years was finally crumbling beneath her.

Don’t give up, whispered a small familiar voice. Not her magic now but the child who cowered in the soft corner of her soul. The girl she used to be. Afraid of the world, afraid of her place within it.

Fight back, she begged.

You’re not done.

We’re not done.

Andreas went first. With a cry that splintered into nothing, his eyes glazed and the last flicker of gold there winked out. He surrendered to his wounds, his head falling back on the rocks, where he stared, unseeing, at the sky.

The Silver-tongue was dead.

His magic unmade.

The War of the Saints was over.

Sera took a shallow breath. She was so very cold now. She couldn’t feel her feet or the jutting rocks under her, cutting into her skin. Her mind began to drift, the world fading to a faraway voice. It was as gentle as a parting kiss.

Rest now.

There was a strange relief in it, that final thorn pricking a terrible pressure inside her, as though she was letting out a breath she’d been holding all her life.

The world went dark and soft and quiet. There was a kindness to the silence, to the way the edges of her thoughts began to blur. She was too tired to feel sad, too spent for last goodbyes.

Sera was almost gone when she felt it. Not the prick of a thorn but the pull of something else – something ancient and vital and true.

Seraphine.

Her name was a howl on the wind. The thread inside her strained. Ransom was here, calling her back to him, tugging on the last of her senses – the string that bound them.

And, saints, how badly she wanted to go to him. To hold his face in her hands and kiss his lips one last time, to sit in the autumnal light of his gaze and tell him she loved him. She loved him. She loved him. With her weak and fluttering heart. With her last dying breath.

‘Seraphine!’ He was closer now, rock and shale sliding under his feet. ‘I’m here!’

‘Seraphine.’

‘Seraphine.’

‘Please.’

Please, Oriel, she whispered.

It’s too late, Maker.