Chapter 38
Chapter thirty-eight
Seraphina
The tunnels grew brisk the farther she walked from the surface back to her rooms. She marched directly past Alistair, wanting to be alone to process whatever the fuck had just happened.
The sensation when their magic touched. Relief that she didn’t burn down the forest, then pain and despair for putting that poor fox out of its misery… and lastly the undeniable fact that she had a well of demon magic within her.
“Why were you outside?” Alistair demanded, keeping pace beside her.
“He asked if I could show him something.” Sera forced the words out. She was terrible at lying, always had been. What good was it to lie when your mother could read your thoughts?
“And why couldn’t I join you?” Agitation was evident in his tone. His hands clenched at his sides. He was definitely pissed. “What are you wearing?”
Fuck.
She hadn’t thought of that. “Alistair, you don’t have to follow me everywhere.” She brushed off his questions and continued through the dark halls. They passed minor house demons carrying linens, each giving her a slight bow as she walked past.
“I want to protect you.”
She halted and faced him. “I understand your concern. But I’d like to be alone right now.
” Her words were firm, maybe too firm, by the look on his face.
The muscles in his jaw bulged. He’d break his molars if he didn’t stop.
She hated possessiveness and wondered why he assumed he could force her to do anything. Because of a kiss?
“Did he touch you?”
“No.” Sera wiped a hand over her face.
Alistair summoned his sword from thin air. “I’ll kill him.”
“For Shadow’s sake,” she said. The last thing she needed was the two of them ripping each other to ribbons. “Can you please give me some space? You’ve been hovering over me for days,” Sera huffed and walked toward her room faster.
“That’s not fair.” Alistair whipped her around by her arm. “You leave me to go be alone with him… show up in a completely different outfit—” He scanned her up and down, his blue eyes bright with rage. “And then tell me you want to be alone?”
Sera pulled hard out of his grasp. She was so sick of being manhandled. The dark magic—vatra magic—inside her perked, but she buried it back down. “Don’t ever put your hands on me like that again.”
There was a deep tug in her chest, then a wave of calm rushed over her. Like a breath of cool air on a hot summer day. Sera glanced down the dark hallway where she had just left Vasso. She swore he was there, leering at her from the shadows. There was nothing to see, but… she could sense him.
“I’m going to my room.” Sera turned on her heel, and this time Al was smart enough to stay behind.
Snik’s green ears perked when she walked in. Sera hardly noticed the chicken bone in his teeth as he leaped from the bed and wrapped his gangly green arms around her knees.
“It’s all right,” she said to him, rubbing his back.
The goblin harrumphed and went back to chewing.
Sera shed her leathers. Her arms, her legs, and everywhere else were slick with perspiration.
Leather might have been the best option to protect her body from flames, but it didn’t breathe.
After filling the copper tub with hot water, she proceeded to rake her fingers through her curls and sank into the steam.
She hated lying to Alistair. After everything they had been through on this quest. He’d comforted her, healed her blisters and scorched lungs, danced with her…
laughed. Up until the other night, she’d been safe with him.
Sooner or later, though, he would realize what type of magic she possessed.
If the Citadel’s tower was her fate, she’d gladly go as long as Nora was out of Gehenna.
She could still hear Vasso’s words. You’ll learn your duty, just as I did, and the ones before me.
“All right.” She knew she was foolish for speaking aloud, but she needed more answers. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Are you talking to me? her magic whispered in answer.
“There isn’t anyone else in here, is there?”
Her magic snickered at her. Darkness twirled and danced in her body. What do you wish to know?
Sera swallowed the lump in her throat. “Am I a demon? Is that why you came to me?”
I came for it was fated. The crossroads nears. Her magic slithered and sang. You will know when it happens, for there is still a chance the stars do not align…
She groaned in frustration. “Just tell me the truth. Will I hurt him?”
Yes.
The door creaked open. She could hear Snik on the other side, whining.
“You can come in,” she said. The tops of his pointed ears were visible over the tub’s edge. Snik reached his bony green hand toward her, and she took it and squeezed. The goblin squeezed back and curled on the bath mat, snoring not minutes later.
Heat from the water roasted her cheeks as Sera searched for an answer in the cracks of the stone ceiling.
Dom had to be furious with her. It’d been over a week since she wrote him.
Moons, she hoped he was staying out of trouble.
He’d been with her through every celebration, breakup, and hard decision.
And even though he would be most likely amused by the predicament she was currently in, at least she knew Dominick would be understanding.
Sera held her breath and sank below the surface of the water. This magic… the control… It only seemed to listen when she was around Vasso. Then there was the tug in her chest, and that soothing calm that had washed over her when she was ready to rip Alistair apart.
Vatra. That’s what Vasso called it.
Sera breached the surface and began working the soap through her curls. The release from her body. All that tension gone when the dark flames had poured from her. But it was the freedom of not hiding it, of not being afraid for once, that had been liberating.
Then there was Vasso. First, he prevented her from becoming a destroyer of the forest, but then… he was so demanding. Her breath hitched as she remembered the sensations of his magic rushing through her. Like leaves unfurling, like flowers turning toward the sun.
She sighed.
Wasn’t this just a cluster of shit she’d gotten herself into? None of it was normal, and once again… she was other. Something different. Death. Or was she what Vasso had called her? Mercy?
A soft knock came on the outer bedroom door. She lifted herself from the tub, did her best to squeeze the water from her curls, and wrapped herself in a towel.
Then she gripped the raven around her neck for courage. “Go away, Alistair. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“It’s not Alistair.”
Her heart fluttered at his deep voice. She cracked open the door.
“Is this a bad time?” he asked, glancing at her towel.
“Give me a moment.”
Sera ran back to the bathing chamber, padding in her bare feet across the bedroom carpet, doing her best not to wake the sleeping goblin as she slipped on her freshly laundered coven uniform.
She stopped when Vasso slinked in, closing the door behind him.
In his hands were the tunic and pants she’d been wearing before he’d dressed her in leathers.
“Can I help you?” she asked. Who did he think he was, sneaking into her room? Even if it was his underground manor… Shadow help her, these men wouldn’t leave her alone today.
“Your bodyguard was down the hall. I figured I’d at least try not to get caught outside your room.”
“For the tenth time, he isn’t my bodyguard.”
“Could have fooled me by the way he lurks around you.” Vasso pushed his hair back, and a few of the white strands dropped down. He was still in his leathers from their training, which was mildly distracting, considering how dignified he looked in them.
“How is it that all of a sudden you care about what I want? You surely didn’t give a shit when we were in the woods.” Sera crossed her arms.
His movements were stilted. That usual grace and sway to him was gone as he stiffened. “I came to apologize for that.”
She laughed. It was the first time in days, but she couldn’t stop it from bubbling out of her chest. “That was the weakest excuse for an apology I’ve ever heard. Tell me, Vasso, what are you apologizing for?”
Vasso put his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. He gave an exaggerated sigh and ran his hand through his hair again. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was nervous. But that was impossible.
“I apologize for how… firm… I was with you in the field, and then…”
“And then when you ripped me from the thicket? Or how about when you held me against my will… or maybe the fact that you made me kill that poor fox when I begged you not to?” Her magic flared within her.
Rage roiled under the surface as she watched this lord attempt to say he was sorry.
The echoes of that little animal’s pain racked her.
Up her leg, into her guts: unrelenting pain.
It didn’t matter that she’d helped it move on; it was that he had made her do it.
Vasso’s jaw muscle feathered in his cheek. His eyes were a pinkish shade, somewhere between gray and red. “I didn’t come here to argue with you,” he said.
“Then why did you come here?” Sera approached the bed and sat upon it, pulling a pillow into her lap and twisting the tassels at its corners.
“I told you.”
She huffed. “You’ve never said sorry for a single thing in your life, have you? Tell me, why do you care at all about my feelings?”
“My reasons are my own, Seraphina. Take the apology or don’t.”
He was trying. She’d give him that. And although she didn’t know his true intentions, there was no denying that their magic tied them together. Could it be that he needed her cooperation? “I’ll accept your apology, but I need something out of you.”
He smirked. “I thought you were all done with bargains?”
“Not a bargain… more of a measure of good faith.”
Vasso tilted his head. Quiet. Assessing. She could tell he was trying to find the loophole. “What is it you ask of me?”
She bit her smile back. “Tell me where a doorway to Gehenna is.”
Vasso barked a laugh. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope,” she said. She was close. She needed this, just one. Then she could mark it on the map and go home. It would take months for them to realize that the manor wasn’t an actual doorway, but if she had one that was accurate, well then… Renata would just have to deal with that.
His face shifted, not to malice or anger but to amusement. “So you won’t take my apology”—his shoulders sank back into the door, and he crossed one foot over the other—“unless I tell you how to get to the underworld?”
“I don’t need to know how to get there, just an entrance.”
“Interesting…”
Why did she feel like she’d just given something away?
Something he could take to his commander belowground and barter with?
That thread in her chest pulled tight. This wasn’t her magic.
It was something else entirely, like being dragged through a current, plunged like an anchor into the sea.
But there at the end of it all, a steady beat of a heart…
Sera jumped at an insistent knock on the door.
“Sera, can I come in?”
“Fuck,” she whispered and frantically motioned for Vasso to hide. She pushed him into the bathing chamber with Snik and closed the door.
Why did Al have to ruin everything? She was close, so damned close to getting the answer she needed. Leave it to Al to mess it all up again.
Sera cracked the door wide enough for her face to pop through. “What do you want?”
“To talk.”
“We can talk right here.”
“Is someone in there?” Alistair glanced over her head, scanning the room. A second later, she was staring at empty space, and he was inside, looking into every corner.
“First of all, I thought you were too sick to travel. Second, I didn’t invite you in.”
“I traveled four feet, hardly a strain.” He was on his hands and knees looking under the bed. Sera zipped her raven back and forth on its string.
“Snik is asleep in the bathing room. That’s all of who’s in here. What do you want?”
Al crossed his arms. “I wanted to make sure he didn’t do anything to you.”
“No, he didn’t do anything to me.” Liar. He’d awoken something… given her hope.
“Sera, he could have powers that we don’t know about. What if he enthralled you? You’re a Jedan witch, for coven founders’ sake.”
Sera stared at him. “What did you just say?”
His shoulders fell. “Sera, I…”
“Get out.”
He stayed put. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
She lowered her voice to a deadly tone. “I know exactly how you meant it. You think that because I don’t have a lot of magic that I’m less than you?” Sera ripped the door wide. “Get out.”
“Do I think you’re less of a witch? No. But you can’t deny the fact that your limited magic makes you—”
“Get the fuck out, Alistair Alcott.” She gritted her teeth together so hard they squeaked.
“This discussion isn’t over.” He glared at her. As soon as his bootheels were on the other side of the threshold, she slammed the door.
How had he known she was originally placed in Jedan? Sera never mentioned that day, nor did she bring up the day after, when she walked onto the Dobro level of Darine Hall, evading dirty looks and whispering tongues.
A click of a door had her turning to see Vasso cradling a still snoring Snik in his arms. He set the goblin down with as much care as she would a newborn. Taking the decorative blanket from the foot of the bed, he placed it over Snik.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “He gets a little heavy for me sometimes.”
“He’s had a rough go, this one.” Vasso pointed his chin at the goblin, placing his hands in his pockets.
“What do you mean?” Snik curled in a ball, his ears relaxed as he rested his small head on his arms.
The demon lord sauntered toward the door. “Why don’t you ask your captain what happened to his clan?”
With that, Vasso left.