Chapter 64 Seraphina
Chapter sixty-four
Seraphina
Night had fallen hours ago, draping the mountain fortress in a darkness that the few sputtering candles on the chapel’s altar could not hope to pierce. The air here was still, heavy with the scent of old wax and freezing stone.
But more importantly, it was quiet—a place she could finally be alone.
Alone to think, at last.
Seraphina huddled in the front pew, her heavy fur cloak pulled tight around her shoulders, though it did little to ward off the chill seeping into her bones.
Her breath unfurled in white plumes before her, ghosting over the heavy leatherbound tome resting on her knees. Her copy of the Scriptures. Her fingers, numb even within her gloves, turned another page of the Chronicle of Raena.
She already knew this particular Chronicle by heart, but she wasn’t reading, not truly.
The words swam before her tired eyes—tales of the first Oracle, of trials endured and faith tested.
She had come to the chapel to read and hunt for a pattern.
A precedent. A strategy hidden within the verses that would tell her how to save a husband who was bait for a trap she couldn’t see.
How to liberate a kingdom with an army she didn’t possess.
Her northern forces were not enough. She needed more, always more.
More information. More men. More time.
Weariness pressed down on her shoulders, threatening to crush her against the rough stone floor underfoot.
She had no answers for her war council. She had no comfort for Tristan, whose grief had filled the landing bay until her godfather had finally managed to convince the knight to come away with him.
And she had no plan.
The heavy wooden doors at the back of the chapel scraped open, the sound echoing sharply off the vaulted ceiling. A shush of slow, deliberate steps against the stone floor followed.
Seraphina didn’t turn. She was too tired to lift her head and too cold to feign interest in anything beyond her own problems—not even for one of her councilors or another well-meaning refugee.
The footsteps stopped just behind her. A familiar voice disturbed the quiet air. “The Chronicle of Raena?” Father Perero’s voice was soft, and yet still his words filled the entirety of the room. “A good book. Though it is terribly late to be up reading it, Your Majesty.”
Seraphina stared down at the illuminated text, her vision blurring; but still, her heart lightened to hear the Shepherd’s voice. At last, she could seek her spiritual advisor’s counsel.
Here was the man she had demanded be rescued from Goldreach on her behalf.
Here was the man Sir Tristan had risked his own life to save.
And yet, now that he was here, she didn’t even know where to begin.
“Is it the nightmare keeping you up again?” the Shepherd gently asked. “The vision?”
Before she could stop it, a short, sharp laugh exploded from her throat—one that held no humor. “No,” she whispered, slamming the tome shut. The thud boomed like a catapult releasing within the stillness of the chapel. “The vision has not visited me since before…”
Seraphina faltered, the words sticking in her throat. The coup. She would not say it. She could not say it. “Since before Goldreach,” she finally finished.
Father Perero hummed thoughtfully and moved around the pew to stand before her. He looked even older in the candlelight, his face etched with deep lines and sorrow. Yet his eyes remained clear, focused.
She waited for him to say something—anything—perhaps to even reveal the meaning behind her vision’s absence. Did this mean she had failed at whatever she was meant to do? Did this mean that the Lord no longer… needed her?
But the Shepherd remained silent, watching her, as if waiting for her to say something further.
She swallowed and glanced down, tracing the gold inlay of the Scriptures with her fingertip. “I had hoped the Scriptures would give me some answers,” she explained, “but—” But nothing. Still, there was nothing. Still, the Lord was silent.
Frustration flared in her chest. Setting the heavy book aside, she shoved to her feet.
“I wish the Lord would just tell me what He wants me to do!” she snapped, the candlelight on the altar flickering with the force of her words.
“I know He has a plan, and I know His plan is better than mine, but what am I meant to do, Father? Am I meant to wait and listen—or act and trust that He will meet me on the way?”
Father Perero cleared his throat. “Have you prayed—?”
“Yes!” The word tore from her, far louder than she had intended. But the Shepherd did not flinch at her tone. He did not so much as blink. He merely looked at her with such kindness that she had to glance away for fear her lips would begin to tremble and her eyes to sting.
She refused to weep a single tear further.
She had shed more than enough for one lifetime already.
“I have prayed, Father,” she whispered, forcing her voice to be softer, calmer. Still, she sounded desperate to her own ears. “Many times I have prayed. But each time He is silent. I still do not know what I am supposed to do.”
“That is because you are expecting Him to hand you a map,” the Shepherd gently observed, “when He has already handed you a calling.”
A calling?
Seraphina couldn’t stand still a moment longer. She began to pace the narrow space between pew and altar, her shadow stretching long and thin against the stone.
“To what was I called?” she demanded, speaking more to the air than to the Shepherd. The memory of Oracle Tsukiko’s words in the throne room on the day she first received the vision burned in her mind: “All of Avirel is in grave danger, Your Majesty.”
Bitterness coated the back of her throat. “To save the world?” she asked, nearly choking on the words. They sounded so absurd, even to her. “When I could not even save Elmoria? When I could not even save Mysai?”
She turned on her heel to face the Shepherd as she flung her arms wide to gesture at herself standing there in her wool and furs, her crown still hidden in her knapsack within her small, cold bedroom here at the Spire.
Short the jewel she had to use to barter for horses.
“I am no hero,” she whispered, shaking her head.
“If the Lord has truly called me to save all Avirel, then He has made a mistake.”
Gently, Father Perero reminded her, “The Lord does not make mistakes.”
Jaw clenching, she raised her voice to proclaim, “In this He has. He has chosen the wrong de la Croix.”
Old sorrows tore through her like the frigid waters of the Frostrun in the wake of those words.
Sorrows she thought she had long since silenced.
Perhaps if her brother, Hamon, had lived, Mysai and Goldreach would still stand.
Perhaps if she had been the one to drown in the Straight instead, the world would be better for it.
She was no lady knight like Dame Florence, no warrior like the mysterious woman in the painting down in the vaults. She was just…Seraphina.
A gasp shuddered through her as her knees finally gave out, exhaustion winning in the end. But Father Perero was there before she could collapse, his hands gently cupping her shoulders with a strength his frail form shouldn’t have possessed.
Without a word, he helped guide her to the floor, where she settled on her knees, ignoring the way the cold gnawed at her shins even through her skirts.
Disgust tangled low in her gut—disgust with herself. Where was the Seraphina from just last week who had declared with such certainty that their fate was in the Lord’s hands now? That He would reveal the plan to them in His own time?
But that Seraphina hadn’t known her Crow was alive.
That Seraphina hadn’t had to look Tristan Dacre in the eye and feel cowardice turn her tongue to stone, rendering her mute when it came time to tell him what had become of Olivia.
Aldric. Olivia. The realization of what was truly bothering her lanced through her like a bolt of lightning, stealing her breath all over again.
To her war council, this was merely a question of strategy.
But to her, this was a question of loyalty.
Who should she seek to rescue first: her oldest, dearest friend…or her husband?
Seraphina swayed where she knelt; her eyes fluttered closed.
Father Perero’s grip on her shoulders tightened. “The Lord on High does not choose the prepared, Seraphina,” he whispered, the quiet words barely audible through the pounding of her own pulse within her ears. “He prepares the chosen.”
Through numb lips, she muttered, “Then I must not be chosen, for I am woefully ill-prepared.”
Despite everything, the Shepherd chuckled.
When her eyes fluttered back open, she found him staring at her with a small smile on his lips—as if he understood her far better than she understood herself. “When Mysai fell, what did you do, Your Majesty?”
She answered without pause, “I abandoned my troops in Mysai to die.”
“You evacuated the defenseless civilians and saved hundreds of lives,” he corrected her, his tone gentle but firm. “And when you learned of Coreto’s betrayal, what did you do?”
The mere sound of the name Coreto was enough to make her hands clench into fists. “I let the viper live. And he came back to bite me.”
“You showed mercy where others would not—”
“I showed weakness where others would not!” she shouted, the words ringing off the cold stone walls. “If I had killed Coreto when I had the chance, perhaps I could have saved Goldreach.”
“And condemned your own soul in the process?” Father Perero asked, his voice dropping to a grave whisper that carried more weight than any shout.
She flinched away from the undeniable truth in his eyes.
But still he continued. “You say you showed weakness in sparing Coreto, but is it weakness to show mercy as the Lord bids us to do—to live by His laws instead of the world’s?”
He paused, as if waiting for her to answer his clearly rhetorical question.