Page 31

Chapter thirty

Edith

“ I was thinking we should throw a ball,” Edith suggested, studying Seraphina’s face in profile.

But her goddaughter had eyes only for the view of Goldreach gliding past beyond the carriage window. She didn’t so much as blink in reply to those words.

Perhaps she hadn’t heard.

The past week, ever since they had first returned home from Nerina Reef, Seraphina had been prone to long silences and vacant stares. Gone were her easy smiles and bright laughter.

Their absence made Edith’s heart ache.

Pursing her lips, she gently teased, “Perhaps we might also hire some dancing pigs and juggling bears for entertainment.”

Seraphina turned a hollow-eyed stare her way and finally asked, “What? ”

“A ball, darling,” Edith repeated on a softer note as she reached over to take her goddaughter’s hand in her own. “Next month. For your birthday.”

Seraphina’s nose crinkled in a way that made her look so much like her mother, Silvie. “I am not about to authorize the Lord Exchequer spending money on something so frivolous.”

Edith bit back a chuckle. Seraphina might have looked like Silvie, but she most certainly sounded like Percy. “His Grace warned me you would say that…which is why I wish to pay for it myself. As my birthday present to you.”

When her goddaughter looked away again, Edith leaned forward and pressed, “I know you don’t feel like celebrating, but it’s important for you to celebrate all the same.”

“What is there to celebrate?” Seraphina gloomily questioned as the carriage rumbled to a halt outside the grand cathedral of Goldreach.

It was a glorious piece of ancient architecture, fitted with airy spires and stained-glass windows. The afternoon sun sparkled off the latter, making each pane glitter in the light. There was something terribly bittersweet about those windows, given the scenes they depicted.

The once numerous dragons of Avirel, winging through the heavens. Before the Enemy corrupted them all and led them to bathe the world in fire.

Before they nearly sundered the world.

Edith accepted aid from the footman who opened the door for them, and she stepped out into the sunshine while answering, “ There is your success with the summit we still need to celebrate. And the fact that there is to be a royal wedding…at some point. Perhaps.”

Seraphina twisted her lips to the side and dryly quipped, “And the fact that I am stepping foot into a house of the Lord for the first time in months?”

“Well, yes,” Edith agreed with a quiet laugh. “But I wasn’t going to say anything about that. You’ve been…a bit busy.”

“That hardly feels like a good excuse.”

“Well, there’s never a good excuse, my love,” Edith whispered under the hustle and bustle of the busy square. “We make time for the things that are important to us. But we must remember always that the Lord is not confined to mere buildings of glass and stone. He is everywhere. All around us. He meets us where we need him most.”

Her Majesty’s Queensguard, in their blue and gold livery, pressed in close on all sides as she and Seraphina made their way through the bustling square. The unspoken threat of the weaponry they carried kept the common people of Goldreach at bay.

But those people’s curious eyes followed their queen all the way up the marble steps and through the great double doors into the cool shadows of the cathedral’s interior beyond. Especially when that iridescent usuru of hers swooped down from the cloudless sky above to tangle itself about Seraphina’s shoulders with an ear-splitting shriek.

Edith winced at the sound and hurried to keep up. “And might I add you are doing an excellent job at being queen, Your Majesty. The mere fact that you are queen deserves a celebration of its own.”

Seraphina didn’t seem so sure. “It hardly feels like I am doing a good job,” she murmured under her breath. “I feel as though I am making mistakes at every turn. And…” But whatever else the young woman intended to say simply trailed into silence.

Edith laid a hand on her goddaughter’s arm and insisted, “Well, your mother would be proud of you. As I am proud of you.”

Seraphina’s brisk steps finally drew to a pause at that. “Would she truly?” the queen asked, flashing her a glance.

Edith’s heart threatened to crumble into motes of dust at the sight of defeat shining in her goddaughter’s eyes. “Of course,” she whispered. “I knew your mother better than anyone, and I can say with the utmost certainty that she would…”

Trailing off, Edith wet her lips and studied Seraphina’s face in the light spilling in through the cathedral’s many windows.

The queen was the very picture of her mother as if the Lord had decided He simply had to craft another. Such was Silvia de la Croix’s beauty.

Except where Silvie had been spun from sweetness—raised in a quiet hamlet, far away from life at court, by parents who loved her dearly—Seraphina had been forged in the fires of a childhood spent in Goldreach. Her spirit had been sharpened on a whetstone of lies and intrigue.

As had Edith’s .

“…weep with joy if she could see you now,” Edith finally finished. “If she could only see the strong and courageous woman you’ve grown to be.”

A small smile trembled its way across Seraphina’s lips at those words. But the expression lasted for only a moment. “My father would weep tears of a far different kind if he could only see me now,” the queen concluded. “Plagued by nightmares. Questioning my decisions at every turn.”

Edith bit the inside of her mouth to keep from proclaiming within the reverent stillness of the Lord’s house that she didn’t care what Reynard de la Croix thought about any of them, and neither should Seraphina. Reynard was dead.

And good riddance.

“Nonsense,” Edith offered instead. She trailed in her goddaughter’s wake as they forged deeper into the cathedral.

Despite the soft cast to her voice, that singular word still sounded entirely too loud to her ears. The cathedral was nearly abandoned at that time of the day, leaving the vaulted spaces primed to catch and amplify even the slightest bit of noise. The pews lay empty. Father Perero was nowhere to be seen.

But no doubt the good Shepherd was back in the living quarters, where Sir Dacre was being cared for. They had visited the young man nearly every day that week.

His condition remained unchanged.

“Your father would be quite pleased that you managed to uphold the alliance with Drakmor,” Edith went on to say. Which was true enough. Reynard would have been pleased about that. He would have looked askance at his daughter’s potential groom, but he would have been pleased by the politics.

Up until the moment he realized that a foreigner had been promised a seat on the throne of Elmoria.

But something else her goddaughter had said nagged at Edith while they walked. Frowning, she asked, “But the nightmares are still bothering you? It is still the same one? The vision?”

Seraphina sighed and nodded. Without glancing toward her, the queen confirmed, “It has come to me every night since we returned from Nerina Reef.” Edith’s heart ached when the younger woman turned another hollow-eyed stare her way and whispered, “Sometimes, it even comes to me during the day. I cannot escape it.”

The pain written across her goddaughter’s face was almost too much to bear. If she could, Edith would take that pain from her. She would bear it as her own. “Let us speak to Father Perero, then, after our visit,” she suggested, desperately trying to think of any possible solution. Perhaps the good Father would know of something that could be done.

Visions were far beyond her own understanding. She had never even heard of anyone being blessed with foresight beyond an Oracle of the Lord. And Seraphina was no Oracle.

An Oracle was always born, never made.

When they finally arrived to the living quarters tucked deep within the cathedral, Edith laid a staying hand on Seraphina’s shoulder so they might peek into Sir Dacre’s room without yet disturbing those already within .

There the young man lay, still unconscious. On one side of the bed sat Father Perero, his head bowed in prayer.

But on the other side lingered Olivia, her hand clasped with the knight’s own.

Edith sighed. “If our young friend ever wakes, perhaps dear Olivia will finally admit that she cares for him.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Seraphina softly countered, always eager to rise to Olivia’s defense, “and you know it.”

Edith heaved another sigh. “Yes, yes, I know. Olivia thinks she is too common for him. But a person is defined by far more than simply their pedigree.”

As if the Lord Himself wished to test her on that assertion, Edith heard in the very next moment a call of, “Your Majesty!” ring out from just behind them. Within Sir Dacre’s room, Olivia twitched her hand away from the knight and shot them a narrow-eyed stare through the doorway.

But rather than apologize to her other surrogate daughter for spying on her in a private moment, Edith turned to face the king of the common-born upstarts himself who was currently hurrying down the hallway.

Lord Tiberius Beaumont, the Baron of Crestley.

“Not now,” Seraphina hurriedly hissed for her ears alone. “I can’t deal with yet one more man wanting something from me. Not right now.”

“Go,” Edith bid in soft reply. “Hurry. I will take care of him. ”

The moment the queen and her Queensguard disappeared into Sir Dacre’s chamber and the door snapped shut behind, Edith pinned a pleasant smile onto her lips.

“Lord Beaumont.” She greeted the young man with all the sweetness she could muster, though he seemed to have none reserved for her. He frowned and craned a look at the closed door over her shoulder while she went on to declare, “How good it is to see you up and walking about. I heard that was a rather nasty hit you took the other day.”

It was a shame she had missed it.

The baron shot her a withering look. “I had hoped to speak with the queen, if you don’t mind, Your Grace.”

“The queen is busy, I fear,” Edith informed him with another smile. “But if you have a message for her, I would be happy to pass it along.”

“It is a message for the queen’s ears alone,” he insisted, trying to step around her.

But Edith was having none of it. She had known her fair share of men just like this Baron of Crestley over her nearly sixty years spent at court. Men who didn’t like to take no for an answer.

And there was only one way to deal with them.

A knee to the groin and a dagger to the throat.

But she would never hear the end of it from Percy if she drew a blade in the middle of the Lord’s cathedral. Flinging out her arms instead, Edith braced a hand on either side of the doorframe and declared, “Then it will simply have to wait for another time, my lord. Her Majesty is not to be disturbed. ”

The baron’s eyes narrowed. “Is this decree from the queen’s lips or from yours?”

“Both.”

Lord Beaumont snarled like the dog he was and withdrew from that nearness. Like a caged varhound, he paced the hallway.

Edith watched him in silence.

“But I need to speak with her,” the man insisted again when next he whirled to face her.

Edith frowned. “Your needs are of no concern to me.” Narrowing her eyes, she added, “And let us not pretend as if I do not know why you are here. Now . When Her Majesty finally has a chance to be free of you.”

For years, her goddaughter had mooned over this boy. Back and forth and around and around. They would flirt. They would fight. She would pray Seraphina was free of his influence at last .

But then when next she looked, there was Tiberius again, tugging her goddaughter every which way. It was maddening to watch.

But Silvie had been the same way—determined to see only the good in people, no matter how many times she had been burned by them.

“You speak of the dwarf?” A bitter-sounding laugh escaped Lord Tiberius’s throat. “You surprise me, duchess. I would have thought you , of all people, would be against such a match.”

Edith hesitated at that. She didn’t know what to think of Aldric Hargrave. She had yet to gain his measure. But she didn’t like his reputation. Nor did she like the complications he brought with him.

But she wasn’t about to tell this young man that.

It didn’t seem like she needed to, though, when in the face of her hesitation, Lord Tiberius smiled. “You don’t approve of the match,” he whispered, stepping in closer. He spoke softly. Intimately.

Edith recoiled from the younger man’s nearness, though she had nowhere to truly retreat unless she wished to step away from her post guarding the door. “Whether or not I approve is beside the point, my lord.”

“And what is the point, then, Your Grace?”

“The point,” she bit out through clenched teeth, “is that I have a better chance of becoming a pirate queen of the Stygian Sea than you will ever have of becoming the King of Elmoria. So perhaps you should leave now before you embarrass yourself further.”

The baron’s smile withered. “You assume much about me,” he uttered just as the door behind Edith abruptly opened, startling them both.

“Your Grace,” one of the Queensguard whispered at her back. “Come quickly. Sir Dacre is awake.”

Edith’s heart fluttered at the news and she dove into the chamber without hesitation, the baron forgotten in an instant.

“Sir Dacre is awake?” she echoed to those gathered about the bed, earning for herself a tired smile from Father Perero and a teary-eyed glance from her goddaughter .

“He’s awake,” Seraphina confirmed a mere second before Edith spied such a thing for herself.

There the young knight lay, his eyes blinking as he looked at the faces of all those gathered around him. When his gaze finally landed on Olivia, though, he stopped at once and whispered, “ There you are,” with such a heart-rending sweetness, Edith’s hand pressed against her chest in an attempt to stop the sudden ache there.

Seraphina looked away and turned in toward her instead. While they stood there, pretending not to hear Olivia’s stammered reply of, “Yes, I’m here,” her goddaughter’s fingers found the necklace about her throat, as they so often had when the queen was still a little girl.

Rather like a magpie, young Seraphina had always been fascinated by the sapphire star pendant Edith wore. The pendant Percy had given her for their second Wintertide together, when he told her she would always be his north star.

Edith pressed a gentle kiss to Seraphina’s brow while the younger woman stroked a fingertip against that pendant in silence.

She didn’t need to ask what her goddaughter was thinking. She knew. She recognized the morose cast to Seraphina’s features well enough.

It was a familiar feeling.

One day, darling . One day.

That was all she had ever wanted for her two surrogate daughters. That was all she had ever prayed for.

Safety. Happiness .

And that they might, one day, find a man who would look at them as Percy had always looked at her—ready to defend her against any danger that might threaten. A man who would look at them as Sir Dacre was looking at Olivia now.

As if he were a man drowning and she the only air he ever again wished to breathe.