“Is it the nightmare keeping you up again?” the Shepherd gently asked. “The vision?”
Before she could stop it, a short, sharp laugh exploded from her throat—one that held no humor. “No,” she whispered, slamming the tome shut. Thethudboomed like a catapult releasing within the stillness of the chapel. “The vision has not visited me since before…”
Seraphina faltered, the words sticking in her throat.The coup.She would not say it. She could not say it. “Since before Goldreach,” she finally finished.
Father Perero hummed thoughtfully and moved around the pew to stand before her. He looked even older in the candlelight, his face etched with deep lines and sorrow. Yet his eyes remained clear, focused.
She waited for him to say something—anything—perhaps to even reveal the meaning behind her vision’s absence. Did this meanshe had failed at whatever she was meant to do? Did this mean that the Lord no longer…neededher?
But the Shepherd remained silent, watching her, as if waiting for her to say something further.
She swallowed and glanced down, tracing the gold inlay of the Scriptures with her fingertip. “I had hoped the Scriptures would give me some answers,” she explained, “but—”But nothing.Still, there was nothing. Still, the Lord was silent.
Frustration flared in her chest. Setting the heavy book aside, she shoved to her feet. “I wish the Lord would just tell me what He wants me to do!” she snapped, the candlelight on the altar flickering with the force of her words. “I know He has a plan, and I know His plan is better than mine, but what am I meant to do, Father? Am I meant to wait and listen—or act and trust that He will meet me on the way?”
Father Perero cleared his throat. “Have you prayed—?”
“Yes!” The word tore from her, far louder than she had intended. But the Shepherd did not flinch at her tone. He did not so much as blink. He merely looked at her with such kindness that she had to glance away for fear her lips would begin to tremble and her eyes to sting.
She refused to weep a single tear further.
She had shed more than enough for one lifetime already.
“I have prayed, Father,” she whispered, forcing her voice to be softer, calmer. Still, she sounded desperate to her own ears. “Many times I have prayed. But each time He is silent. I still do not know what I am supposed to do.”
“That is because you are expecting Him to hand you a map,” the Shepherd gently observed, “when He has already handed you a calling.”
Acalling?
Seraphina couldn’t stand still a moment longer. She began to pace the narrow space between pew and altar, her shadow stretching long and thin against the stone.
“To what was I called?” she demanded, speaking more to the air than to the Shepherd. The memory of Oracle Tsukiko’s words in the throne room on the day she first received the vision burned in her mind: “All of Avirel is in grave danger, Your Majesty.”
Bitterness coated the back of her throat. “To save the world?” she asked, nearly choking on the words. They sounded so absurd, even to her. “When I could not even save Elmoria? When I could not even save Mysai?”
She turned on her heel to face the Shepherd as she flung her arms wide to gesture at herself standing there in her wool and furs, her crown still hidden in her knapsack within her small, cold bedroom here at the Spire. Short the jewel she had to use to barter for horses. “I am no hero,” she whispered, shaking her head. “If the Lord has truly called me to save all Avirel, then He has made a mistake.”
Gently, Father Perero reminded her, “The Lord does not make mistakes.”
Jaw clenching, she raised her voice to proclaim, “In this He has. He has chosen the wrong de la Croix.”
Old sorrows tore through her like the frigid waters of the Frostrun in the wake of those words. Sorrows she thought shehad long since silenced. Perhaps if her brother, Hamon, had lived, Mysai and Goldreach would still stand. Perhaps if she had been the one to drown in the Straight instead, the world would be better for it.
She was no lady knight like Dame Florence, no warrior like the mysterious woman in the painting down in the vaults. She was just…Seraphina.
A gasp shuddered through her as her knees finally gave out, exhaustion winning in the end. But Father Perero was there before she could collapse, his hands gently cupping her shoulders with a strength his frail form shouldn’t have possessed.
Without a word, he helped guide her to the floor, where she settled on her knees, ignoring the way the cold gnawed at her shins even through her skirts.
Disgust tangled low in her gut—disgust with herself. Where was the Seraphina from just last week who had declared with such certainty that their fate was in the Lord’s hands now? That He would reveal the plan to them in His own time?
But that Seraphina hadn’t known her Crow was alive.
That Seraphina hadn’t had to look Tristan Dacre in the eye and feel cowardice turn her tongue to stone, rendering her mute when it came time to tell him what had become of Olivia.
Aldric. Olivia.The realization of what was truly bothering her lanced through her like a bolt of lightning, stealing her breath all over again.
To her war council, this was merely a question of strategy.
