Chapter 25
Chapter twenty-five
Seraphina
It wasn’t the prodding that made her panic. It was the pops and crackles from the fire that caused Sera to wake up screaming. Snik slithered his way into her arms. His whines reverberated against her chest like a soothing purr.
“Snik? You’re safe,” she croaked. Her throat was raw from either the vomiting or the smoke she’d inhaled.
He’s safe. Yes. The people? She’d done it again, and every pop of a stick against flame made her twitch.
“Are you all right?” Alistair asked from across the fire.
Sera ran a shaky hand through her hair. She didn’t remember being set down on her bedroll, nor Al making camp. The last thing she remembered seeing was the empty eye sockets of the man who was going to rape her.
Sera nodded.
“I moved us south. You won’t have to see him again,” he said, breaking off a piece of a stick and tossing it into the flames. He must have been doing that for a while. A pile of burning stubs lay near his side.
“Thank you.” Snik was warm in her arms, a blessing, since she wanted to be as far away from that fire as possible. Flame and death, that’s what she was. Destruction… an end.
Al wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I shouldn’t have let him approach the stairs.”
“It’s not your fault. How would you have known he was coming to our door?
” Our door, like this was something permanent, like they could go back and spend their whole lives drinking ale and dancing the night away.
As if the entire world wasn’t crumbling around them and she wasn’t burning and killing and ruining everything she touched.
“I’m supposed to protect you.”
She froze at that word. Always needing to be protected.
Defective, spineless, incapable. Her mother’s words churned through her head, causing her darkness to rouse.
Sera quickly bound what magic she had, envisioning the cage and locking it away.
“You’re supposed to find the oracle. If I survive, great, but your mission isn’t to protect me. ”
Too much talking. Her lungs protested despite Al’s healing. They were bruised, the muscles around her rib cage sore.
“You think I’d let harm come to you, Sera?”
She didn’t have an answer for that.
“Why didn’t you run?”
Sera stared into the fire. The movement of the flames matched what had licked up the tavern walls. Instead of the reds, oranges, and blues, all she could see were black, gray, and white—mist, fog, and burning.
“Sera, when I traveled back, you were just standing there. Why didn’t you try to get out?”
Her palms itched as she willed the darkness to stay in the cage within her. She’d never wanted this. Of all the times she had, as a witchling, prayed to Shadow for more power, this had never been what she wanted. “I thought maybe I deserved it. That I should die there.”
“How could you think that?”
“Who would care if I went up in flames?” She swirled her fingers in the soil.
“Are you insane?” Al wiped a hand over his mouth.
Her mind jumped from one thing to the next. A useless waste of space. Too tiny a well. She didn’t even know why the Council wanted her to try to find the doorways to Gehenna, and she’d been too cowardly to ask. A barb of hot anger ripped through her. She set Snik on her bedroll.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier?” Her throat protested. “Or were you too worried about leaving a recruit behind? That if I died, you wouldn’t get a promotion?”
“How fucking dare you,” he growled at her. “How fucking dare you think all I care about is a promotion, Sera. What the fuck even is this?”
She wanted a fight. To rip him limb from limb, to feel something other than the constant pressure of limiting herself. To stop struggling.
“Like you know me so well?” she huffed, slamming her hand on her bedroll. Snik winced as she stood and began to pace. She was overheating, and it was fueling her anger.
“We may not have been friends the last seven years, but I know you matter.” He stood before her. His gaze was intense, sweeping over her face and mouth. “Not just to me, but to Dominick, Honora, and your mother.”
“My mother doesn’t care about me,” she hissed. “All she cares about is the seat on the Council that she’s been working toward half her life, and Nora. Her instructions were to give myself up to save my sister. A bargaining chip, a trade, and a fucking poor one.”
Alistair grabbed her wrists and pulled her forearms to his chest. She could feel his heartbeat galloping at the same speed as hers.
Alistair leaned down, his breath scorching her skin just below her ear. Sera shuddered at the sensation. “Get over yourself. You’re not the only one who had a hard life.”
He let her go. And there, in the middle of each palm, was a burn. Al wiped his hands on his pants and swore, leaving her beside the fire.
She rifled through both packs, hoping her journal had been tucked between pants and tunics, or somewhere else where she couldn’t see it. She needed Dom: a balance, her anchor, someone to keep her from spinning out of control.
The longer she rummaged, the more panic set in.
Alistair walked into the camp, shirtless and wet.
Very wet.
Water dripped from his hair down his corded neck, shoulders, and chest.
He was made for battle. Every inch of him was hard muscle. His defined abs had a trail of hair down the center, leading below the waistband of his pants.
His hands… The injuries were so similar to what she had done to her mother’s. Not as severe, but moons, they had to be painful.
“What are you doing now?” he asked.
“Looking for my journal,” she said. “Have you seen it?”
Alistair shook his head and threw his shirt down amid the other clothing and trinkets. “I’m going to assume by this”—he motioned with his damaged hands to the mess strewn around her—“that it wasn’t in your pack?” He reached for a roll of bandages and slowly wrapped each palm.
“I was writing in it before… Did you grab it, by chance?”
“The room was in flames. I barely got your map in time.”
“Fuck,” she whispered. “Fuck!”
“I’ll buy you a new journal,” he said, tenderly putting his gloves on over his bandaged palms.
“It was enchanted.” This couldn’t be happening. That was the only way to communicate with Dom and get information about Nora.
No control. She had no control and no way to figure out how to fix that. Ironoak was probably soot now.
She wiped the tears from her cheeks.
Failure. Disappointment. Spineless.
“Have you cried since Nora was taken?” he asked softly.
“I feel like I haven’t stopped.”
An air of melancholy surrounded him, and he traced the palm of his glove, clenching his jaw, his dark wet hair flopping across his brow. Shadow, what was wrong with her? She was bitching about her journal, and he was in pain.
“How are your hands?”
He flexed his fingers in his gloves. “This isn’t anything to worry about.”
“Why did they do that when you grabbed me?” She was terrified to hear the answer.
“Could have been anything. That magic was… unnatural, and you were surrounded by it; you inhaled it. I’ve never seen a demon use that kind of power before, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t evolving. It also doesn’t help that you’re constantly cuddled up with that beast over there.”
Snik responded with a snore. The goblin lay curled in her bedroll like a sleeping cat; he hadn’t even moved when she’d tossed the clothes on top of him.
Alistair thought it was demon magic. Sera held her head in her hands.
She felt like she was being pulled from the inside out, raw and frayed.
She pulled Snik closer, curling around the goblin.
She wanted to waste away, to be free from carrying these burdens.
The killing of innocent humans. The harm done to Nora, Dom, and now Alistair was all because of her. She was alone in this.
She reached for her pack and downed one of her elixirs, praying for a soundless sleep.
Above the chirping of crickets and the crackling of the fire, she heard Al moving something around. Then he lay beside her.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“If you think I’m going to let you sleep unguarded, you’re out of your mind.”
If she took a deep enough breath, the planes of her back would brush against his. She didn’t want to admit that the thought soothed her. No matter how many times she’d wanted to refuse his help, anyone’s help, she knew now she couldn’t. She needed Alistair Alcott in more ways than one.
That fact clawed at the back of her mind like a rat trying to escape flames. And there was nothing she could do about it.
Safely tucked between Al and Snik, she wondered what it would feel like to fall asleep in his arms, to feel truly safe, to let herself be taken care of.
But a desperate witch was never safe.
The calm rise and fall of Al’s breathing could have lulled her back to sleep. Snik had rustled her awake before venturing out into the woods for his morning hunt, leaving her to stretch, turn, and tap Al on the shoulder.
He startled and threw his arm in the air. Suddenly a domed white barrier surrounded them.
“How many powers do you possess?”
“Shadow, Sera, stop touching Snik, then me. I thought I was stabbed.” He dropped the shield and rubbed sleep from his eyes. He was still shirtless from last night, and goose bumps now rippled over him.
Where her fingertips had touched him were raised purple welts.
“Sorry,” she said. Al covered her delicious view of his far-too-chiseled chest with his shirt. “And thank you,” she added.
“For?”
“For sleeping next to me.” She got quiet. “For saving me.”
“Always,” he said, holding out his gloved hand to help her up. “You’re going to need more training, though.”
“I do.” She sighed.
“We’ll work on that,” he said, looking at their clasped hands with a furrowed brow.
The muscle in his jaw twitched as he turned her hand in his, inspecting the grooves of her palm.
Sera ripped it away from him. “For now, let’s eat…
and I mean eat. There will be no more sharing with Snik.
He’s proved he can hunt for his own meals.
I’ll cook them if he wants, but you’re wasting away. ”
“Again with the commenting on a witch’s figure,” she said, rolling up her makeshift bed. He handed her a piece of bread, and she took it and began to chew. “Butter would make this edible.”
“I’ll get some butter for you in the next town, Queenie.” Alistair glanced at her sidelong, and she bit back a smirk. “We’re headed to Port Sidnah. I overheard talk last night about an oracle holing up there.”
“We need to stop at the ruins first. Port Sidnah is almost to the sea.”
Al nodded in agreement. “Well, it was the lead we needed. I just wish we’d learned a little more before… well, before the night went to shit.”
She forced down the dry crusty bread. Her appetite had evaporated at the mention of the tavern.
“Don’t do that,” Alistair said.
“Do what?”
“Get quiet like you did something wrong. That wasn’t your fault.”
In another life, she’d be relieved he hadn’t figured it out. In this moment, all she wanted was to be seen.
He’d saved her twice now.
He offered protection and power, but she lied to him. Hid this abomination that ran rampant through her veins.
Dominick had been forgiving, but a captain in the Solarni Legion?
Taking in his gaze, the concern on his face, the way the side of his mouth crept upward with every passing second, she stared at him. She wondered what his expression would be when he realized she shouldn’t be permitted to live.
She thought of how his features would change—a scowl, then tight manacles around her wrists. Sera had no doubt he’d report her. He had a duty, and that duty wasn’t to her.
No matter how much she wanted it to be.