Chapter 51
Chapter fifty-one
Seraphina
Her body moved of its own accord, shoving essentials into one of Olivia’s spare leather knapsacks: the royal seal, a map of Elmoria, her copy of the Scriptures.
Her fingers caught on the worn leather of the latter, the fading gold inlay. When had she last opened it? She couldn’t remember.
No time now.
She dropped it into the bag and slammed it shut, the cold settling back in. The numbness. She could not think. She could not feel.
She just needed to act now. To leave.
Her godparents stood by the hearth, burning what sensitive documents they could not take with them. Olivia and Sir Tristan were in the sitting room, barricading the doors. Lord Tiberius paced uselessly in the space that remained between the Umberly guards and her own.
“We must hurry,” the baron fretted. “I already have the horses waiting.”
Olivia snapped from the other room, “Worrying isn’t going to make this go any faster, Crestley.”
Seraphina passed her knapsack off to Sir Arkwright. “Where is Father Perero?” she asked, her attention shifting to her godmother. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded faraway—far too calm for the question.
Of course, she already knew where the Shepherd was: out there in the city.
Duchess Edith flinched and tossed the last of the paperwork into the fireplace. “He was at the cathedral when last I saw him, but—”
“We need him,” she said, cutting gently across her godmother’s protest before it could form. There was no time. She knew that. But she would not abandon the capital without her Shepherd.
Arath would not spare him.
Alyx screeched, flapping her wings once before settling back into place in her drape about Seraphina’s shoulders.
Silence fell across her study in the wake of the usuru’s cry.
Her godparents exchanged a look.
Lord Tiberius stalked closer, a snarl on his lips. “We do not have time to rescue some old Shepherd, Sera. Coreto wants to kill you. The Arathians want to kill you.”
“I will go,” a voice sounded from the doorway. Sir Tristan.
Olivia appeared beside him in the next moment, her features tense. “No,” her friend whispered, grabbing the knight’s arm.
Tristan gently extracted himself from her grip. “The Shepherd took care of me when I was…” His mouth worked. “Asleep. I owe him this much.” His tone gentled when he glanced aside at Olivia and promised, “I will be right back.”
Unbidden, Aldric’s face flashed through her mind.
His deep voice rumbled through her soul.
“I will do my best to survive.”
Seraphina jerked her gaze away, her eyes falling to her left hand instead—to the wedding ring hidden there.
Some madness took her. Before she could question what she was doing, she peeled off her gloves, letting the cold air bite at her exposed fingers as she revealed the emerald to the light.
Within the glow cast by the fire, the jewel glinted darkly—just as her Crow’s eye always did in her vision when he looked up at her and begged her to run.
Her vision.
She kept hoping it would come over her. That, for once, it might show her more than doom. That it might show her what to do.
But there was nothing. The world did not melt away into that nightmarish land of black sand. The scent of ash and blood did not fill her nose. For the first time since Oracle Tsukiko had first cursed her with it, her vision was absent.
The Lord was silent.
Somewhere beyond the barricaded door, a shout went up. A crash.
They were running out of time. She finally had to run, just as the Aldric within her vision always urged her to do.
Voices washed around her—familiar, urgent, all blurring into one.
Olivia murmuring, “Hurry, Dacre. The passage is through the wardrobe. When you reach an intersection, take every right until you reach the stables.”
Duke Percival cutting in, “Wait, Olivia! I must speak with you.”
Lord Tiberius insisting, “We have to leave. Now.”
“Darling?” Duchess Edith whispered, her voice closer than the others.
Seraphina twitched herself out of her daze and lifted her eyes to stare into her godmother’s latest worried expression. “I am fine,” she repeated, sounding like a colorful Arathian bird that can only mimic human speech.
Tiberius was right. They did have to leave. No more hesitation. No more uncertainty.
“We must leave before we lose this opportunity,” she declared, taking control of the situation once again. “We make for the Dawnspire.”
Sir Tristan saluted and swiveled on his heel, hurrying toward her bedchamber, toward the secret passage hidden there.
She swiftly followed, the rest of her people right behind.
Another shout pierced the air just outside her quarters. A boom soon chased it—one that reverberated through the walls.
The barricaded door rattled.
Alyx hissed.
Her sitting room already looked ransacked—all her many belongings scattered across the floor, the fine furnishings piled high before the exit. Worthless things. Things she felt no remorse about leaving behind.
Passing into her bedroom, Seraphina barely registered the box of jewels abandoned atop her vanity, nor the many fine gowns left hanging in her already open wardrobe. None of it mattered.
Only the wardrobe itself did.
Sir Tristan was already there, sweeping aside gowns, pressing his hand along the paneling until—click. The narrow section of wall shuddered and shifted inward, revealing a sliver of darkness.
“The Lord go with you,” she whispered to the knight before he disappeared into the shadows.
The sitting room door boomed again. The wood groaned.
Duke Percival was the last to limp into her bedchamber, Rogue padding alongside. “Olivia, please. I must speak with you. Edith, go with Her Majesty. I will be right behind you.”
Her godmother balked. “I am going nowhere without you.”
Olivia slammed the bedroom door shut behind them all and locked it fast with the iron ring of keys she bore. “Make it quick, Percy.”
“There is no time for any of this,” Lord Tiberius snarled again, pulling his rapier free of its scabbard. The blade glinted in the afternoon light. “They are at the door. We have to evacuate the queen.”
Seraphina’s attention flickered between her family and the yawning darkness of the passage. She could not leave them.
She could not stay.
“Sir Arkwright,” she finally commanded, “on me. We will go on ahead and wait at the first intersection.”
Olivia’s reaction was immediate. Visceral. “Absolutely not,” her best friend snarled.
Alyx hissed again, wings half-flaring.
The barricaded door splintered with a sickening crack.
Their time was up.
“Go!” Duke Percival shouted. “We will be just behind. Wait at the first intersection. Arkwright, stay on her.”
The captain of her guard snapped a salute. “Aye, Your Grace.”
Seraphina drew in a deep breath, like a woman about to plunge into icy waters. Her eyes locked with Olivia’s. “Follow me when you can,” she whispered before slipping past the silk and velvet of her gowns, forging into the darkness.
Sir Arkwright and two dozen guardsmen pressed in after her, surrounding her in the narrow corridor. Lord Tiberius followed suit, shouldering himself through the pack until he loomed at her side.
“Go,” she urged, following Arkwright into the black.
Her captain’s steps were cautious, unsure.
But she could have traversed this tunnel in her sleep.
Out of all the secret passages the palace walls held, this was the one she used most often.
Especially of late when she visited Reyla’s cottage in the middle of the night…
Her breath hitched.
Reyla. She had forgotten Reyla.
Her jaw tightened. She would simply have to fetch her sister-in-law on the way out. Lord Tiberius would not like it. Her godparents wouldn’t either.
But she didn’t care. She would not leave her and Dame Florence behind.
The narrow corridor sloped subtly downward as they approached the first intersection—a cramped space branching left, right, and forward. Right lay the stables, Sir Tristan’s destination. Straight lay the King’s Forest—theirs.
“Wait—” Seraphina began to say before the rest of the words died in her throat.
A sound drifted near from the right-hand tunnel: the unmistakable clash of steel against steel. Fighting, right there in the passage.
Her blood froze. Tristan. Tristan was down that way.
Lord Tiberius’s hand clamped around her right wrist like a vice before she could do anything at all. “No,” he hissed against her ear, his breath ruffling her hair. “You are worth more than him.”
A protest swelled in her throat. She wasn’t. No one life was worth more than another.
Her guards rippled around her in the darkness, closing ranks as best they could in the tight quarters. A man’s distant scream echoed through the black, eerie, disembodied.
Her heart lurched. Was it Tristan?
“What are your orders?” Sir Arkwright asked, his voice brittle.
From the left, a sudden sound ruptured the silence—the clatter of stone in the distance.
Was someone approaching from that way, too?
Lord Tiberius tightened his grip, as if afraid she might be bodily wrenched from his grasp if he didn’t. “We. Must. Go.”
Her mind protested the thought. No. This was the council chamber all over again. Wellane. She did not want to be separated from her people. She did not want to leave her godparents and Olivia behind. She did not want to leave Tristan to die.
But neither did she want to condemn her guards to death by an unseen foe. A queen could not afford to choose one man over twenty—not even a man her best friend cared for.
“Please,” her captain implored from the darkness. “Your orders, Your Majesty.”
Her throat constricted around all the things she truly wished to say—denials, pleas for more time—but they were already out of time.
Please, Lord, watch over them all.
As if from far away, she heard herself whisper, “We must keep moving.”