“If you want me,” she screamed, her voice tearing through the din of battle, raw and challenging, “you will have to come and claim me!”
And then, the sea of soldiers parted.
A woman stepped through the tumult, untouched by the frantic violence swirling around her. She wore no armor, only robes of deep, blood-drenched crimson that billowed like smoke with each step she took. She walked with a terrifying calm, her gaze not on the dying men at her feet, but lifted high.
Fixed directly on her.
Mourn snorted, his ears pinning back. The great stallion reared slightly, his iron-shod hooves pawing at the empty air—not in fear, but in recognition of a predator. No doubt he felt it, too. The wrongness of her. The way the air seemed to shimmer and warp around her form.
The witch stopped, her head tilting to the side, as if trying to make sense of what she was doing. Sitting exposed. Seemingly alone.
Even from that distance, the weight of the other woman’s stare was heavy. Suffocating. It felt like insects crawling across her skin.
Seraphina didn’t wait to see more. She jammed her heels into Mourn’s flanks. “Go!”
The destrier exploded into motion.
They thundered down the soft slope, eating up the ground with terrifying speed. She leaned low over the stallion’s neck, the wind roaring in her ears, whipping her hair into a frenzy. She steered him hard, veering away from the main melee and straight into the mouth of the ravine.
It was a reckless, desperate gamble. And it was glorious.
For the first time in her life, she wasn’t the woman in the tower, carefully strategizing behind the safety of four walls. Agonizing. Overthinking. Nor was she the fragile creature Olivia constantly tried to handle like glass.
She was the dawn.
The biting chill of this early winter filled her lungs, sharp and clean. The raw power of her husband’s horse beneath her surged through her veins. She should have been afraid, and yet she felt nofear. There was only the burning light in her chest. Only the fierce, wild joy of being alive thrumming through her soul.
The thud of incoming hoofbeats echoed in the distance, distinct against the rocky terrain.
She risked a glance over her shoulder.
The witch had found a horse and she was coming in fast, crimson robes cracking in the wind behind her, body leaned low over the creature’s neck. She came alone.
Perfect.
Seraphina urged Mourn faster as the walls of the ravine rose up around them, shadowing the rising sun. Far above her, Alyx’s familiar screech pierced the air.
Something whistled past, slicing the air inches from her ear.
Seraphina flinched, crouching lower as a second arrowthunkedviolently into a scraggly tree to her left, the shaft quivering. She looked up, her stomach dropping. High atop the eastern ridge—the hill Cyneric had warned was vulnerable—shapes moved against the skyline. Arathian archers.
She didn’t stop. She didn’t slow.
She just flew.
From the western ridge above her, a volley of arrows sang out in reply—her own men, raining death upon her enemies. The air above the ravine became a crossfire of hissing shafts. It was madness. It was chaos.
But she rode in the eye of the storm.
She pushed Mourn harder, the stallion’s hooves sparking against the rocky floor of the pass. They were nearing the exit. Just a littlefarther, and she would lead the witch right into Cyneric’s waiting arms.
Then, the air shifted. The temperature spiked, instantly drying the moisture in her mouth.
There was no warning hiss, no sound of impact. One moment the pass ahead was clear.
In the next, the world turned red.
A wall of roaring flame erupted from the ravine wall fifty yards in front of her, sealing the end of the pass. The heat was instantaneous. Blistering. It washed over her, sucking all the air from her lungs, replacing it with an acrid tang.
