Chapter 50
Chapter fifty
Seraphina
The darkness of the stone passage swallowed her whole.
Cold, damp air clung to her skin as she was led by Coreto through the narrow corridor like a dog on a leash—his hand firmly gripping the rope binding her wrists.
Lord Bennett walked ahead, his torch throwing jagged shadows across the cramped wall. Rough hands belonging to her former guards shoved her forward. The silk gag bit deeper into the corners of her mouth. The rope burned her wrists.
Her shoe caught on a loose stone, sending her tripping. Clenching her jaw, she caught herself and kept walking.
Refusing to give these men the satisfaction of seeing her fall.
Wellane trailed behind her, his breath coming too fast, too loud. His betrayal was yet another dagger carving a fresh hole into her chest.
“Forgive me…he has my wife.”
As if that absolved him.
As if that excused treason.
Her teeth ground against the gag. Aldric had said the same sort of thing, had he not? Reyla—his reason, his excuse. And just like Wellane, it was a very human reason. One she could almost understand.
Understanding didn’t stop the hollow ache from gnawing at her chest.
It didn’t make betrayal sting any less.
Another shove. She stumbled again, her shoulder brushing damp stone. The narrow passage twisted sharply left, then dipped downward—a steep incline that forced her to brace her heels to keep from toppling face-first into Coreto’s back.
The air grew colder. Heavier.
Where were they?
Think. Think. Her pulse hammered in her ears as she tried to map the twisting route in her mind. They were deep within the palace walls, one of the ancient outer corridors, judging by the slope. Which exit were they heading toward? Where was Coreto trying to take her?
But more importantly: how could she escape?
The weight of Aldric’s dagger still pressed against her left wrist beneath the sleeve of her gown. Still strapped there. Forgotten. No, overlooked.
Fools.
On her right hand, the cool weight of the poison ring Olivia had gifted her just before the summit rested, hidden, beneath her glove. And tucked into the seams of her bodice, just between her breasts, the dagger her godmother had once given her waited where no guard would dare look.
No one had thought to check her for weapons.
And thanks to those who loved her most, she had three.
Three chances to escape.
Her heart steadied.
Ahead of her, Coreto barked, “Faster! The men should be in position by now,” yanking her onward without bothering to look back.
His voice bounced off the narrow walls, nauseatingly triumphant.
Lord Bennett lifted the torch higher, illuminating the next bend—a sharp corner plunging into deeper darkness.
Seraphina drew in a slow breath through her nose, forcing clarity into her thoughts. She would not die here. Nor would she be used as a pawn in Coreto’s political games.
She was a de la Croix. A queen.
And she would not go quietly.
Just as she steeled herself—just as her fingers curled, ready to ease Aldric’s dagger free—the wall to her left gave a low, grinding groan. Stone shifted. A section of the passage wall slid open. A flood of golden light poured in.
Seraphina recoiled, her eyes squeezing shut against the sudden glare.
“What?” It was all Coreto had time to ask before a blur of blue-green shot toward him with a furious screech. Alyx.
Her usuru slammed into the duke’s face, wings battering, jaws snapping. Coreto shouted and stumbled backward, releasing his hold on her rope. Lord Bennett screamed. Wellane cowered. Blades rasped free, her traitorous guards drawing steel.
A silhouette moved to fill the doorway—tall, slender, unmistakable.
Olivia.
Voice calm—entirely too calm—her friend ordered, “Get down.”
Seraphina obeyed on instinct, dropping into a crouch just as Olivia flung a handful of some sort of powder over her head.
And straight into her captors’ faces.
Screams of pain ricocheted off the walls. Men choked on nothing, blind. Disoriented.
She clenched her eyes shut and ducked her head, trying not to breathe in the powder.
Hands seized her wrists and dragged her through the hidden doorway, out of the suffocating dark. More cold air slapped her cheeks. Torchlight blazed against her eyelids.
Cautiously, she opened her eyes and found herself in what looked like a guardroom, but one deep in the palace. One with no windows.
The dungeons?
Sir Tristan was there, shouldering the hidden door closed again.
Her chest constricted. Alyx was still in there. “Alyx!” she tried to shout, though the word was muffled against her gag.
Yet still the usuru darted from the corridor and made straight for her just as Sir Tristan finished shoving the door shut. The rasp of stone slamming into stone reverberated through the room. Motes of dust floated through the air.
They were free.
Smooth scales glided against her throat as Alyx wound herself around her neck and settled in close—with a hiss instead of her usual purr.
“Hold still,” Olivia snarled, a knife flashing in her hands, cutting clean through the rope binding her. Her gag came off next, ripped free by her friend.
Seraphina worked her mouth, her tongue dry. “Thank you—”
Olivia seized her hand and tugged her from the room, out into a narrow corridor, Sir Tristan following close behind. More cold and damp clung to the air. Torches sputtered on the walls. To the left, a flight of stairs led upward.
Footsteps pounded against those steps, descending. Voices clattered against one another.
“Olivia?” someone shouted from further up—her godmother.
“Don’t worry, I have her,” Olivia called back, as if she were a parcel being fetched.
As if she were not even there.
A seed of doubt burrowed its way into her heart. Was that what her family thought of her? One single misstep—one single moment of trusting the wrong person, a man who had never given her reason to mistrust—and suddenly she was a little girl again, in need of coddling?
A dark voice in the back of her mind murmured, Yes. That is exactly what they think.
Seraphina pried her hand from her friend’s grip and flattened herself against the wall as two dozen guardsmen flooded down the staircase, as if meaning to pursue Coreto through the bowels of the palace.
“Stop!” she shouted. Olivia shot her a strange glance.
Seraphina forced steel into her spine. “There is no point in following them. The passage is too narrow—a choke point. And the duke said men were already in position. He wants you funneled. It will be an ambush.”
The men hesitated at once—two dozen armored bodies frozen mid-stride. A few exchanged uneasy glances. Others looked toward Olivia, clearly unsure. But Olivia wasn’t their queen.
She was.
“I will not lose good, loyal soldiers to blind pursuit,” she continued, biting out each word. “Return upstairs with me so that we can secure the rest of the palace.”
One of the guards shifted uncomfortably. “But Your Majesty…Coreto—”
“—wants you to chase him,” she cut in. “He led me through those tunnels for a reason. He has something planned. Something waiting. And not only that, but he would surely relish you being funneled.” Her jaw hardened. “I will not grant him that.”
The guard dropped his gaze and bowed. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
She turned on her heel and made for the stairs. Far overhead, screams echoed. Not screams of pain, but of fear. She tripped over the uneven steps underfoot, nearly losing her balance completely.
But Sir Tristan grabbed her elbow from behind, steadying her.
A tremor rippled through her fingers. What was happening up there? What fresh plan of Coreto’s had she not seen coming? A part of her did not wish to know.
And yet she had to know.
“Mistress Olivia,” she whispered, her voice sounding distant in the chill darkness of the stairwell. “I need a report.”
She shot her friend a glance over her shoulder.
Olivia met her gaze in that brief moment, reluctance shimmering there. The other woman hesitated.
“Now, Olivia.”
“The Viscount of Arlund is dead, Your Majesty,” Olivia began, her tone detached, uncharacteristically matter-of-fact. “The front has broken. And now we stand to lose Goldreach.”
Seraphina missed the next step and staggered into the wall, just barely catching herself against the rough stone. “Lose Goldreach?” she repeated, her lips cold, numb.
The walls on either side closed in. The already steep stairwell seemed to tilt, to spin. Suddenly, breathing became difficult.
Alyx rumbled with an usuru purr and bumped her scaled head against her throat, as if in an attempt to comfort her. But she barely felt her serpent’s presence now.
She barely felt anything at all.
The Viscount of Arlund, dead.
The front, broken.
Aldric. She had sent him to that broken front.
Her Crow’s betrayal still smarted, still fresh. But even so, her heart lurched—a wild, useless protest. No. No, this could not be happening. Her fingers fumbled for the chain resting against her chest, closing around the golden sun pendant there.
“I will do my best to survive.” That was what he had promised.
But she had sent him to his death.
Olivia was still speaking, saying something about the Dawnspire. Words that didn’t make sense. Words that no de la Croix would ever heed.
“…we must retreat…”
“No,” Seraphina heard herself whisper as she climbed on, drifting now like a woman caught in a dream. Light spilled from the open doorway at the top of the stairs. Her godparents stood there—watching, waiting.
Screams shivered into being beyond them. Footsteps pounded over marble. Shouts to hurry. Panic lay over everything like morning frost.
Her stomach should have roiled. Her heart should have stuttered with every cry.
Instead, there was nothing. The world around her felt distant, muffled, as if she had stepped outside her own life.
As if she were only a bystander watching someone else’s world crumble.
And turn to ash.
“Your Majesty!” Duke Percival cried, his relief palpable. From his place at the top of the stairs, her godfather reached out to take her hand and guide her the rest of the way out. “Praise the Lord.”
She narrowed her eyes against the sunlight of the palace corridor, blinking rapidly as she adjusted to the brightness of the world again. Vaguely, she was aware of Lord Tiberius lingering nearby. Sir Arkwright. A whole host of other armored men.
But before she could finish gaining her bearings, velvet, coarse dire bear fur, and body heat enveloped her on all sides as her godparents swept her into both their embraces at once.
“Did he hurt you?” Duchess Edith whispered, kissing her brow.
Duke Percival snarled, “I will kill him if he did. To think, Wellane—”
“They have his wife,” Seraphina dully informed them, idly surprising even herself that she would bother defending the actions of the man who had just betrayed her.
Over her godmother’s shoulder, she watched the world pass her by as courtiers and servants raced through the halls, no longer paying her any heed. As if she were a mere princess again.
The spare. The political pawn. Easily overlooked.
Far away, the bells of the cathedral still tolled.
How long had she been in the tunnels?
Duchess Edith pulled away, carefully searching her face. The older woman’s brow furrowed. “Are you all right, darling?”
Duke Percival scowled, worrying his hand against the top of his cane. “I fear we cannot linger, Your Majesty. We must hurry.”
“Yes, we must,” Seraphina softly agreed. For once, she did not try to paint a smile on her face for the sake of her godparents.
She no longer had the energy for such falsehoods.
“I am fine,” she reassured Duchess Edith before turning to face her godfather instead. “Your Grace, we must lock down Goldreach in preparation for a siege. Send word to the gates. The harbor…”
She trailed off as Duke Percival’s features crumpled. He looked past her, over her shoulder. Toward Olivia.
“You did not tell her?” he asked.
“I tried,” Olivia hissed.
Seraphina expelled a slow breath through her nose. “Tell me what?” she heard herself ask, as if her voice were elsewhere—somewhere far, far away.
Without a word, Duchess Edith took her by the hand and led her toward a window across the hall, narrowly avoiding being slammed into by a servant fleeing, his arms laden with golden candlesticks from the great hall.
Behind her, Duke Percival murmured, obviously reluctant, “Arath is already here, Your Majesty.”
There, through the window, she finally saw it—smoke rising just beyond the palace in great, dark clouds, unfurling above her capital city.
Goldreach was already ablaze.
What air remained within her lungs rushed out, leaving her bracing herself against the windowsill as her knees threatened to buckle. Her ears buzzed with a sudden absence—an absence that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. It took her a few more moments to realize what it was.
The bells.
The cathedral bells had finally stopped ringing.
“We must quit the city while we still have a chance,” her godfather was saying, his voice just barely audible over the pounding of footsteps echoing through the halls, the clamor of distant shouts to hurry.
In the courtyard below, courtiers scrambled, dragging trunks, loading carriages, fighting over horses. Servants darted like birds flushed from cover and disappeared from view. Already fleeing. Already abandoning the city she had sworn to protect.
Her city.
Her people.
Her father’s dying whisper ghosted through her thoughts once more, haunting her. Taunting her. “You will spell the end of House de la Croix and all that my forefathers worked for. Our royal line will die with you.”
“No.” The word punched from her throat, shattering the numbness encasing her heart just enough for something hot and sharp to pierce through. She was Elmoria’s queen. She was the protector of its people.
It would not end like this. It could not end like this.
She straightened, whirling to face them all—her friends, her family, the last allies she had left. “We will stand and fight. We will not quit Goldreach. We will not abandon our people to die.” She spat that last word like the curse it was.
But silence was her only answer. No one spoke. No one dared meet her gaze.
No one save for her godfather.
“Your Majesty,” Duke Percival whispered, his voice steady despite the trembling of his hands. “We must quit Goldreach now while we still have a chance. Your people? They will survive. Because your enemies have no reason to kill them.”
He paused, looking at her over the rims of his spectacles—not with pity but with love. And the kind of pain only a father could bear.
A true father. Not by blood, but by choice.
“But you? They will kill you. And you are no good to your people dead.”