Chapter 56 Edith
Chapter fifty-six
Edith
Branches clawed at Edith’s sleeves as she crept through the underbrush, one hand gathering her skirts, the other holding back a low-hanging limb so Percy could slip past.
“Careful,” she murmured, her voice sharper than she intended. All the things left unsaid hovered between them, festering like an open wound. But there was no time. No time to waste. No time to fall apart.
No time to grab her husband by the shoulders and shake him, demanding to know why he had tried to abandon her right when she needed him most.
Percy’s cane clacked against roots and stones as he picked his way after her, each uneven patch of ground earning a quiet hiss of breath from him. Rogue padded at his heels, the varhound’s pale coat a ghostly smudge in the dark, ears pricked, tail low.
The King’s Forest loomed around them in shades of black and deeper black. Only the faintest wash of stars and moonlight filtered down through the canopy, lighting their way.
Far behind, somewhere in the direction of the ruined hunting lodge, a horn sounded—a harsh, braying note that sent cold fingers creeping up Edith’s spine.
Coreto’s men. They must be looking for Seraphina, too.
But she and Percy had to find their goddaughter first.
Lord, give me wisdom. Give me strength.
The prayer flickered through her mind as naturally as breath. She fixed her eyes on the dark path ahead, trying to assemble in her thoughts some sort of plan beyond simply keep moving, keep searching, stay alive.
Sir Arkwright was dead. They had found the captain’s body near the ruins, Seraphina’s knapsack still with it—the knapsack Percy now carried. But there had been no sign of Seraphina. That must mean she was alive.
Edith refused to entertain any alternatives.
But where? Where would her goddaughter have gone?
“We need to make for the Dawnspire,” Percy grumbled from the darkness, answering the question she had not yet asked. A twig snapped beneath his boot, too loud. They were being far too loud. “That is where we will find Seraphina.”
Edith frowned. She wasn’t so sure. “Seraphina was a girl the last time she visited the Spire. Would she even remember the way?”
The path up the mountain was treacherous. Her heart ached at the thought of her goddaughter braving it alone.
Percy grunted. “Sera is a good deal braver and more resourceful than any of us give her credit for. She is rather like you in that regard.” He meant it as a compliment. She knew that.
But still, she winced.
Oblivious, her husband finished, “She will survive.”
Pressing her lips into a thin line, Edith carefully eased herself over a fallen log and thrust out her hand to help Percy do the same.
“Is that why you tried to abandon me?” she bit out at last, the words escaping her lips before she could stop them.
“Because you find me brave and resourceful? Because you thought I could survive on my own?”
His gaze snapped to her at once. Within the moonlight streaming through the trees, his spectacles glinted. His face crumpled. “My star—”
“Do not ‘my star’ me, Percival Umberly,” she hissed, her voice low and sharp. They couldn’t afford to speak loudly—not with soldiers combing the woods.
But neither could she afford to keep silent any longer.
Pain bubbled up in her chest—a searing geyser that forced each word from her throat.
“I want you to answer the question. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me why you were going to leave me, after all we have been through.” Her lips trembled.
“Forty years, Percy. After forty years of marriage?”
Her husband glanced away, as if he could no longer bear to look at her.
But she continued anyway, not letting him escape this conversation. “After raising seven children?” Six, the world would have said. Six living sons.
But one daughter already with the Lord.
And their eldest, Cyneric, lost somewhere between Varoa and Goldreach. He should have arrived by now. For one wild moment, Edith pictured him fallen in a nameless ditch. Abandoned. Forgotten.
“Nine,” Percy exhaled, his gaze finding hers again in the darkness, “if we wish to count the girls.”
The girls. The reminder that they had simply left Olivia behind lanced through her again, compounding the grief already threatening to swallow her whole. Guilt. Pain. She tried to push it all aside, to leave it for another time.
But it was too fresh.
Too much. First Cyneric. Now Olivia. Perhaps Seraphina, too.
Three children unaccounted for.
“Very well,” she softly agreed. “We have raised nine children together.” She crossed her arms over her chest beneath the heavy drape of her dire bear fur cloak and waited for him to continue.
Her duke heaved out a sigh, bracing his free hand against a nearby trunk. “I wanted to protect you, Edith. I wanted…” His grip tightened on his cane. His gaze lowered. “I wanted to be your hero one last time. We…we both know that I am a burden. That I am slowing you down.”
His words struck her like an arrow to the heart.
A burden. Is that truly what he thought?
Her throat grew thick. “Percy…”
Slowly, he lifted his eyes back to hers.
“You could never be a burden to me, my love,” she whispered, her breath catching on the words. “You are only a blessing. You are my husband. I…” She swallowed hard, fighting the prick of tears threatening at the corners of her eyes. “I love you.”
Percy pushed himself away from the tree and closed the distance between them in the span of a single moment. Even before her first traitorous tear fell, he was there, cupping her cheek.
“You—” she choked out, her hand lifting to cover his. “You will always be my hero—”
“Shhh,” he soothed her, easing her closer until his forehead pressed against hers. Within that scant space, their breath mingled. “I am sorry,” he whispered, the words brushing warm against her lips. “I am so sorry. I love you.”
Silence fell between them—comfortable and familiar. A silence she could easily lose herself in for hours. Letting her eyes flutter closed, she leaned into him as she had leaned into him a thousand times before. In ballrooms. In deadly forests. In quiet bedrooms and crowded halls.
“I fear we might be getting too old for all of this,” Percy whispered, luring a smile to her lips despite herself. “Perhaps we might consider retirement if we make it out of this alive.”
“I would like that—” she managed to say before his mouth found hers in the darkness, his beard brushing her cheeks. It was a warm kiss—soft and steady.
Just like her duke.
Somewhere far off, a hunting horn sounded, wailing through the trees. Her shoulders tensed. They were not safe here.
“We must keep moving,” she forced herself to say, drawing in a steadying breath as she gently pulled away.
“If Coreto catches us, he will surely have us executed. But we must find Sera. We promised Silvie we would protect her, Percy.” Her breath hitched on the words, that sorrow she knew she needed to keep tamped down rising again. “But now—”
“We will find her,” Percy whispered, so calm, so sure. The hand not clutching his cane gently wrapped around her own. “You are the best tracker I know.”
Edith huffed, something almost like a laugh escaping her, though it tasted bitter. “It is pitch black out,” she pointed out, though still she started forward again, looking for any signs that someone had already passed this way. “And I have not tracked anything in nearly twenty-five years.”
That Edith seemed like such a distant memory. The Edith who had always had a bow in her hand and a knife at her hip. The Edith who had spent all her spare time riding horses and hunting. The Edith who had been the first woman to ever help fell a dire bear.
She had tucked that Edith away when dear Silvia de la Croix had died and she had promised to raise Seraphina as her own.
Seraphina was a princess. She had needed to learn grace. Decorum. Diplomacy. How to smile when she wished to snarl. How to wield words like weapons instead of steel.
Edith’s heart twisted in her chest as she wondered now if she should have taught her goddaughter how to fell a dire bear as well.
Or, at the very least, how to gut anyone who dared threaten her.
A low rustle sounded somewhere up ahead, a fluttering, delicate and wrong against the heaviness of the night. Rogue’s head snapped up, ears pricking. The varhound let out a soft huff, then darted forward toward a clump of brush.
“Rogue,” Edith hissed. “Quiet.”
But the hound was already shoving his way nose-first into the tangle of briars and fallen leaves, tail twitching.
She hurried after him, dragging Percy with her, heart pounding, breaths shallow.
Every new noise could draw Coreto’s men near. Did they hear the rustling, too?
She braced for another horn blast, a shout from amongst the trees.
But there was nothing. Only silence.
Pulling away from her, Percy crept forward and nudged aside some leaves with the end of his cane. A glimmer of iridescent scales, dulled by dirt and blood, caught the moonlight.
“Alyx!” she gasped, hardly daring to believe her eyes.
Seraphina’s usuru lay coiled in a miserable knot, one wing dragged half beneath her body. An arrow jutted clean through the delicate membrane, pinning it like a torn scrap of silk.
The little serpent’s chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths. Her tongue flickered weakly.
Oh, Lord…
Edith dropped to her knees without thinking, heedless of the damp earth soaking into her skirts. Gently, she slid her hands beneath Alyx’s narrow body, lifting her as carefully as if she were a newborn child.
The usuru hissed in pain but did not strike.
“Percy,” Edith urged. “The arrow.”
“I see it.” He lowered himself beside her with a grunt, cane laid across his lap. His fingers were steady as he reached for the shaft. “Hold her still.”