Chapter 62
Chapter sixty-two
Seraphina
The air in the deepest vaults of the Dawnspire tasted stale. Old. Here, far beneath the howling winds and the crowded great hall, the world truly did stand still.
Frozen in time.
Seraphina held the lantern high, the golden light pushing back the shadows that clung to the rows of dusty crates and weapon racks. Beside her, Reyla moved with a quiet, focused intensity, her fingers tracing the strange mechanisms laid out on the workbench.
“Well?” Seraphina asked, her voice echoing strangely in the cavernous space. “Can you make sense of it? Master Finch claimed these were merely ‘failed experiments’ from ‘a time long past,’ but they look…” She tilted her head to the side, trying to understand what she was looking at. “Intriguing?”
Reyla didn’t look up. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, her gaze darting across the disassembled components of what looked to be a crossbow, though it was far too large and possessed a complex system of pulleys and levers Seraphina had never seen before.
Not even her cousins could guess what it was for. It had been Dame Florence who had suggested she let Reyla take a look.
After a moment, her sister-in-law took up her writing slate again. The scratch of chalk was sharp in the silence. She held it up.
It’s a tension multiplier for a crossbow. Not a failed experiment. Just unfinished.
Seraphina smiled, impressed but not surprised. Aldric had told her Reyla was immensely clever. Different, but certainly not less.
And in those quiet moments, picking through the secrets Dawnspire’s lowest depths held with her sister-in-law, she finally saw just why Aldric had risked his life by carrying a witchblade into her court—into her bedroom.
Not for his own enjoyment nor his own gain, but all to save this woman. This brilliant soul. His little sister.
But then again, a part of her had always seen it. Had always understood. She had just been too wounded to see it in the heat of the moment during his confession.
Her Crow had only done what any brother would have done.
“Can it be finished?” she asked, trying to keep her hope in check, just in case the answer was no. “If we are to retake Goldreach, we will need every advantage we can come up with.”
Reyla wiped the slate clean with her sleeve, a puff of white dust drifting into the air, and scribbled again. Give me a week. I will need a blacksmith.
“You shall have both,” she promised at once.
Reyla turned back to the contraption, her fingers dancing over the metal triggers, but Seraphina’s attention drifted. What other secrets did this vault hold?
She stepped deeper into the gloom.
The back of the vault was cluttered with items that seemed less like weapons of war and more like relics of a forgotten history. Old banners, moth-eaten and faded from blue to gray. Chests bound in rusted iron. And in the corner, standing sentinel against the stone wall—a suit of armor.
Seraphina drew closer, frowning.
It was plate, dull with age but clearly forged by a master’s hand. But it was not the heavy, broad-shouldered plate of a knight. The cuirass was tapered, the greaves slimmer.
It was armor forged for a woman.
Behind the armor hung a painting, its frame warped by the damp, the canvas darkened by time. Seraphina lifted the lantern higher, squinting to make out the details through the grime.
It was a portrait of a woman—a woman wearing this very armor, sitting astride a white charger. Her helmet was tucked under one arm, revealing a face both severe and striking. Who was she? The shield she bore gave some clue.
A rearing stag. The sigil of House de la Croix.
The sight stole the breath from Seraphina’s lungs.
“Who are you?” she whispered aloud, curiosity prickling. She knew her lineage—the kings and the conquerors, the great King Hamons and all their many deeds. But the history books only ever spoke of the de la Croix men.
Never the women.
A shout echoed down the spiraling stairwell, faint and distorted by the distance. “Cousin!”
The spell broke. Seraphina spun around to face the sound. It was Cyneric.
“There are more riders in the pass!” he called.
Reyla was already moving, abandoning the prototype weapon. For the very first time, she met Seraphina’s gaze, her eyes wide and luminous in the lantern light. She frantically scribbled on her slate and thrust it forward.
My brother?
The hope in Reyla’s expression was a mirror of the desperate, clawing thing inside her own chest, asking the same question. Was it Aldric? Was it her Crow at last?
“Maybe,” Seraphina whispered, though she tried to strangle the hope before it could take root. She could not bear to let it bloom only to have it crushed again.
Together, they ran. Up the stairs. Through the Spire.
By the time they reached the wind-scoured landing bay, Seraphina’s lungs were burning. Her legs were shaking. But she did not stop. She burst out into the open air, the biting wind whipping her hair across her face, stinging her eyes.
It felt like a cruel echo of the week prior. The gray sky. The biting cold. The Liftwarden standing in the signal room, reading the levers. The deep, mournful blast of the horn from below.
“Report!” she commanded, just as she had before, her voice breathless.
“Four men, Your Majesty,” the Liftwarden shouted over the gale. “Allies.”
Four. Seraphina clenched her jaw and nodded once. “Raise the lift.”
The great chains shuddered into motion, the winch groaning as it hauled the cage up from the abyss. Clank. Clank. Clank. The rhythmic locking of the safety gears reverberated through her bones.
Reyla stood beside her, seemingly unbothered by the cold, her writing slate clutched to her chest. She stood on her toes, leaning precariously over the railing, staring down into the mist.
Please, Seraphina prayed yet again, feeling like a woman stuck in a repeating dream. I do not care that he betrayed me. I do not care about the lie. Just let him be alive. Just let it be him.
The top of the cage cleared the lip of the landing. The gears ground to a halt. The iron gate swung open with a screech.
A man stepped out, stumbling slightly as his boots hit the stone.
Seraphina’s breath caught.
It was Calix Fitzjesmaine.
The half-Kunishi man looked as though he had been dragged through the Underworld and back. His face was a map of healing cuts and purpled bruises. But he was alive.
“Calix,” she breathed, dispensing with all formalities as elation surged through her veins. If Calix was here, Aldric had to be close. She rarely saw the two of them apart.
Behind him, Rakon ducked to exit the cage. Then came Kyn, limping heavily, missing his medic bag for once. And finally, Leif—looking even more shrunken than when she had seen him last, as if the oldest Son had aged even further in the time they were gone.
Four. Her heart skipped a beat. The cage was empty.
She scanned the lift again, desperate, looking for a shadow, a hidden corner, anything. But there was nothing. Just the empty iron grate and the swirling mist beyond.
Reyla made a small, keening sound in her throat.
Seraphina took a step forward, her legs trembling. The four Sons huddled together, shivering in the cold. None of them met her gaze. They looked at their boots. They looked at the snow swirling past. They looked anywhere but at her.
“Where is he?” Seraphina finally asked, her voice nearly lost in the wind.
Calix flinched. He slowly raised his head, swallowing hard. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then whispered, “He is dead, Your Majesty.”
The wind ceased its howling. The cold vanished, replaced by a numbness that started in her fingertips and raced to her heart.
Dead.
Beside her, Reyla’s right hand went slack. Her chalk slipped from her fingers and hit the stone with a sharp clack, shattering instantly. What pieces remained rolled across the uneven flagstones, driven by the wind, tumbling over the edge of the precipice and disappearing into the white void below.
Reyla didn’t move. She just stared at nothing.
Seraphina felt her knees giving way, but Kyn rushed forward, bracing her shoulders before she could fall. No. Her words to Coreto echoed through her mind like a cruel jest. All her talk of legends. Her implication that the infamous Crow of Drakmor could never die.
And now…
“How?” she heard herself ask, her voice far away once more.
“We were ambushed,” Calix explained, his voice thick with emotion. “We barely made it out. But Aldric…he didn’t.”
Rakon bowed his head. Kyn finished steadying her and stepped back, looking away.
Only Leif seemed to not mourn their fallen leader. He stared at Calix, his lips twisting into a dark scowl. “Liar,” he accused.
The word cracked through her grief like a whip.
Her gaze snapped his way. “What?”
Leif spat on the ground, his glare still fixed on Calix. “I said he’s a liar.”
“Shut your mouth, old man,” Calix hissed. “We swore an oath.”
“I ain’t swore nothing to no one,” Leif volleyed back. “He was alive last we saw him, Your Majesty. Making a big ruckus of a distraction so we could escape.”
Reyla was moving now, frantic. She dropped to her knees, her fingers scrabbling against the stone, searching for the chalk that was no longer there. She patted her pockets, desperate, letting out frustrated, sharp exhalations.
Seraphina stepped between the men, her sorrow hardening instantly into steel. “Enough!” she barked, her voice ringing off the arched ceiling sheltering the landing bay.
She turned her gaze on Calix, and he immediately shrank back, looking rightfully afraid of her. She was tired of all the lies. Of the secrets. No more.
She would have the truth from these men, even if she had to find a Shepherd to perform a Truth-Reading to do it.
“You are going to tell me what is truly going on,” she ordered, the words low and dangerous as they exploded into the frigid air. “Why did you swear to tell me my husband is dead when he is not?”
It was Rakon who answered her, his deep rumble unfurling with palpable reluctance. “Because those witches are setting a trap for you, Your Majesty.”
Slowly, she turned to face the large man. His eyes burned with a terrible, haunting fear she would have never thought possible for one of her husband’s Sons to feel.
“And our Crow is the bait.”