Chapter 7 Seraphina
Chapter seven
Seraphina
The sudden press of her godmother’s hand against hers lured Seraphina out of dark fantasies about angry Elmorian mobs coming for her in the middle of the night and back to the present.
To the elegantly arranged dining table before her. To her untouched dinner plate. To Olivia lounging in the chair at her side, watching her with those amber eyes that missed nothing despite the medicated haze clouding them at present.
To the worried frowns of her godparents sitting across from them both.
“Are you all right?” Duchess Edith asked. “You have been distant all evening.”
“I’m perfectly all right,” she lied with a smile, refusing to spoil their private “family” dinner further with her morose mood.
Gently extracting her hand from beneath her godmother’s, she plucked up her fork and pushed around the wilted greens on her plate to make it seem as if she had eaten something. “I’ve merely been thinking.”
Her godparents exchanged a glance.
But it was Duchess Edith who delicately asked, “About…the wedding tomorrow?”
Without missing a beat, Olivia drawled, “Probably more about that shouting match she had with the Crow earlier, just outside the council chamber.”
Seraphina’s fork clattered against her plate. She kept her eyes lowered, unable to meet the prying gazes of these three people most dear to her. Here, she should feel most at peace. Most able to just…be herself.
But how could she when even her godparents and best friend could not help but study her like a caged creature within the royal menagerie?
With the weight of their eyes boring into her skull, a great weariness settled into her bones like a chill she could never hope to shake.
She was growing so very tired of having to constantly pretend all was well and that she was all right.
Especially when she was anything but.
“Yes, if you must know,” Seraphina confessed, shoving her food away. “I am thinking about all of it. The wedding. Mysai. Arlund. Lothmeer’s silence. This”—with a sigh, she settled deeper in her chair—“business with the pamphlets.”
Duke Percival frowned, his goblet of cider held suspended halfway to his mouth. “Pamphlets? What pamphlets?”
Olivia waved her hand through the air, as if the question were a mere tendril of smoke she could brush aside. “Someone is trying to turn the public’s opinion against our queen. But it’s nothing I can’t handle.”
Her blood ran cold as she slid her best friend a sidelong look. Aldric had told her something Olivia had not? A sting that felt rather like betrayal plucked at her heartstrings. Olivia had never kept secrets before.
At least none of this magnitude.
“You knew about them?” Seraphina asked, fighting to keep the hurt thrumming through her chest from leaching into her voice.
Her eyes searched the other woman’s face through the shadows cast by the candlelight, desperate to spy something that might explain what Olivia had been thinking in keeping this of all things from her.
But whatever her friend was feeling, she hid it well behind an expressionless mask. Unclipping the flask from her hip, Olivia took a heavy drag of its contents and mumbled against the flask’s opening, “I have some good leads to follow. Don’t worry. I’ll have it taken care of soon.”
“Don’t worry?” Seraphina echoed as a heavy silence fell across her personal sitting room, where the four of them dined together.
For a single wild moment, she actually considered ripping that flask from Olivia’s grasp and dumping what was left of it all over the floor. She knew her best friend needed its contents to manage her pain. But the other was swiftly becoming entirely too dependent on that cordial.
And it was dulling her edge.
“You should have told me,” she bit out, indignation, anger, and disbelief all fighting for supremacy within her heart. How could Olivia have thought it wise to keep something like this from her?
As if knowing her thoughts, her friend murmured, “I didn’t want to heap one more problem on your plate—”
“That is not for you to decide,” Seraphina insisted, shoving herself away from the dining table with a screech of chair legs on the floor.
“I have a right to know these things, Olivia, and as my Spymaster, it is your responsibility to tell me.” Before she could stop herself, her anger became pointed, leading her to wonder aloud, “Otherwise, what was the point in raising you from a mere kitchen maid in the first place?”
Her tongue wielded those words like a blade. Sharp. Ruthless.
Olivia flinched, as if she had just been struck in the face.
Duke Percival’s frown deepened.
Biting back all the other words she so longed to say but knew she should not, Seraphina stepped away from the table and swept toward the fire crackling merrily in the hearth. There, Rogue lazed, sprawled out in all his snowy glory, with Alyx curled atop him. The two looked so content, so at peace.
She could not remember the last time she had felt similarly.
Olivia laughed, as was her way when she was full of dream petal and bitter root, as if everything was all so terribly funny. “Don’t go snapping at me now just because the little Crow hurt your feelings with all his shouting about queens and pawns.”
Seraphina whirled to face her friend, her still-smoldering fury igniting again. “This has nothing to do with the Crow.” It had everything to do with him, of course. But she refused to hand Olivia that victory.
Olivia snorted, clearly unconvinced.
Duchess Edith cleared her throat. “Now, ladies, please. Let us not quarrel.”
“Quarrel?” Duke Percival repeated. Behind his spectacles, his eyes narrowed. “I’m likely to start quarreling if somebody doesn’t tell me about these blasted pamphlets sooner rather than later.”
Out of habit, Seraphina’s lips snapped into another false smile. Even here—facing the only family she had left—she couldn’t afford to let her anxiety show. Because this was what happened when she did.
People started handling her with kid gloves.
“They are these charming little depictions of the de la Croix stag being devoured by Arath’s dragon, Your Grace,” Seraphina explained, bitterness welling up inside her like a rising tide.
Her people wished her dead. Even her best friend was now keeping secrets.
And despite her best efforts to be just as blasé about the whole thing as Olivia was clearly determined to be, her voice still cracked a little when she added, “With the words, ‘So ends House de la Croix,’ written beneath. Prince Aldric was kind enough to show me one, you see, when he was suggesting I send Sir Easome to the front so he could stay here, to ensure the people don’t put my head on a pike when they eventually turn on me. ”
A profound silence descended over her sitting room—a silence broken only by the thump of Duke Percival’s goblet settling back atop the table.
His attention fixed on Olivia. “How long?”
Olivia took a sudden interest in the carvings etched along the edge of the table rather than the stern-faced duke across from her. With her gaze lowered, she confessed, “Three days—”
“Three days?” he hissed, disbelief radiating across his features. “And you were intending to tell us…when?”
Seraphina’s attention trailed away from the pair and toward her godmother. When their eyes met, Duchess Edith’s frown melted away as she rose to her feet.
Olivia shoved away her half-eaten plate. “When I had the culprit in irons. My people have already traced the pamphlets to a particular district. It’s only a matter of time before we find the press and the person who commissioned the original drawing.”
“Olivia,” Duke Percival sighed. Leaning toward her, he reached for her hand across the table. Their tense conversation continued, the words now too quiet for Seraphina to follow.
In the lull, her godmother crossed the room, making straight for her.
“I’m perfectly all right,” she insisted again, turning away from Duchess Edith’s searching gaze in favor of facing the crackling fire once more. She held out her hands toward the flames, letting the warmth lap against her skin.
But it did little for the cold tendrils of fear slowly ensnaring her heart. Aldric’s final words from that morning still echoed through her mind: “I would never sacrifice my queen for the sake of a few pawns.”
Is that truly what she was doing by sending him to Arlund?
Sacrificing herself?
“No, you’re not,” her godmother whispered, coming alongside her. The older woman’s hand settled on her arm—warm, familiar, and comforting. “But that’s all right. You don’t have to pretend with me, darling.”
For a time, Seraphina just stood like that, shoulder to shoulder with her godmother, basking in Edith Umberly’s nearness. Her quiet strength. But in the silence, her mind wandered again, flitting between thoughts of the pamphlets. Of Arlund. Of Aldric.
His grimace. His disdain.
The feel of his callused fingers wrapping around hers.
“Are you certain you wish to have the wedding at the cathedral tomorrow?” Duchess Edith murmured, startling her out of her thoughts for a second time. “We can always have a quieter affair here in the chapel.”
Seraphina blinked, trying to make sense of the abrupt turn their conversation had taken. “What?” She glanced toward her godmother sidelong.
Duchess Edith offered a tired smile, her concern evident. “I simply mean, with all the talk of these pamphlets, if you would prefer to remain within the palace tomorrow instead of going out into the city among the common people…”
Understanding dawned, leaving Seraphina clenching her eyes shut as she reached out a hand and braced herself against the mantel.
Even fearless Edith Umberly was concerned about a riot.
“No,” Seraphina breathed, swallowing against the rising lump in her throat.
“The people will expect to see me in the procession tomorrow. It is tradition.” Opening her eyes again, she looked toward her godmother and added, “And besides, whoever is spearheading this campaign against me is surely trying to frighten me into retreating.” She lifted her chin a little.
“I refuse to give them the satisfaction.”
A strange smile curved Duchess Edith’s lips. “The Lord truly did gift you with all of Silvia de la Croix’s mercy and sweetness—and all of Reynard de la Croix’s unfailing stubbornness.”
Seraphina slanted the duchess a questioning look, unsure just how to take that observation. It was no secret that her godmother, despite having been best friends with her mother, had never cared for her father.
By the light of the fire, the duchess’s eyes sparkled. “I meant it as a compliment, dear heart,” she whispered, gently squeezing her arm. “But if it is not the thought of the procession that is troubling you, then is it the thought of the wedding itself?”
Seraphina’s lips parted, a protest lingering just on the tip of her tongue.
Of course she wasn’t worried about the wedding.
What was there to be worried about? It was simply a political union.
Just as her mother’s marriage to her father had been a political union.
Just as her godparents’ own marriage had originally been a mere political union.
But the words stuck in her throat.
Because she couldn’t deny it—even now, even realizing this was what the Lord wanted her to do, she still wished she didn’t have to marry the Crow of Drakmor tomorrow. She wished she didn’t have to marry anyone.
Duchess Edith breathed out a quiet, knowing sigh.
“I know this isn’t what you wanted, darling.
I know you would have preferred to rule as a queen in your own right, to show the world that you could bear this burden on your own with no need for a king or even a consort.
” Softer still, she asked, “But do you know what?”
Seraphina shook her head, her gaze fixed on the sight of Alyx dozing before the fireplace. She didn’t know what the duchess was about to say, but she could certainly guess.
“The Lord makes all things good in His time,” the older woman whispered, confirming her suspicions.
A wry smile quirked Seraphina’s lips. “And yet my mother was perfectly miserable until the day the wasting sickness took her, Your Grace,” she reminded her.
But no sooner had the words departed her lips than Duchess Edith’s hold on her arm tightened.
“Silvie found peace in her circumstances, just as I know you will find peace in yours, Sera,” her godmother contradicted, an uncharacteristically stern edge to her voice.
“Joy is a choice we make rather than something that is given to us. And if this is truly the Lord’s will for you to marry Aldric Hargrave, as you say that it is, then I can tell you this without a single shred of doubt—it will be good.
Because His plan is always so much better than ours. ”