Her Crow had only done what any brother would have done.
“Can it be finished?” she asked, trying to keep her hope in check, just in case the answer wasno. “If we are to retake Goldreach, we will need every advantage we can come up with.”
Reyla wiped the slate clean with her sleeve, a puff of white dust drifting into the air, and scribbled again.Give me a week. I will need a blacksmith.
“You shall have both,” she promised at once.
Reyla turned back to the contraption, her fingers dancing over the metal triggers, but Seraphina’s attention drifted. What other secrets did this vault hold?
She stepped deeper into the gloom.
The back of the vault was cluttered with items that seemed less like weapons of war and more like relics of a forgotten history. Old banners, moth-eaten and faded from blue to gray. Chests bound in rusted iron. And in the corner, standing sentinel against the stone wall—a suit of armor.
Seraphina drew closer, frowning.
It was plate, dull with age but clearly forged by a master’s hand. But it was not the heavy, broad-shouldered plate of a knight. The cuirass was tapered, the greaves slimmer.
It was armor forged for a woman.
Behind the armor hung a painting, its frame warped by the damp, the canvas darkened by time. Seraphina lifted the lantern higher, squinting to make out the details through the grime.
It was a portrait of a woman—a woman wearing this very armor, sitting astride a white charger. Her helmet was tucked under onearm, revealing a face both severe and striking. Who was she? The shield she bore gave some clue.
A rearing stag. The sigil of House de la Croix.
The sight stole the breath from Seraphina’s lungs.
“Who are you?” she whispered aloud, curiosity prickling. She knew her lineage—the kings and the conquerors, the great King Hamons and all their many deeds. But the history books only ever spoke of the de la Croix men.
Never the women.
A shout echoed down the spiraling stairwell, faint and distorted by the distance. “Cousin!”
The spell broke. Seraphina spun around to face the sound. It was Cyneric.
“There are more riders in the pass!” he called.
Reyla was already moving, abandoning the prototype weapon. For the very first time, she met Seraphina’s gaze, her eyes wide and luminous in the lantern light. She frantically scribbled on her slate and thrust it forward.
My brother?
The hope in Reyla’s expression was a mirror of the desperate, clawing thing inside her own chest, asking the same question. Was it Aldric? Was it her Crow at last?
“Maybe,” Seraphina whispered, though she tried to strangle the hope before it could take root. She could not bear to let it bloom only to have it crushed again.
Together, they ran. Up the stairs. Through the Spire.
By the time they reached the wind-scoured landing bay, Seraphina’s lungs were burning. Her legs were shaking. But she did not stop. She burst out into the open air, the biting wind whipping her hair across her face, stinging her eyes.
It felt like a cruel echo of the week prior. The gray sky. The biting cold. The Liftwarden standing in the signal room, reading the levers. The deep, mournful blast of the horn from below.
“Report!” she commanded, just as she had before, her voice breathless.
“Four men, Your Majesty,” the Liftwarden shouted over the gale. “Allies.”
Four. Seraphina clenched her jaw and nodded once. “Raise the lift.”
The great chains shuddered into motion, the winch groaning as it hauled the cage up from the abyss.Clank. Clank. Clank.The rhythmic locking of the safety gears reverberated through her bones.
