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Chapter one

Seraphina

F or not the first time that day, Queen Seraphina de la Croix of Elmoria fantasized about leaping across the polished expanse of her council chamber’s central table so that she might throttle the Duke of Coreto with her bare hands.

Her people were dying, a fact which hammered at her conscience day and night—a staccato reminder of all the lives lost since Arath had first rained fire down upon Fort Mysai four months ago.

She didn’t have an exact number of the lives lost. Such a sum would be impossible to calculate.

And yet here sat her War Council, bickering like a pack of schoolboys after the Duke of Coreto had incited yet another argument amongst them. Her eyes skimmed across the lot of them, these councilors of hers—minus her Spymaster, who was conspicuously absent that morning.

But there the rest of them sat, arguing over logistics, resources, and strategy while her people in Mysai suffered.

“We should just leave Mysai to the Arathian vultures,” Coreto insisted yet again with a sneer. “It is not worth the manpower and resources we have expended already to hold it further.”

Seraphina pressed her lips into a thin line before asking, “You would suggest we abandon our people and simply leave them there to die , Your Grace?”

Coreto’s icy eyes snapped her way when the older man answered without pause, “I would suggest we cut our losses now, yes.”

Losses . The very word was like ash on her tongue.

Since when could a human life be weighed like gold?

“Don’t listen to him, Your Majesty,” her Lord Constable, Sir Easome, interjected. “If we lose Mysai now, who knows what we might lose next?” The gray-haired knight shook his head. “We can’t afford to show such weakness to those Arathian devils. Not now. Not with your reign so new.”

Coreto barked out a laugh. “Are you truly suggesting Arath would be so bold as to invade our shores? With what ships? They are a desert nation, Easome.”

But Sir Easome ignored the Duke of Coreto. His eyes remained on her when he growled, “Perhaps the duke is so eager to see us withdraw from Mysai because he sympathizes with the desert witches?”

Seraphina heard her godfather, Percival Umberly—the Duke of Varoa and Lord Chancellor of the Realm—suck in a breath from his place seated at her right .

Beside him, her godmother, Edith Umberly, attempted to interject, “There is no need to resort to such insults—”

But Coreto simply spoke over her to coldly ask, “You would dare question my family’s loyalty to my face?”

Sir Easome immediately lobbed back, “I would question why the only witch worshiper in the room would suggest we concede Mysai to the witches, yes.”

Father would never have lost control of his council like this.

That familiar sense of inadequacy pooled within Seraphina’s stomach while she but watched—an outsider within her own council chamber. What did she know of war? What did she know about ruling a kingdom?

Nothing . She knew nothing.

No one had prepared for this.

Seraphina lifted her voice and sliced through the growing tension with a decree of, “No one will be questioning anyone’s loyalty here at this table—”

But the Duke of Coreto was already on his feet and shouting over her words, “This insult will not be borne.”

For the briefest of moments, Seraphina saw her father’s face swim to the forefront of her thoughts. How pale he had looked in the wake of her older brother’s death. How weak.

As if someone had just pricked him with a needle and drained all the life he had left from his body.

Though she desperately tried to root herself in the moment, to fix her attention upon the words being spoken right then and there at the half-circle table dominating her council chamber, her mind careened elsewhere against her will. To another time. To other words that had cut her so deeply then.

That cut her so deeply still.

“You will spell the end of House de la Croix and all that my forefathers worked for. Our royal line will die with you .”

Seraphina squeezed her eyes shut and bowed her head. Outwardly, she no doubt appeared to be indulging in an impromptu moment of prayer. Inwardly, she tried to claw her way back to the present.

No , she commanded her wayward thoughts even as they replayed for perhaps the ten thousandth time everything she wished she had said to her father in reply.

Not now.

With an effort, Seraphina shoved aside the memory, burying it back where it belonged in the dark corners of her mind. But she knew it would return. It always did.

Like an infection her body refused to shake.

“Stop,” Seraphina commanded when her eyes flashed back open. “We will have order in the council chamber.”

Her manners mistress had always told her a princess must not shout. A princess must not make a fuss. A princess must not take off her jewel-encrusted shoes and lob them at a man’s head, no matter how much he deserved it. A princess must be seen, but not heard. She must do what she was told.

But Seraphina was no longer a princess.

Eyes locking upon each of her councilors in turn, she continued with, “We will not sit here and insult one another. This is what the Enemy wants—for us to fight amongst ourselves rather than focus on saving our people.”

Looking at Sir Easome in particular, she added, “And we will not again suggest any member of this council is disloyal to the Crown because of their faith. Need I remind us all that my spymaster also prays to the Lady? And no one here would dare question her loyalty to me.”

With a grunt, her godfather, Duke Percival, muttered to her in an aside, “Yes, and one wonders just where Mistress Olivia is this morning. Her reports would be useful right about now.”

Breathing out a quiet sigh through her nose, Seraphina dipped her head in acknowledgment of her Lord Chancellor’s words. But there was no point in sending a runner to locate Olivia. If the woman was absent, it was for a good reason.

Olivia was never late to anything without good reason.

“From here on out,” Seraphina decreed, “we will only discuss solutions. Now.” She flicked a glance between Sir Easome and her Lord Exchequer, the Count of Wellane. “How will we break the siege on Mysai?”

Wellane sighed, rubbed his temple, and consulted the open ledger before him. “Well, Your Majesty. We need more men on the ground, but I’m wondering—to be frank—where we will conjure up the funds. Are we still against seeking a loan from the city-states…?” He looked at her over the rim of his spectacles, his expression hopeful.

Seraphina shook her head in reply. The City-States of Fortuna was a nation of merchant princes and bankers—cutthroat and ruthless with their interest rates. She would do a great deal to save her people, but she was not yet ready to sign away her soul.

Sir Easome interjected, “Then we instate another draft, Your Majesty. We can lower the age from eighteen to sixteen.”

Seraphina swallowed hard and again shook her head. “We can’t conscript children into the Elmorian army, Sir Easome.”

Duke Percival heaved out a sigh and removed his glasses so he could rub his eyes. “It seems the only true solution here is that we appeal to our allies again, Your Majesty. The Holy Lothmeeran Empire, to start.”

Seraphina slanted her godfather a sidelong glance before she turned her head to the left to look upon quiet Father Perero, their Shepherd there in the capital of Goldreach. “What are your thoughts, Father?” she gently prompted, earning a frown from the elderly man.

Though the Holy Lothmeeran Empire was ruled by its emperor, it was common knowledge that said emperor only ever acted on matters of politics when the High Shepherd of the Lord’s Church bid him to act. If anyone would know whether Lothmeer would rise to Elmoria’s call now, it was her own holy advisor.

“The empire prefers to remain neutral in such things, Your Majesty,” Father Perero slowly reminded the room, though his attention was mostly on her. “But I can write to the High Shepherd and suggest that, perhaps, the Church should view this war with Arath as a holy war. The people of Mysai have been Elmorian citizens for two centuries now. Almost all have converted to the Lord’s faith. If he agrees with me, perhaps he will speak to the emperor on our behalf.”

Seraphina breathed out a sigh of relief and hazarded a small smile at last. “Thank you, Father. That would be helpful.”

But the Duke of Coreto was clearly not convinced. “We all know it will be at least five years before the empire sends us any aid at all.”

Duchess Edith added her own voice to the conversation yet again. “I believe we are all forgetting Elmoria has another ally, no? The King of Drakmor. Drakmor shares a border with Arath. If we can convince him to mobilize troops, the siege on Mysai could be broken easily enough.”

Again, Coreto barked out a laugh.

“ Drakmor ?” The duke dismissed her godmother’s suggestion with a flick of his wrist and proclaimed to the rest of the room, “My intelligence tells me that His Majesty has not returned any of Her Majesty’s correspondence, and I am sure we all understand why.”

Seraphina’s jaw tightened at that as she was, yet again, acutely reminded of just why she disliked the Duke of Coreto. One of the many reasons why. Had she her way, that arrogant relic would have been bodily removed as a member of the Royal Privy Council the moment she was crowned queen five months ago.

But her godfather had advised against it.

He had strongly advised against it.

“Your father understood the wisdom of staying on Coreto’s good side, Your Majesty,” Duke Percival had sighed the first time she suggested ejecting the senior nobleman from the council. “And I would… suggest we employ a similar wisdom during your own reign, insufferable though the man may be.”

And so Seraphina endured the Duke of Coreto’s presence.

She still reserved the right to loathe the man, though.

Finally, Sir Easome rejoined the fray when he boomed, “Let the boy king sulk! Not all of us were sitting here lusting for the sight of a foreigner’s rear sitting on the Elmorian throne like you were, Coreto.”

Such commentary earned a chortle from her Lord Exchequer, another look from Duke Percival, and an exasperated-sounding sigh from Father Perero.

It was an exasperation Seraphina herself felt all the way down to her bones.

“Foreign or not, Sir ,” Coreto snarled, again rising from his seat so he could better loom over the still seated knight, "we all know those Arathian devils wouldn’t have dared strike our holding in Mysai if Her Majesty were wed to the King of Drakmor. Or even if His Highness Prince Hamon was still alive. Long live the queen.”

“Long live the queen,” the entire room echoed without pause.

Seraphina could bite her tongue no longer.

“We could waste the rest of our lives sitting here, considering what might have happened or what could have been, my lords,” she directed to the room, though her gaze was leveled at the Duke of Coreto in particular while she spoke. When he finally deigned to meet her gaze, she arched an eyebrow at him and suggested, “Or we could direct our attentions back toward something actually useful.”

“Well said, Your Majesty,” Duchess Edith sweetly declared.

But along with the rest of her War Council, Seraphina had certainly heard the words that Coreto had left unspoken—blatantly obvious as they were lingering there just beneath the surface of his harsh speech. It was the same sentiment the senior nobleman had always held where she was concerned.

If my brother had survived, if he sat on the throne as was always Father’s intention, the King of Arath would not have dared declare war against us. Because my brother was a man.

And I am a woman .

It was not a new thought. It was a thought that had harried her since the very first moment her godfather placed the crown of Elmoria upon her head.

“You are now the queen, my dear girl,” Duke Percival had whispered to her beneath the cheers of the crowds whilst they made their way from the steps of the cathedral back to the carriage that would carry them home to the palace.

“Beloved, the darling of your people.” She remembered how those words had lifted her heart, had filled her with such hope for the future. A hope that perhaps, finally , she would have a proper place in the world.

A purpose at last.

But it had been a foolish, girlish hope that had been properly tempered when her godfather murmured to her in warning, “But your peers will not care that you are the queen. They will simply care that you are a woman. And they will wish to see how far they can make you bend before they make you break.”

And they had.

What nonsense.

An Oracle—the most revered and treasured member of the Church, chosen by the Lord on High Himself before birth—could only ever be a woman, after all. If the Lord would choose a woman to carry His miracles into the world, one would think the world would accept the fact that a woman could rule.

And yet the King of Arath had waited all of a month before sending his men to slaughter hers in the dead of night.

Looking down at the table as the conversation continued to wash around her, she eyed the map of Mysai—Elmoria’s final holding on the coast of Arath. Their final foothold left from the days of the Great Conquest.

Statuettes of war elephants and figures meant to represent Arathian witches littered the outer reaches of Fort Mysai. They had lost the outer ring of the fort that very first night.

But the outer ring was the newest construction. Fortifications put in place once Mysai came under Elmorian rule two hundred years ago. They had been built to protect the edges of the ancient fort from erosion by the desert sands and heat.

The outer ring had not been constructed to keep out people.

And certainly not people wielding witchfire and war elephants.

She had far greater confidence in the structural integrity of the mid- and inner-rings. Mysai had stood on the coast of Arath since before the Sundering.

This war in Arath could be won. In written history, the port of Mysai had only fallen the once—to Elmoria—thanks to the cunning of her ancestors. So long as they continued to hold the Gate of Exiles, they would continue to hold Mysai.

But her godmother was right. To continue to hold the gate, they needed to divert Arath’s attention away from the walls, and they needed to do so now .

They needed Drakmor.

During her silence, Sir Easome and the Duke of Coreto had taken to bickering again—more like a pair of unruly children than two grown men. Lifting her chin, setting her jaw, Seraphina slammed her palm down on the table with such force, one of the elephant figurines toppled from its post. While it still clattered into its new place, she reminded them both, “My lords, we will have order.”

Silence fell within the room yet again and all eyes settled upon her. Including the cold weight of Coreto’s piercing gaze.

She couldn’t help but wonder just how the duke found her wanting today. That she had been born a woman? That she was her father, King Reynard’s, only heir after the death of her brother?

That I was not the de la Croix sibling who drowned?

Or perhaps that, after her coronation, she had refused to marry the now King of Drakmor, Edmund Hargrave, despite the longstanding promise of a marriage to strengthen the alliance between their two kingdoms? A promise that had first been forged when she was fifteen and Edmund was but a child of five?

Oh, she was sure her father would have preferred to betroth her to the eldest Hargrave son, Aldric. But he'd passed away before such arrangements could be made .

The Duke of Coreto had been right about one thing. Everyone within that room did know the reason why the King of Drakmor now refused to come to Elmoria’s aid.

What twenty-year-old boy would not feel petty after being scorned and set aside by a woman ten years his senior?

“My lords,” Seraphina repeated, letting her voice carry throughout the room. “Tensions are high and tempers are rising. How glad I am to be reminded of the passion each of you holds for our dear and treasured Elmoria.”

Passion was the polite word for it. And though she had many other choice words she would have liked to voice in those moments, none of them would have soothed the headstrong personalities of her War Council.

None of them would have helped reclaim her councilors’ confidence in her ability to lead Elmoria to victory in these troubled times.

“Long have your families served this realm and my family—my father before me and his father before him and his father before him.” Her eyes trailed around the table, meeting the gaze of each councilor: Duke Percival, Duchess Edith, the Duke of Coreto, the Count of Wellane, Sir Easome, and Father Perero.

Though her own pulse hammered with the rhythm of all the many thoughts clattering through her mind at present— What if Drakmor continues to ignore us? What if we truly must institute another draft?— she fought hard to keep her voice measured in the midst of her speech .

“Rest assured that your concerns have been heard, though I fear, Your Grace”—Seraphina’s gaze fixed upon the Duke of Coreto—“that your intelligence is lacking.” Ice frosted her tone with those particular words.

The Duke of Coreto’s jaw tightened in reply.

She spied out of the corner of her eye Duke Percival shifting in his chair, his sudden discomfort nearly palpable. But she didn’t care.

She let the double meaning of her words stand.

Eyes still boring into the Duke of Coreto’s own—challenging him, daring him to say anything at all further against her in front of her most loyal advisors—Seraphina continued to address the rest of the room. “His Majesty King Edmund of Drakmor and I have been in correspondence.”

A murmur rippled around the table at that bald-faced lie. She simply hoped none of her councilors would call her out on it. “And I will—the Lord willing—have good news to share with you all soon.”

Such words, like so many words spoken within the political realm, were empty ones. Hot air and little more.

But the shift within the room was nigh palpable as tempers were gentled, and worries soothed. Aside from Coreto, who looked as though he had just swallowed an entire swarm of bees.

For a fleeting moment, Seraphina had to smother a smile at having inspired that expression into writing itself across the senior nobleman’s face. But it was an incredibly fleeting moment.

There were too many unknowns at present for her to sit there feeling smug with herself. Because at the end of the day, she would rather be trampled to death by a horde of Arathian war elephants than prove Coreto right about their relations with Drakmor.

Please, Lord, let my words become prophecy rather than remain sweet lies .

Perhaps the Lord on High would even grant her a miracle and see her calls for aid piercing through the walls of King Edmund’s wounded pride and allow her ex-fiancé to see reason at last. The lives of her people were at stake.

“For now, this meeting is adjourned,” Seraphina concluded, already rising to her feet. Her gown weighed on her almost as heavily as her concerns, the many jewels twined around her waist and sparkling at her throat making her wonder, for not the first time that month, just how many Kunishi mercenaries a single gem might buy.

But Duchess Edith insisted queens did not sell their mother’s jewelry to back-alley pawnbrokers to purchase mercenary contracts, even as the Lord Exchequer warned her of the royal treasury’s dwindling status, thanks in no small part to her father’s ill-advised investments in his later years.

“Your mother would have wanted you to look the part,” Duchess Edith always advised. “Your enemies have eyes everywhere. Even the smallest crack in the facade gives them an opening with which to wound you further, Your Majesty. ”

Which was all well and good, but Seraphina would rather end the war before it could progress much further than have a full jewelry box.

“Duke Percival. Duchess Edith,” Seraphina bid without bothering to look over her shoulder to see if her godparents were following her already. She turned to depart from the council chamber. “Your company is desired. Walk with me.”

“May the Lord on High walk with you always, Your Majesty,” Father Perero softly invoked, extending a hand to her.

The signet ring bearing the golden sun of the Lord on High on his right hand seemed to gleam with a light all its own. Seraphina offered the Shepherd her arm so he might bestow upon her the Lord’s blessing before she left.

And when his fingers alighted upon her wrist, the familiar and calming sensation of the Lord immediately greeted her—like the brush of the summer sun unfurling against her skin.

It was a glow she wished she could bask in for the rest of the day, but the sheer number of things she still had to accomplish weighed upon her far too heavily for her to indulge in such a thing. As ever, though, she felt a little lighter in spirit even once that warmth had dissipated, as though the Lord had claimed some of her burdens for His own.

The guards posted by the exit leading out of her council chamber opened the double doors for her departure, revealing the corridor beyond. When she stepped out into that hallway, the space erupted in a flash of color—silks and jewels all agleam—when her ladies-in-waiting rose from where they had been seated so as to join her entourage.

She locked eyes with Duchess Edith and spared her godmother a little smile before returning her attention to Duke Percival. Her godfather was collecting his varhound, Rogue, from where the great, white-furred beast had been sitting outside the council chambers all that time like the good boy he was.

Though many in the royal court still balked at the sight of those monstrously large dogs almost every member of House Umberly kept for pets in order to protect themselves from the dire bears for which their home duchy of Varoa was infamous, Seraphina had grown more than used to the varhounds over the years. Especially after all the Wintertides she had spent up north with the Umberlys after the death of her mother.

Duke Percival and Duchess Edith had always treated her like one of their own.

When her gaze finally locked sidelong with Duke Percival, her godfather conjured a dry smile for her. He soon fell into his usual place at her left elbow with Rogue in tow.

“Worry not, Your Majesty,” he murmured for her ears alone as they all began their promenade back to her chambers with her Queensguard fanning out around them and marching behind. “I do not think any of the other lords detected your bluff.”

Well, at least that is something , Seraphina wryly mused to herself. There was no point in wasting her breath on voicing such an observation aloud, though, while she waited for the latest lecture from her godfather-turned-Lord-Chancellor to begin.

As ever, he did not keep her waiting for long.

“Though I wish you would stop baiting His Grace,” Duke Percival added from behind clenched teeth. The tap-tap-tap of his cane punctuated each word. “One of these days, he might very well take your bait and spit it back in your face, and there will be nothing at all I can do about it.” Breathing out a heavy sigh, her godfather muttered under his breath, “You and that tongue of yours are going to be the death of me, child.”

Duchess Edith quietly interjected, “Oh, please. Her Majesty is simply saying what we are all thinking, Percy.”

Duke Percival made a face at that.

Biting back a chuckle, Seraphina suggested to her godfather, “Then why don’t you just let me worry about the Duke of Coreto, while you worry about…” She vaguely waved her hand through the air, letting that gesture fill in the blanks.

“Everything else?” Duke Percival grumped.

Before Seraphina could part her lips to offer any sort of retort, a sudden hiss lured her gaze upward just in time to see a flurry of iridescent scales and feathers shooting through the air toward her.

Though she spied out of the corner of her eye her godparents flinching at the sight of the usuru flying full-tilt for her person, Seraphina simply accepted the sudden weight of the winged serpent twining itself around her shoulders with a far softer smile. “Hello, Alyx,” she murmured under her breath to the creature nestling against her throat.

The usuru purred in reply .

Red-faced and panting, one of her guardsmen—Radcliffe, was it?—finished his jog down the corridor toward her and her entourage before he stopped and swept into a low bow. “Pardon me…Your Majesty…” he gasped in between shallow breaths. “She’s a slippery one…been hissing the whole time you were…in council…”

“There is nothing to apologize for,” Seraphina reassured as she reached up to rub the tip of her finger underneath Alyx’s scaled head. “I would just let her come to council with me if I could trust she would not make a scene.”

She had learned the hard way the last time she had tried to bring the feisty little usuru along to a meeting that she could certainly not trust her in that regard.

Duchess Edith chuckled and recalled, “At least that was the most entertaining council meeting I’ve personally witnessed. Though, granted, I have not been to many.”

Duke Percival grunted. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. An usuru is not a fit companion for your esteemed personage, Your Majesty.”

“Oh?” Seraphina leaned around Duke Percival to gift her godmother a quick kiss against a powdered cheek. “You will always be allowed at my council meetings, Your Grace,” she promised Duchess Edith before she tossed a look back to Duke Percival and asked, “Shall I adopt the Umberly fashion of being stalked through the palace by a varhound, then?”

Duke Percival stamped his cane against the floor. “You know you’d have the pick of any litter. ”

With a shake of her head, Seraphina insisted, “This usuru suits me just fine, thank you.”

Alyx had chosen her, after all.

When this particular usuru had first flown into Goldreach and tumbled into the palace in a mess of blood-spattered scales and glass, Master Lyndone, the Keeper of the Royal Roost, had said it was a miracle she had even made it across the Straight.

Alyx had been the name embroidered on the harness strapping the messy missive to the usuru’s scaled body—dark words of Arath’s betrayal carried upon shimmering wings.

Since then, it had been nearly impossible keeping Alyx away. The little usuru had simply…taken to her, rather instantly.

There was something nice about it, being chosen.

Wanted for once in her life.

“Besides, I have read that in the time before the Sundering, people revered the usuri,” Seraphina informed her godparents as she and her entourage passed through the West Wing, heading for the courtyard beyond. “They believed they brought good luck, you know, and were messengers of the Lord Himself.”

“Only an Oracle can possibly carry messages from the Lord, Your Majesty,” Duke Percival countered, his tone dry. “But if we wish to use Alyx for a messenger, perhaps we should send her to find Mistress Olivia, hmm? That would be a spot of good luck, actually receiving the latest reports out of Drakmor and Mysai that were supposed to be on my desk this morning before the meeting.”