Mourn slammed into the flank of the witch’s horse, the heavy impact sending them all staggering.
Within her grip, the sword was a dead weight—clumsy and foreign—yet she still lifted it. She still swung it toward the juncture of the witch’s neck and shoulder.
The witch flinched, golden eyes squeezing shut.
But Seraphina was no butcher. She was a queen.
With a grunt of effort, she locked her elbow, stopping her strike before it could ever land. The edge of her sword froze a mere breath from the other woman’s throat.
In those moments, the war vanished. The fire faded away.
In those moments, there was only her and the witch.
Seraphina leaned forward, her chest heaving, and felt the truth settle over her like a mantle. This was true power. Not the ability to kill.
But the strength to choose not to.
A dead witch could answer no questions.
And there were many Seraphina wanted answered.
“From one woman to another…” she rasped, wrapping both hands around the hilt of her sword to keep the heavy steel from trembling. Carefully, she nudged the blade forward—not to cut, but to remind the witch it was there. “I would suggest you surrender.”
Chapter sixty-nine
Aldric
The cove was no longer a camp. It was a churning, screaming cauldron of violence.
The rising light of dawn caught on steel as his kirei’s northern forces and Arathians collided in a chaotic tide. The air tasted of copper, salt spray, and the wet ash of the burning tents. It coated Aldric’s throat like soot, stinging his lungs with every ragged breath.
He stumbled, bare feet sliding on the slick stones as he lurched toward the mouth of the cove. Toward the light. Toward the promise of Sera waiting on the ridge just beyond. That was where his men had said she would be.
But when they finally burst out into the valley, his heart stopped.
The ridge was empty.
“Where is she?” Aldric barked, pointing a trembling hand toward the high hill overlooking the narrow pass.
Calix nocked an arrow, sparing only a quick glance for the ridge before he fired back into the cove. An Arathian dropped mid-sprint fifty yards away. “Not there, it seems.”
Aldric snarled, the sound ripping from his chest. “Then where?”
His gaze raked across both hills framing the pass, desperate for a flash of chestnut hair. But there was nothing. Not even a glimpse of Alyx.
“She must have already snapped the trap, boss,” Rakon rumbled, swinging his warhammer to crush the skull of a stray Arathian soldier who strayed too close to their cluster.
Aldric halted. The breath left him.Trap?“What trap?”
Leif tipped his head toward the pass. “Plan was to bait them. Lead the witch down to Cyneric to give you a chance to escape.”
Though the battle raged on deeper in the cove, the world near him still went still, narrowing down until there was only the roar of his blood in his ears. The staccato thrum of his heart.
She hadn’t retreated. She had surrendered the high ground. She had used herself as bait to draw the witch away.
Away fromhim.
“I need a horse!” Aldric shouted, the sharp words ringing out over the clash of steel, the snarl of varhounds in the near distance. Lunging forward, he slashed at a retreating Arathian’s leg with Rakon’s borrowed blade.
