Page 22

Story: A War of Crowns

Chapter twenty-one

Seraphina

S tanding there, her back pressed against the king’s chest, Seraphina forgot how to breathe.

She had been prepared to offer the King of Drakmor many things in exchange for his aid against Arath—herself included.

But she had not been prepared for this .

No , she wanted to whisper, though with an absence of breath came a stillness of tongue. She had not the words to protest. She had not the thoughts to offer a rebuttal to the king’s proposition.

The pavilion suddenly felt too small, too crowded, too loud.

She couldn’t think in such a place.

“No,” Seraphina finally gasped. She wrenched herself from the king’s embrace. “Absolutely not. Not now. Not ever. ”

“Then I hope Elmoria’s navy is not wholly engaged on the Arathian coast, as my reports suggest, because you will have my ships to contend with soon as well,” the king cooed.

She flung a look at him over her shoulder, as sharp as any arrowhead.

For a wild, split second, she remembered Olivia’s poison ring. It was still there on her right hand. All she had to do was strike the king, and the needle hidden within would do the rest.

She seriously considered using it in that moment while the King of Drakmor stood there chuckling at her. As if he had outsmarted her.

As if he had won .

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” the king said, but Seraphina didn’t stand around to hear the rest. She fled, making for the exit on brisk strides.

Behind her, His Majesty called out one last boast of, “And there will be no loopholes for you to exploit this time, I fear!”

Seraphina didn’t stop. She didn’t turn back. She let him have the last word.

Bursting out into the night, she tried to breathe in deep but struggled for air. Even outside, there was something decidedly claustrophobic about Nerina Reef.

The air was too heavy. The night pressed in too thick.

And the ground underfoot was filled with treacherous unknowns.

Guided by the dim light of the lanterns twinkling all around, she surged into the darkness and almost immediately tripped over something unseen. In her heeled slippers and her heavily beaded gown, Seraphina stumbled.

But blessedly, she didn’t fall.

Kicking off her blasted shoes, Seraphina wheeled away from the pavilion and raced toward the blissful silence that awaited her further on.

Think .

She had to think.

Her ladies would be upon her soon. Her guards would be upon her even sooner. And her godparents would be upon her even sooner than that.

But right at that very moment, she just needed to be alone. She didn’t need anyone fussing over her. She didn’t need anyone touching her. She didn’t need anyone asking her what was wrong.

Knowing her people would look for her within her own pavilion, she veered off the path and stumbled into a copse of trees edging their makeshift village. Sticks and rocks pricked at her stocking-clad feet, but she ignored the pain in favor of diving deeper into the shadows.

She stopped only when she was certain she could not be seen from the path. Bracing her back against the nearest tree trunk, she tried to catch her breath.

Edmund thought he had her backed into a corner. He thought he had her pinned. He thought he had her bested.

But he thought wrong .

All she needed was a few hours alone with her thoughts and she would think of a way out of this. She always thought of something .

But she didn’t have a few hours. She had a few minutes at most before someone found her out there in the dark.

Or perhaps even less time than that.

“I am beginning to find your utter lack of self-preservation bewildering,” rasped a low voice from somewhere behind her, and Seraphina whirled to locate the speaker while fumbling for her bodice dagger.

“ A lady may be a damsel, but she should never allow herself to be put in distress,” Duchess Edith had often told her when she was younger.

She was quite glad for that advice right at that moment as she turned to face the Crow, her blade in hand. He lurked in the darkness behind her, mounted on that monstrously large destrier of his again. Man and horse loomed over her, sending her heart racing.

“Come any closer and I will gouge out your other eye,” she snarled to the man.

The Crow did not listen, though. He but nudged his horse in closer, causing Seraphina to stumble backward to keep from being crushed by the beast. Her back thumped against another tree trunk.

“We both know you won’t,” he rumbled, quietly calling her bluff.

“What do you want, then?” She held up her dagger so he could see she was armed. Not that she knew how to use it beyond the basics. Duchess Edith had insisted on that much. But Seraphina had always preferred books to blades. “Have you come to beat me within an inch of my life as well?” Lifting her chin, she sneered, “Or have you come to gloat like your brother?”

He cocked his head to the side in the wake of her words, though it was several long moments more before he rasped out a simple answer of, “No.”

The memory of how the tournament had ended suddenly flashed to the forefront of her mind, leaving her nauseated all over again. “You nearly killed him,” she whispered around the taste of bile burning in the back of her throat. “You nearly killed my friend.”

She had been so sure Sir Tristan was dead just a few hours ago. He had lain so still. But Tsukiko had promised he would be all right.

Even though he had yet to wake, she had promised he would live.

But that didn’t excuse Aldric Hargrave from the fact that he had struck a man not wearing a helm with such force he had pitched him into an unnatural slumber.

Seraphina sneered, “How could you possibly think I would wish to marry a man like you after such a display?”

The Crow’s answer to that was immediate. His words slithered toward her through the darkness on a low hiss of, “Let us not pretend as if you ever would have wished to marry a man like me in the first place.”

“And yet you still follow me into the darkness to press your suit— ”

He barked out a laugh—a harsh, discordant sound. “Do not flatter yourself. I was here already when you came crashing into the trees like a drunkard.”

She shifted her grip on her dagger and frowned at the man. “Then you may leave me, Crow. I need to think.”

Silence was his only reply for several moments before he dully questioned, “You can’t think unless you’re alone?”

Seraphina snapped back, “I cannot think when there is a monster lurking in the darkness with me.”

Though she could not make out much of his features within the darkness, what with so little moonlight filtering down through the leaves, she could see plainly enough the way the Crow leaned toward her to snarl, “I would rather be a monster than a fool.”

“A fool?” She expelled a breathless laugh devoid of all humor. “And yet you want to marry me? So what does that make you?”

“Nothing at all,” he sneered, open disdain dripping from his every word. “I wouldn’t want to marry you even if you crawled to me on all fours and begged me for it.”

Heat scorched its way across her cheeks at the imagery. “There is nothing at all I would ever beg from you, least of all a marriage—”

What was left of her words wisped into nothing when the Crow’s great stallion suddenly took another step forward and saw her pressed even more tightly against the tree behind her. Its bark bit into her bare back.

But she would choose the bark over King Edmund’s grasping fingers any day .

“If you don’t wish to marry me, then why is this your brother’s demand?” Seraphina asked, desperately searching the shadowed planes of Prince Aldric’s scarred visage. “If I do not want this and you do not want this, then why must it be so?”

The Crow had no answer for her that time—nothing beyond mere silence as he reined his horse away and retreated through the brush.

Seraphina thinned her lips and leapt in front of the man’s monstrously large destrier. “I am not finished speaking with you.”

“Get out of the way, woman,” he growled.

“We can help each other, can we not?”

The very idea of allying herself with such a man turned her stomach. But if such an alliance was truly the way forward, then perhaps—this once—the ends might very well justify the means.

Perhaps this was the true meaning of her vision.

Before the Crow could give his answer, a muted call of, “Your Majesty!” rang out into the night from beyond the safety of their copse. A louder, “Seraphina!” soon followed.

It was her godparents.

She called back, “I am here!” which earned a low scoff from the Crow.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” he broke his prolonged silence to rasp. “Hurry back now to your keepers.”

Seraphina arched an eyebrow. “My keepers?” She let loose a disbelieving laugh. “Are you truly trying to mock me because out of the two of us, I am the only one with someone who cares enough about me to wonder where I am? ”

“No,” he contradicted in that slow, rumbling way of his. “I am mocking you because the reason there is someone worried about where you are is because clearly you can’t be trusted to be on your own for longer than two seconds.”

Her lips twisted into a frown. “ Please , let us not pretend as if you know me at all—”

“I know enough to know that in the two days we’ve been together at this pointless summit of yours, I could have killed you at least thirty times over.”

Seraphina recoiled from the mounted man. Her fingers tightened on the hilt of her dagger yet again. But then she recalled the words of the bronze-eyed man who had been with the Crow the first time they met.

If he was to be believed, Aldric Hargrave didn’t make threats. He was but making an observation. He could have killed her many times over the past two days.

And yet he hadn’t.

“What is Edmund holding over you?” Seraphina whispered up to the man, desperate to solve this particular puzzle in what scant few moments they had left alone. Already, she could hear her people crashing through the brush and drawing in closer. “What is he threatening you with? Aldric, stop—” She grabbed his horse’s reins with her free hand when he tried to ride away from her again. “Let us help one another.”

His reaction was immediate and visceral when he snarled in reply, “I am not your ally, woman.”

And then their time was at an end .

“Your Majesty,” Duke Percival gasped as he finally crashed his way into their little patch of forest. Duchess Edith and the Queensguard were close behind. “Are you…are you quite all right? I heard…”

Her godfather trailed off as his eyes flicked across the scene. The realization of just how it all must look crashed down upon Seraphina all at once, leaving her releasing the reins of the Crow’s horse and taking a quick step back. She resheathed her dagger.

But even then, she still felt like a highwayman who had just been caught robbing a man in the bushes.

After a few more tense moments passed, Duke Percival shattered the silence with a brusque question of, “What in the name of the Lord is going on here?”

“Nothing,” Seraphina claimed at once, before the monster she shared the darkness with could interject. “Nothing at all.”

Alyx joined their happy little party with a flap of wings and a greeting purr, which preceded the feel of the usuru nestling about her shoulders. For the first time since her conversation with the king, some manner of peace seeped back into her soul when the winged serpent nuzzled her throat.

But it was a small, fleeting sort of peace.

Duchess Edith murmured, “First we see you dancing with the king, and then…” Her godmother shot a glance up at the Crow of Drakmor.

But the man’s one-eyed attention was all for her, as though he wished to smother her with the sheer weight of it .

The duchess slowly continued, “…and then we see you running outside, and the next thing we know—”

Duke Percival pressed his lips into a thin line and interjected, “We think you’re in danger. And now we find you with—”

“Her betrothed,” the Crow finished on a low rumble, leaving her godparents both whirling to face him.

Seraphina gritted her teeth.

Duchess Edith gasped, “I beg your pardon?”

Duke Percival asked her directly, “Your what ?”

But before Seraphina could get a word in edgewise, the creature looming over her on horseback continued, “The queen was just informed by my brother that if she wants Drakmor’s aid with Mysai, she will have to marry me and name me King of Elmoria.”

Now it was Seraphina’s turn to gasp, “ What ?”

That last stipulation was certainly news to her. Edmund had said nothing about having to name this murderer the King of Elmoria .

“Never,” Seraphina declared, her eyes narrowing as she did so. “I would rather die than see the likes of you sit the Elmorian throne.”

The Crow’s visage didn’t change in the slightest, so far as she could judge in the darkness, when he quietly warned, “That will probably be the outcome should you refuse.”

Despite the fact that she was nearing seventy years of age, Duchess Edith stepped between Seraphina and the mounted man as if intending to protect her from him herself. Around them, her Queensguard stirred.

Sir Arkwright even unsheathed his sword .

But it was Duke Percival who ultimately snarled, “Now, you see here. I don’t care who you are. Prince. Crow. I will not just stand here and listen to you threaten Her Majesty.”

“It was no threat,” the Crow revealed. And though his words were for her godfather, his one-eyed gaze remained wholly fixed on her. “My brother intends to declare war on Elmoria if Her Majesty refuses.”

“His Majesty wouldn’t dare,” Duke Percival immediately insisted, though Seraphina herself wasn’t so sure.

King Edmund most certainly would dare. He had made such perfectly plain.

At the memory of his breath brushing against her ear and his fingertips digging into her skin, her stomach roiled yet again.

“His Majesty would dare,” the Crow quietly voiced, echoing her thoughts and confirming her fears. “And he will.”

Anger welled up from deep inside her then, as though her soul was a pile of dry tinder that had suddenly caught flame. Clenching her fists, she took a step out from behind Duchess Edith and advanced toward the mounted man.

Beneath him, his stallion startled, and the Crow tugged the beast’s reins backward in a hasty retreat.

She advanced. “Your brother is truly as mad as they all say you are if he thinks for a single moment I would marry someone like you and place you on the throne of Elmoria as my equal.”

Each word slashed forth from Seraphina’s lips with all the precision of an assassin’s blade .

But the Crow didn’t so much as flinch. He simply nudged his horse back forward and angled the stallion to the side, leaving him riding up alongside her while Sir Arkwright fought to keep himself between them.

“Is that what they say about me?” he snarled down to her, his voice soft.

“Yes,” Seraphina answered, ignoring the disgruntled rumble originating from her godfather somewhere behind her.

Danger crackled in the air, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose when the Crow leaned toward her and prompted on a low hiss, “Tell me, Your Majesty. What else do they say about me?”

Undaunted by the fellow’s attempts to encroach upon her personal space by leaning over her Queensguard, Seraphina squared her shoulders and declared up to him, “They say you are mad. They say you are a murderer. They say you are a monster. They say you’ve massacred…” When she arrived to that particular rumor, the words finally stuck in her throat.

But the Crow did not relent. His glare remained, his singular eye seeking to pierce her through.

“…They say you’ve massacred thousands. Tens of thousands,” Seraphina finished at last.

Those words lured from the Crow a sound she had yet to hear from his lips—an honest laugh. It was a discomforting sound.

Even with her guards and godparents now forming a wall between her and the Crow, even with the feel of Alyx draped about her shoulders and nuzzling against her with a low usuru purr, Seraphina felt far from safe .

She felt leagues and leagues away from safety, in fact, when the little monster the King of Drakmor declared was to be her husband finally stopped laughing long enough to huff out on an amused breath, “Tell me something, Your Majesty…”

With a creak of his armor, the man retreated from his threatening lean and righted himself in his saddle. But his one-eyed gaze remained upon her and her alone when he asked, “Do I look mad to you?”

No.

No, he did not.