Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
Seraphina
Dusk settled over the forest. Crickets chirped, and glow bugs pulsed with illumination between the low branches.
Her calves throbbed, and although she was happy—the pain from her feet had been lessened, thanks to Alistair—she couldn’t help but focus on a new ache that pushed forward. One new, one old. Demon. Her magic.
Nora had been taken by one of them. He’d slammed Al into a tree like a leaf in the breeze. What chance did she have?
Sera refused to cry. Crying didn’t help. So she bottled it up just as she had her darkness, as she had her hopes and dreams of becoming something more.
Alistair found them a place to camp between a set of ancient oaks. He was methodical. Cleared the ground, gathered the wood, and set a fire. He must have done this a hundred times before.
Was this what life on the road was like?
The Solarni coven of the Citadel wasn’t the only band of witches and warlocks on the continent, only the largest. She’d heard about the Suma coven, which dwelled in the forest. It was one of the traveling covens, which would stop at various places to sell goods and wares.
Their evenings must have looked similar to this one—a troupe gathering around a fire, settling to the sounds of the woods.
Alistair had a stick in his hand. He mumbled his spell and drew a circle about eight feet from the center of the fire.
A thin barrier surrounded them. It was clear, unlike her blue, but Alistair’s almost glittered in the light of the flames.
She could make out the prism of colors only from the corners of her eyes; when she stared directly at it, they disappeared.
“This will keep us safe through the night,” Al said. Thunder crackled in the distance, and faint blasts of light lit up the sky between the gaps in the leaves.
Rain sprinkled on the dome around them before beading and rolling off the side.
“You’ve got a deep well, don’t you?”
Al grunted. He’d been quiet and moody ever since they left Crowpass. Thankfully, there had been no sign of the demon or any other danger.
Sera shook out her bedroll, claiming a spot on the opposite side of the fire from Al, and leaned against a fallen log. She grabbed her notebook and opened it to see Dominick’s spidery scrawl.
1. We are having a conversation about the state of your room as soon as you’re home.
2. Ithar hugged me when I handed him your box of treasure, which wasn’t as skin-crawling as I imagined.
3. Please tell me you fucked Al… and don’t spare details!
She hadn’t wanted to ask him to help with Ithar, but she’d run out of time. She supposed she did deserve a hard conversation about the fact that she’d let herself go, let her lodgings go. There were so many other important things to worry about. Most of all, Nora.
Things have been dreadful without you here, and it’s only been a day. I have no one to gossip with or ogle warlocks with, and my life is utterly dull without you. So, for selfish reasons, I request that you find that oracle quickly so you can return home to me.
P.S. I broke up with Sam… he didn’t take it the best
Sera slid her pen from its holder and wrote her response:
Thank you for taking care of Ithar for me. As far as my boarding room goes… you try dealing with this magic in your veins on a daily basis.
I miss you, and no, I haven’t fucked Al, and don’t plan to. Also, for him being as close as a brother to you, you seem to have a weird fascination for details.
We made it to Crowpass. Al went into the town, but when I was waiting for him, another demon lord appeared.
I swear it had me enthralled. I couldn’t move, and if Al hadn’t come running, I’d be gone.
The forest is beautiful, but there feels like a lingering darkness.
It could be my imagination or the demon, but I’m terrified.
If you hear anything about Nora, please let me know. I’m relying on you, so please don’t get yourself shunned or do something stupid.
—Sera
She closed the journal, then reopened it. The pages had cleared her words.
“Here,” Alistair said right before a ball of fabric smacked her in the face. “Since you can’t glamour, you need a disguise.”
The lavender garment was made of coarse material, with uneven and lopsided stitches around the hem. But she noticed the small smirk on Al’s lips. She wanted to be happy for this break in gloom, but his mood had been a boulder in her gut. One that seemed to stay put.
“Is this the best they had?” she asked. The dress was hideous—about three sizes too wide, and it would hang at an awkward length below her knees.
“You don’t like my taste in dresses?”
“This isn’t a dress, it’s a tent.”
“Are you worried I won’t find you pretty enough to ask you to the solstice ball?” He winked.
Sera couldn’t help her scowl. Maybe he was over the events of the afternoon, but she remembered what he had said, what he had implied. “Now you have a sense of humor? Over our little incident with the demon?”
That struck a nerve. His blue eyes pinned her where she sat, his mouth set in a grim line. “Do you have any idea of what could have happened? What he could have done to you?”
“Believe it or not, I am very aware of the different varieties of demonic torture.” Sera threw her notebook into her rucksack and pulled out her Legion cloak, rolling it into a ball to be used as a pillow for later.
“So glad you’re well read.” Al stretched his arms above his head. She didn’t want to watch him; she hated how her eyes lingered on the lines of him, envisioning what all that muscle looked like under his clothes.
Sera restrained herself from going further down that thought line and stood. This wasn’t some opportunity to reconnect with an old crush, and how dare she lose focus on the real reason she was here?
“This is not a game to me! Nora is gone. They have her. How would you feel if they had Colton?”
His lip curled. “I know more than most what it would be like to have someone you love ripped apart by demons.”
Sera swallowed hard. His father. Of course. How could she have forgotten? “Then you know exactly how I feel right now. The only difference is that I don’t know if she’s dead or not.” Sera slapped her hand over her mouth. “Al, I’m sorry—”
“At least you have a fucking chance.” The dead leaves on the ground crunched under each step he took toward her. “At least there is some hope that Nora is alive down there. Maybe beaten, maybe bloody, but alive.”
Her heart sank. She recognized the pain in him now. The anger, yes, but also the helplessness.
She could barely hear what he said over the thunderclaps around them. “Never assume what I may feel about a situation. I promise you’ll always end up wrong.”
The back of Sera’s knees hit the log behind her. Scrambling for a moment, she landed atop the log with Alistair hovering over her. Still, Sera held her chin high. “Fine,” she gritted out.
“Fine,” Al repeated back to her and strode back to his bedroll on the other side of the fire. He lay down, keeping his back to her.
Downing her sleeping elixir, Sera let her silent tears fall.