Despite the circumstances, Edith lowered her head, even as her thoughts whirled. What was a princess of Drakmor doing out here, hiding in the woods?
Reyla said nothing. Instead, she scratched out something on her slate with Dame Florence reading the words over the smaller woman’s shoulder. She nodded once.
“You should come inside,” the Lothmeeran woman rumbled.
Seraphina gasped, drawing Edith’s attention back to her. “Oh, Alyx! Forgive me.” Her goddaughter rushed further out into the cold and scooped up the injured usuru. “What happened?”
While Percy set about telling the tale of how they had found the winged serpent in the brush, Edith drifted further inside the little cottage. It was quaint but warm—old but in good repair.
Dame Florence sighed, as if their arrival was a great imposition. “Let me go put the kettle on,” she grumbled as if to herself andstalked off before Edith could say anything at all, leaving her alone with a young woman she did not know.
Silence descended between them.
Edith apologized at once, softly admitting, “Forgive me, but I have never been very good at small talk.”
Reyla rubbed her sleeve over her slate, wiping it clean. Silent, she scratched out another message before flipping it around so that Edith could read it:Where is Olivia?
The question crushed all the air from her lungs. Olivia knew this young woman too? It seemed that both her adoptive daughters were now keeping secrets.
“I...I fear she is not coming,” Edith whispered, reluctant.
Reyla rocked on her heels, as if waiting to hear the rest of the explanation.
But that was it. What else could she possibly say?
“Your Grace?” Seraphina’s voice unfurled from just behind her, soft and uncertain.
Edith swallowed hard and turned to face her goddaughter, already dreading the look she knew would be etched into Seraphina’s features. Hurt. Worry. Disbelief.
She found them all shining there within the queen’s familiar gray eyes—a perfect mirror of her dear Silvie’s.
Tears sprang to Edith’s own eyes unbidden as, lips trembling, Seraphina repeated Reyla’s written question, enunciating each word: “Where is Olivia?”
As if from far away, she heard Percy murmur, “She is not with us, Your Majesty...I fear Mistress Olivia decided to stay behind.”
Seraphina swayed where she stood, her arms tightening around Alyx until the usuru hissed. “Stayed…”
Edith’s own knees went weak. She had promised Silvie she would protect Seraphina. But she had promised herself she would protect Olivia. One princess. One commoner. Both hers—her daughters by choice instead of blood.
But she had failed. She had let the door slam shut. She had left Olivia alone in that burning city.
And now she might never see her again.
Chapter fifty-seven
Seraphina
Warmth. For once, she awoke to warmth instead of bitter cold.
A steady weight pressed against her back—soft, familiar. An arm draped across her middle from the front, holding her close. Her godparents.
For one blissful, drifting moment, she was a girl again, tucked into bed with the duke and duchess during a Wintertide visit to their keep in the frozen north. Snowcrest was so dreadfully cold.
Duke Percival had always huffed and made a show of grousing when she crawled into bed with them, before he tugged the blankets higher to cover her cold nose.
She had always felt so safe then. So loved. Sheltered.
But no longer.
