Chapter one
Seraphina
The vision came as it always did these days: with the rumble of thunder.
And the promise of death.
Crimson lightning split the heavens. Stars tumbled like silver tears—as if the Lord Himself wept. The ground beneath her feet trembled. Screams echoed in the distance. She smelled blood in the air. She tasted ash on her tongue.
But still, she ran.
She knew the way now as well as she knew the thrum of her own heartbeat.
The wind howled across the blackened sands of this desolate wasteland, like a harbinger heralding the destruction to come. Narrowing her eyes, Seraphina plunged through the storm toward theone star left upon the horizon—that dark star to which she had first been pulled the day Oracle Tsukiko cursed her with the vision.
The star that led straight tohim.
“Aldric!” she called, racing toward the man kneeling on the sands, bowed beneath the weight of the many chains wound about his wrists and ankles. Fresh blood oozed from the countless wounds on his body, soaking his shirt clean through.
Once, she had recoiled from the gruesome sight.
Now, Seraphina sank to her knees before him without a single moment’s hesitation and clawed at the chains. All in vain. There was no end to them. No lock. No key.
He was trapped, and there was nothing at all she could do about it.
“Aldric, please,” she begged, wrenching at his restraints. “Help me.” But he didn’t help. He never did. He didn’t so much as look her way.
He simply spoke.
“Run,” her Crow rasped, his shoulders hunching further against the onslaught of the wind. “You must run, kirei.”
Seraphina shook her head. “Not without you.” She couldn’t leave him behind. Whether she liked it or not, Aldric Hargrave was a part of this. Whatever this was.
She couldn’t give up on him, no matter how many times he gave up on himself.
“Come on!” she screamed, her fingers scrabbling uselessly against the iron binding him. The moments slipped away from her like sandthrough an hourglass. Soon, her time would be up. Soon, the darkness already blotting out the heavens would sweep their way.
And then it would swallow them whole.
The rattle of chains was the only warning she received before his hand shot out and grasped her throat, strong fingers gripping her just beneath the jaw.
“I said run!” he roared, finally lifting his one-eyed gaze to hers. He tried to intimidate her, this Crow, just as the true Aldric Hargrave liked to do.
She refused to be cowed by either.
Seraphina leaned into the press of his hand and met his dark glare with a quiet defiance of her own. “No,” she bit out. “Not. Without. You.”
Within the reflection of his one good eye, she saw herself yet again—a woman wreathed in a golden fire that sputtered dangerously as the darkness neared.
His grip loosened. His fingers trembled. The rough pad of his thumb suddenly caressed her throat in a way the true Crow never would.
For a moment, Seraphina forgot how to breathe. “What are you doing?”
“Sera…” he whispered, his fingers slipping upward to cup her cheek. Holding her fast. Easing her closer.
No, she wanted to say. They didn’t have time for this. They didn’t have time for anything. Nor was he allowed to call her that name.
But her protest stuck in her throat.
