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Chapter twenty-seven

Seraphina

T he gallery was alive with an air of palpable excitement when Seraphina entered a short time later. The scent of the sea still clung to her like a perfume, and she longed for nothing more than to take a proper, warm bath for the first time in weeks.

But that comfort would have to wait for another time.

She had already dismissed her ladies-in-waiting and Duchess Edith so they could enjoy a bit of rest and relaxation on her behalf. Only Duke Percival and her Queensguard marched at her side when she returned to her court of Elmorian vipers.

Her Privy Council, minus Olivia and Father Perero, rushed forward to greet her in a flurry of bows and murmured greetings.

Her Lord Exchequer was the first to reach her. “We prayed most earnestly for your safe return,” the Count of Wellane murmured while bowing low over her hand. He pressed a chaste kiss there. “ And what happy news you bring. Thank you for the honor of serving as your Steward, Your Majesty, but I will be more than happy to return to my numbers now.”

His smile was a self-deprecating thing when he stepped back and combed his fingers through his thinning hair. “I do not envy your position in the slightest.”

But Seraphina’s brow furrowed when she echoed, “Happy news?”

Before Wellane could clarify his meaning, the Duke of Coreto stepped forward. Those frosty eyes of his sought to pin her in place with all their usual severity when he declared, “Yes, congratulations do seem in order, Your Majesty. Rumor has it you have returned most triumphant.” The older man’s gaze searched hers with a fresh scrutiny. “Not only have you secured for us a fresh treaty, but a husband as well.”

Coreto might as well have slapped her across the face with those words.

Seraphina swiftly racked her mind for every member of the court who had accompanied her to Nerina Reef. Desperately, she tried to think of just who might have been playing spy for Coreto all along.

Before she could even think of the questions she would need to ask to discover that answer for herself, her Lord Constable, Sir Easome, stepped forward and tossed in his own thoughts in the way of, “To think I might have the honor of one day fighting alongside the Crow of Drakmor himself! I did not realize he and Aldric Hargrave were the same. Nor that Aldric Hargrave was still alive after all these years. Terribly clever, Your Majesty. Terribly clever.”

“Yes, terribly clever,” Coreto drawled in quiet agreement, his eyes still searching her face.

As Sir Easome’s words fully snapped into place, Seraphina froze. Her heart skipped a full beat.

He was here. Aldric Hargrave was here .

“And just… where is His Highness now?” Seraphina delicately questioned, skimming a glance across the gallery. Her courtiers glittered all around—a sea of painted faces and bright jewels. She even spied Lord Tiberius among the throng, as handsome as ever. He hazarded a smile when their eyes locked. But she looked past him, still desperately hunting for any glimpse of black leather and a scarred visage in the crowd. “It would seem we became separated at the docks.”

The docks .

The strangely familiar ship. The black stallion. She had not recognized them out of context. But now she had the context, everything swiftly fell into place. Save for one piece of the puzzle.

How had the Crow beaten her there?

It was Wellane who answered. “The last time I saw him, he and his men went for a stroll while they waited for their rooms to be prepared.”

Duke Percival’s voice was particularly brittle when he echoed the Lord Exchequer with an indignant, “His men?”

Seraphina forced a smile to her lips and hastily said, “Thank you for all your kind words, my lords. I am looking forward to a full report of all that happened in my absence. But for now, I must go speak with, ah…” She hadn’t the faintest idea what to call the Crow in polite society.

Monster would be rude.

But she would rather spend an entire day doing nothing more than flattering the Duke of Coreto’s ego than call Aldric Hargrave her betrothed.

“…the prince,” Seraphina finally concluded.

Before she could properly excuse herself, though, Alyx let loose with a happy screech that filled Seraphina’s stomach with anxious butterflies. She knew what that call meant even before she glanced up and spotted the Crow’s dark-scaled usuru now cavorting gracefully with her own.

“Presenting His Highness, Prince Aldric Hargrave of Drakmor,” a court herald cried, and the excitement already buzzing through the gallery rose to a fever pitch.

Seraphina turned to face the little man stalking his way toward her. Twelve other men fanned out behind him as he went. All thirteen of them were still dressed in black traveling leathers, suggesting they had not been within Goldreach much longer than she.

Or perhaps this Crow owned nothing other than black leather.

She was beginning to suspect the latter.

Though many questions burned on her lips as the prince paused in front of her and sketched a shallow bow, she met his marred gaze with a smile she hoped was warm enough to sate Coreto’s curiosity, and held her tongue .

She was not about to give this Crow the satisfaction of realizing he had already put her on the back foot, and in front of almost the entirety of her Privy Council, no less.

“Your Highness,” Seraphina greeted him, her smile kept firmly pinned in place. “There you are. And here I thought I had lost you.”

“Never,” the Crow rumbled in low promise. “I hope you will pardon my rudeness in leaving you at the docks. I was simply so eager to tell your Privy Council the happy news.”

Seraphina’s smile sharpened at those words. “Oh, no doubt.”

“Indeed.” The Crow slid his one-eyed gaze past her for a moment, as though searching for something. But it soon returned to pierce her with its flat stare all anew. “There was some question as to when the wedding will be.”

“Surely, there is no rush,” Seraphina insisted with another smile. While she spoke, her fingers unhooked her folding fan from its place affixed to the gold chain belt twined about her waist. The tactile sensation of the silk and sandalwood accessory in her fingers gave her something to ground herself with as her mind whirred through the many ways this little interlude might play itself out. “Given that you are here already—”

“I had suggested as soon as possible,” the Crow continued in his dark rasp of a voice, rudely speaking over her.

Seraphina narrowed her eyes at the shorter man. He met her gaze unflinchingly. After a few moments of tense pause, she asked, “Might I speak with you a moment? ”

Though the question was met with a quirk of his left eyebrow, the Crow eventually dipped his head in agreement and moved to follow along.

“Do excuse us,” she murmured to her Privy Council, though she didn’t bother to wait for their replies before she slipped off through the crowd choking the palace gallery.

Her invitation for a private word had included none other than the Crow himself, but Seraphina soon realized Duke Percival and one of the Crow’s dark-clad shadows—the monochrome man painted in shades of bronze—followed them after she had positioned herself into a corner of the gallery with the once exiled prince in question.

Her godfather she allowed a brief glimpse of her displeasure, but the other man she fully ignored as she turned and whispered to the Crow, “I do not remember giving you leave to follow me.”

The Crow countered in his harsh rumble, “I do not remember asking.”

“Now see here,” Duke Percival interjected with a scowl. His walking cane thumped against the floor between her and the Drakmori prince. “Surely even you know, Your Highness, that landing an army on Elmorian soil without receiving prior permission from the Crown constitutes an act of aggression. And that is something we will most certainly not tolerate.”

The Crow frowned. Craning his neck, he looked back toward the rest of his men stood. When his attention returned to her and Duke Percival, he dryly questioned, “Are Elmoria’s forces truly so depleted that a mere thirteen men can now be considered an entire army?”

“Now see here,” Duke Percival began again, but Seraphina cut him off by raising her hand before he could continue.

“You will be allowed to stay,” she declared to the Crow instead, with all the magnanimous authority she could muster in that moment. She was sure they both realized, though, that she couldn’t exactly evict him now. Not in front of her Privy Council and the vast majority of her court.

Which was precisely why he had raced her to the palace in the first place.

Seraphina paused a moment. She allowed those words to sink in before she added in soft warning, “But I expect you to be a gentleman while you are here, Crow . There will be no violence in my court, no whisper of”—she shot the man’s bronze-eyed shadow a look for good measure, including him in her instructions—“ indecent behavior.”

“And our wedding?” he asked at once, pressing that point with all the insistence of a varhound hot on its prey’s scent.

“I will marry you when I am good and ready and not a moment before,” Seraphina insisted on a soft hiss.

But clearly, that was not what the man wanted to hear, given how his lips twisted with displeasure. Before she could even process the shift in his stance, the Crow suddenly stood too close, with his face drawing nearer by the moment.

“I fear, Your Majesty,” the Crow snarled up to her within that suffocating nearness, “that never is not an option.”