Chapter 70 Seraphina
Chapter seventy
Seraphina
Her Crow was going to die.
The realization hit Seraphina faster than the wall of fire erupting from the second witch’s throat as he rode his horse straight into the inferno’s path, arms spread wide. A human shield of flesh and bone meant to catch the death intended for her.
“No!” The cry ripped from her throat, raw. Broken. He couldn’t die now. Not after everything. The heavy sword she had held with such trembling defiance slipped from her numb fingers, clattering uselessly against the stone.
She didn’t weigh the cost. There was no time.
She didn’t think.
She lunged.
Throwing herself from Mourn’s saddle, Seraphina dove toward the danger, toward him. Her arms wrapped around his chest. Her body collided with his. The heat wave slammed into them both, knocking the breath from her lungs. Flinging her backward in a tangle of desperate limbs.
She crashed hard to the ground and skidded several feet, steel plate rattling, jarring her bones. But she had him. Arms locked around his chest. His back crushed to her breastplate. She had Aldric.
The air above them incinerated. A roar like a collapsing mountain shook the earth. The heat was a physical weight, pressing her into the dirt as she tried to roll atop her husband to protect him from the worst of it. The man was half-naked. He did not even have shoes.
Horses screamed—terrible, high-pitched sounds of panic. Smoke choked the air overhead, filling her lungs. She coughed, her eyes stinging. Beneath her, Aldric shifted, clawing his way out from beneath the press of her body.
“Kirei!” His voice was nearly lost in the chaos, swallowed up by the fire, the smoke, the sounds of battle, the screams. But still she heard it. Still, it hummed along the cord binding her heart to him like the sweetest song. “We have to move!”
Out of the acrid smoke, his hand emerged, wrapping around hers.
She clung to his fingers like a lifeline, letting her Crow lead her out.
On hands and knees, they crawled, scrambling across grass and dirt—inelegant, desperate. Someone nearly tripped over her, slamming into her torso with such force it stole the breath from her lungs all over again. Her hand nearly slipped from Aldric’s grasp.
But his grip on her tightened, refusing to let her go.
Around them, the battle had devolved into absolute madness. What northmen still lived formed a ragged wall of fur and steel between them and the witches. Mourn was nowhere to be seen. Beyond the fire wall still blocking the end of the pass, more shouts of men erupted.
Not shouts of pain, but frustration. Panic.
Cyneric and his forces could not get to her through the flame.
She searched the air instinctively for the winged shapes that so rarely left her or her Crow’s side—Alyx, Soot—but the smoke was too thick, the chaos too blinding.
Out of the smoke, Wulfston’s masked form loomed, his axe swinging in a deadly arc. Straight toward the second witch still spouting flame. The blade of his weapon connected. The unbearable heat ceased.
The Arathian woman collapsed—dead—right beside her.
But Seraphina didn’t look. She couldn’t look. She just scrambled to her feet alongside Aldric and raced with him away from the worst of the fight. From the scents of smoke and death.
The thunder of hooves on stone sounded in the near distance, tearing through the ravine straight toward them. More friends? Foes?
She scanned the pass, hunting for a way out of this nightmare. But there was nothing. Nothing that she could see. Merely the wall of fire blocking the way forward. The steep faces of the hills framing the ravine.
This wasn’t exactly going according to plan. They would have to retreat back the way they had just come, straight into the unknown forces approaching—
Something clanged against her pauldron, shattering in a spray of wood. Too close to her exposed face for comfort. Seraphina froze. She looked up, through the swirling gray haze, to the eastern ridge.
To the Arathian archers still there, aiming their bows straight at her.
“Get down!” her Crow roared, wrenching her arm with such force, he nearly ripped the limb straight from its socket.
“Aldric—” She collapsed to her knees, lifting her armored arm to shield her face.
But before she could draw another breath, he moved. Hands shoving at her shoulders as he launched himself at her, tackling her into the grass and dirt.
He covered her, his body a heavy, warm cage pressing her against the earth, shielding her face with his form. No. Her heart seized. Her hands fisted in his filthy shirt, trying to shove him off of her.
But she couldn’t. He was too heavy. Just like that night in her bedchamber.
“Aldric! Get off—” Panic rose like bile in the back of her throat as she stared up into her husband’s one-eyed gaze and found naught but determination shining there. And something else.
A feeling burning in her own chest.
More arrows rained down, sinking into the dirt on either side of her face.
Above her, her Crow hovered, flinching with each arrow that whizzed past on his blind side.
Ash and blood stained his scarred features.
Sweat tracked streaks through the grime.
But his eye was bright as he looked down at her, as he hunched his shoulders and whispered three words to her.
Three words she felt echoing through her soul more than she heard curling through the air:
“I love you.”
Love. Her husband loved her.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Three arrows—three impacts meant for her—slammed home into Aldric’s back. He grunted, hunching his shoulders against each one. His body jerked. He did not shout. He did not scream.
But Seraphina did.
Pain seared her through the golden cord buried in her chest—no longer a hum of warmth, but a shriek. White-hot agony exploded in her own back. Three tongues of fire tore through her senses, burning away all other thought.
“Aldric!” She writhed beneath him, shoving at his chest. “Aldric, please!”
Her Crow’s muscles loosened. A ragged breath escaped his lips. He slumped forward until his forehead rested against her shoulder. Dead weight now. Pinning her down. A faint sound escaped him—not a word, not even a groan, just a wet tremor of breath that terrified her more than silence would have.
The bond flickered. The bright, roaring fire of his presence dimmed to a terrifyingly small ember.
No! It could not end like this. She refused to let it end like this.
Please, she desperately prayed, gritting her teeth, shoving with all of her strength to ease herself to a sitting position. Her arms wrapped around his back. Blood. Blood smeared her fingers. His blood.
Drawing in a shaky breath, she tried to stand. Please, give me strength.
Above her, the sky broke. There was no build-up, no warning.
One moment, the air was merely choked with ash and death; and in the next, a peal of thunder cracked the world open, shaking the ground beneath her feet.
Rain fell.
It didn’t sprinkle; it crashed down in a torrential sheet, cold and furious. Stinging her eyes. Blinding her to all else except the man in her arms. The man far too heavy for her to hold.
She slumped back to the earth, her head bowing beneath the weight of the water pouring over her. Plinking off her armor in fat drops. Soaking her hair. Through the downpour, the thunder of hooves vibrated the air.
Someone was coming.
Shivering, Seraphina wrapped her arms more tightly around Aldric’s midsection and dug her sabatons into the sodden dirt, fighting for purchase as she shoved them both backward across the ground, trying to get out of the way. The bond thrummed weakly. His body shuddered within her grasp.
She had to get him out of there.
The rain hit the burning witchfire with a hiss that sounded like a thousand snakes, instantly drowning the flames in clouds of steam.
The temperature plummeted. The smoke was beaten down, plastered to the earth by the sheer weight of the deluge.
Shapes emerged through the thinning haze—northmen, Arathians, fallen horses—but still no sign of Alyx or Soot.
“Secure the pass!” a voice roared in the distance—Cyneric. “Take the witch!”
Seraphina didn’t care. She didn’t care about the battle. She didn’t care about the one witch left. She only cared about him. “Aldric,” she whispered against his soaked hair, her voice nearly lost beneath the downpour. “Aldric, stay with me!”
Three black-fletched arrows protruded from her husband’s back. The rain had already diluted the blood that soaked his shirt, turning them a horrific, pale pink.
“No. No, no, no.” Seraphina’s lips trembled. Her vision blurred. “Do not do this to me. Not after—” She choked on the final word. Everything. Not after everything.
Not before she had a chance to tell him she loved him, too.
Through the downpour, a shadow emerged. Large. Hulking. Black.
Mourn.
She stared up at the great destrier, hardly daring to believe it as he slowly approached, his reins dragging in the mud. Coat slick with rain. Fresh wounds littering his pelt. And yet he was here. He had returned.
The stallion lowered his head and huffed at his fallen master’s hair.
An idea seized her. Hand shaking, Seraphina reached up, straining to tap the heavy muscles of the destrier’s shoulder as she had seen Aldric do back in the courtyard at Goldreach.
The warhorse didn’t hesitate. With a snort, he buckled his front knees, lowering his massive frame into the mud until he was level with them.
“Thank you,” she whispered aloud, easing herself away from Aldric just long enough to clamber into the saddle first. Leaning over, she seized him beneath the arms and hauled him upward with all her strength. A scream of effort tore at her throat.
Perhaps her Crow understood what was happening, or perhaps it was just instinct; either way, his legs scrabbled weakly against the ground, giving her just enough leverage to get him into the saddle.
“I have you,” she murmured, pulling Aldric’s limp weight against her chest so he sat upright, facing her. His head lolled onto her shoulder, fingers twitching with a single spark of life. She wrapped her arms around his waist, locking her hands together, binding him to her. “I have you.”
She kicked Mourn into a hard gallop, driving into the blinding rain.
But they didn’t get far before the stallion slid to a stop once more.
Twenty yards ahead, blocking the exit of the pass, stood the witch. Unbothered by Cyneric’s approaching forces. Unbothered by the arrows still raining down upon her from the western ridge.
Steam curled off the drenched stones around her, rising in ghostly ribbons. Her dark hair lay slick against her face. Her robes hung from her in heavy sheets. But still she peeled back her lips in a snarl and shrieked, voice cutting across a fresh peal of thunder, “You cannot escape, Lightbearer!”
Seraphina tightened her grip on Aldric, her heart hammering against her ribs. Beneath her, Mourn pawed the ground and tossed his head.
She had no weapon. She had no plan. She only had a dying husband in her arms. Chaos swirling all around. A prayer in her heart.
And then, she heard it. Not the roar of battle. Nor the clash of steel.
It was the sound of bells.
Soft, melodious, bells. Tinkling like music. Chiming like a memory.
She had only heard bells like that once before.
The sound drifted on the wind, impossible yet clear, rising above the storm.
Deep drums soon joined them, vibrating through Seraphina’s chest, pounding in time with her pulse.
The witch faltered. Her head slowly turned.
Through the curtain of rain, banners appeared, a legion of knights marching beneath it.
Seraphina blinked, sure she was hallucinating.
Sure that grief had finally snapped her mind.
Above them, two familiar winged shapes wheeled through the storm—Alyx and Soot, circling with fierce cries as if guiding the army into the pass.
An army marching beneath the golden lion of the Holy Lothmeeran Empire.
But that was impossible. Lothmeer had never joined a battle before. They always remained neutral. Apart. Beside the lion of Lothmeer flew a banner of pure white silk, bearing a golden sun overlaid upon a flaming sword.
The High Shepherd’s own standard.
Seraphina’s heart stilled. The world grew quiet, the fighting seeming to pause as all eyes turned to witness this new force flooding into the pass like a divine tide. And at the center of it all, floating through the mud and blood as if walking on air—the source of the tinkling bells.
Oracle Tsukiko.
The witch stepped back, fear flickering across her face for the first time as the prophetess draped in silver continued to advance. Surrounded by her seven Redguard. Oblivious to the rain.
Seraphina…
Those words unfurled within her thoughts, gentle. Warm. Undeniable.
Seraphina stared, tears streaming down her cheeks to join the rivulets of rain already there. Tsukiko truly was here. She had come.
A sob caught in her throat. In her arms, Aldric lay still, his breath but a weak ruffle of air stirring against her skin. His weight sagged heavier against her. He is dying, Tsukiko.
The Oracle’s veiled head tilted slightly.
Go. Do what you must. The day has already been won.
It was a reassurance. It was a blessing.
Before her, on the other side of the witch, the Lothmeeran forces parted like water, splitting in two, forming a path.
Tsukiko’s Redguard stepped forward, her Shield Ichiro leading the charge as they surrounded the witch, halberds lowering in unison to point at the Arathian woman’s throat.
Seraphina didn’t waste her opportunity.
Digging her heels into Mourn’s sides, she drove forward into the rain again. The world blurred. The destrier’s hooves devoured the sodden earth beneath her.
But she rode—past Tsukiko, past the Lothmeeran forces, her face buried in the wet, copper-smelling crook of her husband’s neck. He was so cold. Too cold. She tightened her grip on him, as if sheer force could tether his soul to his body.
“Hold on,” she whispered, as she flew away from the battle—away from her victory—and back toward the only thing that mattered to her now.
“Hold on, my Crow. Just a little longer.”