But no. He knew how I was tormented by what had happened the night of the chandelier crash. He knew that it kept me up at night. How I had worried thatIhad somehow caused it. How I had lost everything in the wake of it. If he had caused that? Well, he was dead to me. It wasn’t an overreaction at all.
“Seraphina,” he said, his black eyes flashing with hurt. I had cracked his heart, too. I didn’t care. Good. I was glad. That he should feel a fraction of the pain and anguish that I felt now. “Please. Just hear me out.”
I turned away, not looking back, even as he pleaded.
I wasn’t thinking as I stormed through the tunnels of the catacombs toward the Medusa Steps. I was a husk. He had been lying to me the whole time. I trusted him. I trusted him with everything. I had fallen in love with him during these months together. And he had taken that love, that trust, and broken it into a million pieces, so jagged, so sharp, that they would never be able to come back together again.
My magic was boiling over. I didn’t even want to know what I looked like—if the rest of me was full of those inky back veins like my hands and arms were. I had to release some of this magic or it would eat me alive.
So I stormed toward the steps, toward the surface. I was so far beyond how fucked I’d been the night after the chandelier. Itruly had nowhere to go. So, I went to the only place I could think of where someone might listen to me. Where I could scream at the sky.
FLAMES
The streets of Lutesse were mercifully quiet. The solemn bells of the cathedral rang out through the city. It sounded like a death knell. I didn’t know where I was going or why. I just knew I couldn’t be down there anymore. I couldn’t stand to be anywhere near Ciaran. Ithurt.
I wandered through the cobbled streets, once as familiar as the back of my hand, that now felt strange and unwelcoming. The overwhelming sense that I didn’t belong crept up on me. I didn’t belong anywhere anymore. Maybe this was what the half-fey magic wielders had felt like in ancient times. When they didn’t belong with either people—did they feel this lost? Or did they have enough community with each other? Something I once had, almost, before Ciaran’s lies and betrayal had ripped it all away.
I walked along the Sequana now. Just there, Maren and I had shared a vulnerable moment while we smoked dreamweed together. I didn’t have her in my life anymore, either. I wondered what she was doing. She had saved me that night. And I never had a chance to thank her. I never had a chance to tell her how much I loved her. I probably never would.
This path was so familiar, and yet felt so foreign. My whole body felt like that now. Fuck. Even as I walked away from him forever, I could still feel Ciaran—could still feel a twinge of achy soreness where he’d pushed into me over and over. It was the most cruel twist of fate. That this had all come to light right when we’d finally crossed that line. But I had to leave. I couldn’t trust him. Not after he’d told lie after lie after lie.
It was so stupid to be up here, out in the open. I was asking to get caught: caught and executed by the gendarmes, for something I had never done. For something I could not control. Because the men in charge of this city, this continent, couldn’t handle my power. But what did it matter anymore? I had no one. I had nothing. Perhaps it would be a blessing—to burn as furiously as I felt.
My feet were taking me to the place before I could comprehend where or why. I never visited it. I had rushed past, not daring to glance over when Elena and I had come through on our way to the sorcières’ encampment. I didn’t like to open those old wounds. To feel the ache of loneliness that came whenever I thought of them. The first ones who had loved me and ultimately left. The first ones, it turned out, who had lied to me as well. My parents.
Their graves weresmall in comparison to some of the old mausoleums in the cemetery. My parents had met here in Lutesse, here at the opera house. My mother had insisted on being buried here, where they had met and fallen in love. When my father died, he joined her. They each had a simple headstone bearing their names and the years they’d passed. It had been a while since I had visited them. There were no flowers adorningtheir final resting place. It was so quiet there in the fading daylight. The sun had sunk down, almost to the horizon, over the city that I had loved. The city that I now had to fear.
Brilliant pink and orange hues sprayed across the vast expanse of sky. It would have been a beautiful sight if I weren’t so deep within my rage. Tears tracked down my cheeks as I stood on the spot where the only people who had ever truly loved me slumbered in the ground. I looked down at my arms—the black veins dissipated as I breathed, and the overwhelming rage was replaced by grief. I sobbed, falling to my knees on the ground.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it. But I sang, and it ruinedeverything,” I whispered to my long dead mother. “I should have kept my promise,maman. I should have…”
Suddenly, as if tied to my torment, the remnants of my pent-up magic blasted into the sky in a huge plume of black flames. I was burning. I was burning from the inside out. The rage and grief and pain that had built up inside me was burning its way out of me. And ithurt.I threw my head back, and I clawed at the ground, screaming up at the sky, which was now fading from brilliant pink to a deep indigo.
The plume of flames continued to whoosh out of me. I looked down and my hands were wreathed in black flames like the fiery twin to Ciaran’s shadows. The pain was blinding as I burned and burned and screamed and screamed. I was dying. This was what it would have felt like if they’d burned me at the stake, every inch of me in agony. And there was no one to help me. I was alone. Maybe I’d never had anyone to begin with. Maybe I had always been this alone. Maybe this grief was the only constant thing in my life. Like the flames, it consumed me.
As suddenly as the flames had come, they sucked back into me in a deep inhale. The ground beneath me trembled as the flames around my hands extinguished themselves and I was left shaking, empty and cold.
“Well, Seraphina, if there was ever any doubt, that little display proves it. My father will be thrilled.”
Ice filled my veins in the wake of the flames. I would have known that voice anywhere. I didn’t bother turning to face him. I didn’t even bother to feel a jolt of fear as I realized what it meant—that Seff was here, and that he had just witnessed me perform an enormous amount of magic.
“What do you want, Seff?” I spat, still not turning to face him. I wasn’t in the mood to play his games.
“Justice. For those innocent people you killed. For me. For everyone you lied to. It’s time to pay for your actions.” His voice was even colder than usual.
“Justice? Will it be justice then? To see me burn. Will you all feel vindicated then?” I didn’t even recognize my own voice. It was coming out as a hiss; spitting with vitriol and anger and all the rage I had felt for so long. I turned to face him. “Or would you like to pull a gun on me this time?”
Seff let out a huffing laugh. I looked at him for the first time since fleeing the masquerade. His nose was crooked—a large bump down the previously straight bridge, from where Ciaran had punched him repeatedly. He had dark circles under his eyes. “He fucking deserved it. Deserved worse. I hope he bled out.”
And even though I had left, even though I was so mad at Ciaran I would have punched him myself, I still felt a twinge of anger remembering what Seff had done.
“You’re just upset because you know you never would have been able to keep me,” I taunted Seff. I was done acting like some kind of fragile thing around him. He was pathetic. A slimy, spineless excuse for a man. What had I ever seen in him? My taste in men was truly abhorrent.
Seff’s face, so pale against his white-blonde hair and perfectly styled suit, turned red and splotchy. “I would never have wanted to keep someone like you. You’re nothing. You arethatkind ofwoman. You lusted around, panting after me, begging me to fuck you. Once you got what you wanted, you went on and decided to spread your legs for a terrorist. All his friends too, I’m sure. You know, there’s something fundamentally wrong with you.” His words hit me like a slap to the face. It stung, how he continued trying to shame me for that lacklustre night we’d spent together.
“What are you going to do now?” I took a small step toward him. “You’ve seen what I can do—my magic is very powerful. It’s just you here. Not surrounded by Daddy and all those gendarmes this time. Would you risk your own neck for your supposed justice?” I was bluffing. I had no idea how I had conjured those flames. Maybe with time and training with Ciaran, Rory, Fionn and Elena, I could learn to harness them. A stabbing pain shot through my chest as I remembered that would never be possible.
“Oh, he doesn’t need to risk anything.” Another voice came from behind one of the mausoleums. This time my blood ran even colder, and Ididfeel a jolt of fear, as I recognized the arrogant drawl of Viscount Erik de Barras.
