Chapter 57 Seraphina
Chapter fifty-seven
Seraphina
Warmth. For once, she awoke to warmth instead of bitter cold.
A steady weight pressed against her back—soft, familiar. An arm draped across her middle from the front, holding her close. Her godparents.
For one blissful, drifting moment, she was a girl again, tucked into bed with the duke and duchess during a Wintertide visit to their keep in the frozen north. Snowcrest was so dreadfully cold.
Duke Percival had always huffed and made a show of grousing when she crawled into bed with them, before he tugged the blankets higher to cover her cold nose.
She had always felt so safe then. So loved. Sheltered.
But no longer.
Seraphina’s eyes fluttered open as all the horrors of the day before flooded her in a sickening wave. The coup. The fire. Sir Arkwright’s lifeless body. Tiberius’s betrayal. Olivia’s sacrifice.
Aldric. Realizing she had sent Aldric to his grave.
Her throat burned with the rawness of the tears she had shed the night before. Her temples throbbed faintly, as if she had had too much wine. Except she hadn’t drunk any wine at all.
Beneath the blanket, Alyx trembled within her arms. Her poor, wounded usuru.
She wanted to stay in bed a little longer. To hide, tucked between her godparents like a child. Dawn had not yet broken. The sky through the grimy window remained a dark, bruised violet.
But she knew they had to move. They had a long journey ahead.
Seraphina shoved upright and slipped out from beneath the blanket before she could change her mind.
Cold air slapped against her bare feet. Gritting her teeth, she hurried across the sparse bedroom to where she had left her stockings and shoes next to her knapsack.
She was still in the same gown she had worn the day before—creased, stained.
It was all she had now.
Alyx hissed in protest and burrowed deeper into her arms. Her godparents stirred at the sound. Duchess Edith blinked awake first, dried tears streaking her own cheeks. Duke Percival groaned and groped at the small table beside the bed, hunting for his spectacles.
Through the open doorway, she spotted Dame Florence already by the hearth, dishing out bowls of what looked to be porridge. Reyla perched at the table where they had all once played cards, dressed for travel and clutching her writing slate.
Seraphina moved quickly, donning her shoes, cloak, and knapsack. The bag was a little heavier now, weighed down with not only her map, the royal seal, and her copy of the Scriptures, but her crown, too.
She could no longer afford to wear it.
Not when it could endanger those she journeyed with.
“We should move soon,” Dame Florence called without glancing her way. “But eat something first. No telling when we’ll get our next bite.”
Seraphina paused over that. The thought of potentially going hungry one day in the near future was entirely foreign.
How different this morning already was from yesterday.
Had that truly only been yesterday?
“Sera?” Duchess Edith softly asked from her place still tucked within the bed. “How are you feeling?”
Like a queen without a throne.
Like a wife without a husband.
Seraphina avoided meeting her godmother’s prying gaze for a single moment as she forced her expression into something composed. Something steady. Something worthy of the last de la Croix—fleeing for her life and pretending as if that did not bother her in the slightest.
“Well enough,” she lied.
And that was that. No other words sprang to her lips.
Before Duchess Edith could ask any further questions, she drifted from the bedroom and toward the table to claim a bowl of porridge for herself. Dame Florence slanted her a sidelong look but said nothing.
Reyla scratched out a Good morning on her slate and went back to eating.
Her godfather followed, his cane gently clacking against the floor. “We still only have the one horse,” he pointed out. “Even if we ride double, it will not carry all of us.”
“The horse will carry you and Her Grace, riding double,” Seraphina declared without pause. “The rest of us will journey on foot until we reach the nearest village. We can pry a jewel from my crown and barter for horses there.”
Duke Percival pursed his lips, looking on the verge of offering some complaint.
Before he could, Duchess Edith swept from the bedroom and murmured, “We should dispense with the good manners until we reach the Dawnspire, darling. No more ‘Your Grace.’” She smiled, as if trying to infuse some levity into these tense moments of preparation. “Just call us Edith and Percy.”
Her godfather winced. “Percival,” he corrected his wife. “Only you can call me Percy. And…” But he trailed off, not completing the sentence. Pain flickered across his features—there and gone in a moment.
And Olivia, she finished for him as her heart threatened to rip in two again. Because you cannot stop her from calling you that.
Beside her, Reyla scratched out more words on her slate. Seraphina shoved a spoonful of tasteless porridge into her mouth and leaned over to read the question written there: The Dawnspire?
She tried to summon a smile for her sister-in-law.
It felt thin. “It is a fortress in the mountains just west of here. A castle in the sky.” At least, that was how she had always seen it the few times she had visited as a child—a castle floating, precariously perched atop the mountain, with only clouds and stars to keep it company.
Reyla tilted her head as if absorbing this news. Then she wiped her slate and began writing again.
Seraphina’s gaze drifted to the window, to the pale hints of dawn beginning to edge the treetops. In the near distance rose Goldreach, its elegant spires peeking over its walls. All her life, she had thought those walls insurmountable. The capital of her great nation unconquerable.
Now she knew the truth.
Her chest constricted. Sir Tristan. Father Perero. Olivia. Cyneric, lost somewhere with the northern forces that could have saved them.
They might all be dead.
Aldric might be dead.
The thought struck her again like a blade sliding between her ribs. She swallowed around the ache, her hand drifting to her chest, fingers wrapping around her golden sun pendant once more.
Lord…if he lives, please bring him home. And if he has fallen…I beg You to forgive him any trespasses against You. I beg You to receive him into Your embrace.
That word forgive snagged in her thoughts. How could she beg the Lord to forgive her husband when she had not yet done the same? But…Mysai…all those lives lost…
She would carry the weight of each one to her own grave.
Around her, the cottage shifted with quiet motion. Beside her, Reyla made a quiet noise, trying to get her attention. Seraphina opened her eyes and glanced toward her sister-in-law’s slate again.
The words written there were a fresh lance through the heart: Will Aldric be there?
The ache thrumming through her chest clawed its way upward, threatening to undo her in front of them all. But she swallowed it down. She had to.
She was now a queen of nothing and no one. Yet, she still felt responsible for the safety of these people. The ones right here. Looking to her for guidance. For strength.
“Aldric is elsewhere—in Arlund—which is south of here,” Seraphina gently explained. “The Lord willing, we will see him again one day. The Lord willing, he will be back.”
The words tasted like ash on her tongue. Were they a lie? Or a prayer?
She no longer knew.
Steeling her jaw, she rose from the table before her sister-in-law’s curiosity could further chip the fragile composure she had so carefully constructed.
“Gather your things.” Her gaze swept around the table, meeting their eyes one by one, reminding herself of everything she might yet lose if she allowed Coreto’s men to find them here. “We must leave now.”
Dame Florence held her gaze for a moment before she nodded. “As you say…” But the lady knight trailed off, her head tilting. “What do I call you now?”
A humorless smile twitched Seraphina’s lips upward. “Just Sera, I suppose.”
Tucking Alyx beneath her cloak, she turned toward the door and stepped out of the cottage, into the biting wind. The wind whipped at her skirts and stung her cheeks. For once, she did not shrink back from the cold.
She embraced it.
This was her current lot in life.
Cold. Guilt. Shame.
On the horizon, Goldreach shimmered. Banners that were not her own cracked in the wind. Coreto’s boar. And worse still—Arath’s dragon. The sight of those red-and-black standards was yet more salt poured onto her many wounds.
Bitterness rose in her throat like bile before she could swallow it back. Grief, hot and suffocating, clawed at her chest. How many people had died yesterday? How many bodies now littered the streets of her capital city?
Alone out here in the cold, she allowed herself these scant moments in which she could break, weighed down by the ghosts of the people she had sworn she would save.
But she did not cry. She would not cry. Last night had been her night for tears and pity.
Today was a day only for action.
Drawing in a deep breath, she forced her feet to move, to turn her back on the spires of her home and face the mountains rising in the distance. Not forever, she promised herself—a promise that rang false within her own mind.
She had no army. No Crow. No allies. No plan. Not even a vision to haunt her. Nor an Oracle or Shepherd to lend her hope.
But still her heart beat out a defiant rhythm. Not forever. This could not be it. This could not be the end of House de la Croix. Of Elmoria.
The Lord willing, she would be back, too.