Chapter 68 Seraphina
Chapter sixty-eight
Seraphina
The valley had descended into madness.
Thick, oily plumes of black smoke roiled up from the cove, obscuring the shoreline and stinging her eyes even from this distance.
The air tasted of ash and copper—the flavor of ruin.
Seraphina sat astride Mourn halfway up the slope of the western hill, her position precarious, held just before the incline became too steep for a destrier to manage at speed.
Her gloved hands tightened on the reins until the leather creaked, straining against the urge to move. Somewhere in that choking gloom was Aldric.
The golden cord in her chest thrummed, a frantic, vibrating wire pulling her toward the smoke. Every instinct she possessed screamed at her to turn Mourn’s head, to drive him down into the inferno and find her husband. To burn if it meant burning together.
Peace, she commanded her racing heart, forcing her breath to come slow and deep. The Sons will find him. Calix, Rakon, and Leif will not fail.
She had to believe that. She had to believe that the plan would hold, that she would lead these witches away, and that tonight—Lord willing—she would meet Aldric at the rendezvous point to the west.
There were so many things she needed to say to him. So many apologies waiting to be voiced, so many truths she had been too afraid to whisper in the quiet of the Dawnspire. She would speak them all tonight.
High above, twin shadows swept over the undulating grass. Seraphina glanced up to see Alyx and Soot banking sharply against the wind, their wings shimmering in the weak, gray morning light. They moved in tandem, circling the battlefield, two halves of a whole.
Just like us.
A roar rose from the cove, distinct from the rhythmic crash of the waves.
The Arathian line was breaking. Like water bursting through a dam, soldiers in foreign steel spilled from the mouth of the cove, driven back by the ferocity of the varhounds and the relentless advance of her infantry.
They were scattering, retreating toward the pass.
Seraphina tensed, her eyes narrowing as she scanned the chaotic tide of bodies. She had never laid eyes on a witch before. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for—a withered hag? A giant wreathed in shadow?
Muscles coiled, she sat there, waiting for someone to finally notice her. But the chaos of the Arathian retreat was too thick; the enemy soldiers were too busy fighting for their lives against her pursuing men to notice the solitary figure on the hill.
They needed a beacon.
With a sharp intake of breath that filled her lungs with the scent of pine and slaughter, Seraphina reached up and unbuckled her helm. She pulled the steel from her head, shaking her hair free so that it tumbled around her shoulders—a banner of red-touched brown against the gray stone of the hill.
“If you want me,” she screamed, her voice tearing through the din of battle, raw and challenging, “you will have to come and claim me!”
And then, the sea of soldiers parted.
A woman stepped through the tumult, untouched by the frantic violence swirling around her. She wore no armor, only robes of deep, blood-drenched crimson that billowed like smoke with each step she took. She walked with a terrifying calm, her gaze not on the dying men at her feet, but lifted high.
Fixed directly on her.
Mourn snorted, his ears pinning back. The great stallion reared slightly, his iron-shod hooves pawing at the empty air—not in fear, but in recognition of a predator. No doubt he felt it, too. The wrongness of her. The way the air seemed to shimmer and warp around her form.
The witch stopped, her head tilting to the side, as if trying to make sense of what she was doing. Sitting exposed. Seemingly alone.
Even from that distance, the weight of the other woman’s stare was heavy. Suffocating. It felt like insects crawling across her skin.
Seraphina didn’t wait to see more. She jammed her heels into Mourn’s flanks. “Go!”
The destrier exploded into motion.
They thundered down the soft slope, eating up the ground with terrifying speed. She leaned low over the stallion’s neck, the wind roaring in her ears, whipping her hair into a frenzy. She steered him hard, veering away from the main melee and straight into the mouth of the ravine.
It was a reckless, desperate gamble. And it was glorious.
For the first time in her life, she wasn’t the woman in the tower, carefully strategizing behind the safety of four walls. Agonizing. Overthinking. Nor was she the fragile creature Olivia constantly tried to handle like glass.
She was the dawn.
The biting chill of this early winter filled her lungs, sharp and clean.
The raw power of her husband’s horse beneath her surged through her veins.
She should have been afraid, and yet she felt no fear.
There was only the burning light in her chest. Only the fierce, wild joy of being alive thrumming through her soul.
The thud of incoming hoofbeats echoed in the distance, distinct against the rocky terrain.
She risked a glance over her shoulder.
The witch had found a horse and she was coming in fast, crimson robes cracking in the wind behind her, body leaned low over the creature’s neck. She came alone.
Perfect.
Seraphina urged Mourn faster as the walls of the ravine rose up around them, shadowing the rising sun. Far above her, Alyx’s familiar screech pierced the air.
Something whistled past, slicing the air inches from her ear.
Seraphina flinched, crouching lower as a second arrow thunked violently into a scraggly tree to her left, the shaft quivering. She looked up, her stomach dropping. High atop the eastern ridge—the hill Cyneric had warned was vulnerable—shapes moved against the skyline. Arathian archers.
She didn’t stop. She didn’t slow.
She just flew.
From the western ridge above her, a volley of arrows sang out in reply—her own men, raining death upon her enemies. The air above the ravine became a crossfire of hissing shafts. It was madness. It was chaos.
But she rode in the eye of the storm.
She pushed Mourn harder, the stallion’s hooves sparking against the rocky floor of the pass. They were nearing the exit. Just a little farther, and she would lead the witch right into Cyneric’s waiting arms.
Then, the air shifted. The temperature spiked, instantly drying the moisture in her mouth.
There was no warning hiss, no sound of impact. One moment the pass ahead was clear.
In the next, the world turned red.
A wall of roaring flame erupted from the ravine wall fifty yards in front of her, sealing the end of the pass. The heat was instantaneous. Blistering. It washed over her, sucking all the air from her lungs, replacing it with an acrid tang.
Sitting deep in her saddle, Seraphina hauled back on Mourn’s reins with all her strength.
The stallion skid to a halt, his hindquarters dropping low, hooves scrabbling for purchase on the loose shale as they stopped mere feet from the inferno. The heat seared Seraphina’s face, singing her eyelashes.
Shouts went up from the other side of the flame wall—the cries of confused men, of screaming horses.
Out of the fire stalked another woman in red. A woman who stepped through the flames as if they were a gentle morning mist. Another witch. Seraphina realized with a jolt why her scouts had not been able to find the second jaw of the Arathian trap.
Because the jaw had been one woman hiding in all this wilderness.
Steeling her heart, Seraphina slowly wheeled Mourn around to face her pursuer.
The first witch still sat atop her horse in the center of the pass, smiling. A gesture that didn’t reach her eyes. “It seems you have nowhere left to go, Lightbearer.”
“Lightbearer?” Seraphina echoed aloud before she could stop herself, her brow furrowing. She had never heard the title before. It tasted strange on her tongue, ancient and heavy.
The witch’s smile widened, revealing teeth that seemed far too sharp for a woman to possess. She nudged her horse forward, the beast stepping casually over the rocky terrain.
Up close, the woman was positively terrifying, with eyes like twin pools of molten gold that glowed with an inner, terrible luminescence.
“From one woman to another, I would offer you the dignity of surrender,” the witch called out, her voice smooth yet mocking. “But I fear my master has demanded your head.”
Master? Surprise lanced through Seraphina, giving her pause. What master could this creature possibly mean? The King of Arath? Coreto?
Seraphina tightened her grip on her reins, Mourn shifting beneath her, and called back. “And here I would have thought a woman with your power would never debase herself to serve a mere man.”
The taunt landed. The witch’s golden eyes flared, the glow intensifying into a harsh burn. Her lips curled back in a snarl. “You know nothing of power, girl,” she hissed.
With a fluid motion, the woman drew a curved blade from the scabbard strapped to her saddle and kicked her horse forward, raising the blade for the killing stroke.
Seraphina braced herself, clumsily drawing her own sword. The blade that accompanied the armor she wore was heavy, unfamiliar in her grip. She didn’t know how to wield it. Not truly.
Lord, please be my shield.
From the west, a low wail unfurled, tearing through the ravine, echoing off the stone walls like a thunderclap.
The witch faltered, her golden eyes darting upward.
High on the western ridge, silhouetted against the morning sky, a rider appeared. A giant of a man wearing a fearsome leather varhound mask and draped in dire bear fur.
Wulfston.
Her cousin didn’t hesitate. With a howl ripping from his own throat, he spurred his horse over the lip of the ridge and charged straight down the treacherous, sliding scree of the cliff face—a landslide of rocks and fury cascading with him.
The witch’s attention snapped to the avalanche of riders plunging toward them both, no longer paying her any heed.
Realization dawned. This was her chance. She did not have to wait for Wulfston to save her. She did not have to wait for the witch to recover.
She could simply…act.
Her hand found the hilt of the sword at her hip. The sword she did not know how to wield. But perhaps she did not have to know.
Perhaps she simply had to trust.
Without a single sound—no taunt, no battle cry—Seraphina wrenched her blade free and drove her spurs into Mourn’s flanks. Fearless, the stallion launched himself forward. Not away from the danger.
But straight into the teeth of it.
The witch whipped her head back around, eyes widening as she realized too late that the Elmorian trap had two jaws as well. And that she was standing in the middle of them.
Mourn slammed into the flank of the witch’s horse, the heavy impact sending them all staggering.
Within her grip, the sword was a dead weight—clumsy and foreign—yet she still lifted it. She still swung it toward the juncture of the witch’s neck and shoulder.
The witch flinched, golden eyes squeezing shut.
But Seraphina was no butcher. She was a queen.
With a grunt of effort, she locked her elbow, stopping her strike before it could ever land. The edge of her sword froze a mere breath from the other woman’s throat.
In those moments, the war vanished. The fire faded away.
In those moments, there was only her and the witch.
Seraphina leaned forward, her chest heaving, and felt the truth settle over her like a mantle. This was true power. Not the ability to kill.
But the strength to choose not to.
A dead witch could answer no questions.
And there were many Seraphina wanted answered.
“From one woman to another…” she rasped, wrapping both hands around the hilt of her sword to keep the heavy steel from trembling. Carefully, she nudged the blade forward—not to cut, but to remind the witch it was there. “I would suggest you surrender.”