Her hair was styled in simple braids. A high-necked robe draped loosely on her form. Smiling, she shuffled a deck of cards while Aldric spoke to her, rumbling something she couldn’t hear.
Her heart stilled when she recognized the game they were playing—her own favorite: Sovereign. Even though Aldric had called it a child’s game. Even though he had taunted her for enjoying it so.
She had seen enough.
Leaning closer to Olivia, she whispered, “I want to go.”
Through the window, she watched Aldric push himself away from the table and slip to his feet. He seemed to be wandering into another room. The kitchen perhaps? Now was the perfect time to escape.
She squeezed Olivia’s hand.
Her friend nodded and led the way around the side of the cottage, moving slowly, cautiously, sticking close to the wall as they cut across the front of the house. That seemed to be the quickest way back to the horses—
The front door flew open just as Olivia was about to pass it.
Seraphina’s scream caught in her throat as Aldric stepped out into the night, his glaive held threateningly before him. His face was masked in shadow, his expression a mystery. But she knew he must not have recognized them when he abruptly cracked the pole of his weapon against Olivia’s legs.
Her best friend crumpled, releasing her hand.
Aldric angled the sharp blade of his glaive downward, as if he intended to spear Olivia like a fish. Assuming her friend didn’t slice open his ankle first with the dagger now firmly gripped in her hand.
Panic seized her. “No!” Seraphina shouted, finding her voice again as she dove between the two of them. She couldn’t let them hurt each other. She couldn’t stand the thought.
Aldric froze. After a moment’s pause, he tossed his glaive aside.
It clattered to the cottage floor.
Unarmed, he lunged toward her quicker than he had any right to move. Both of his hands grasped her left arm and tugged heroff balance toward the shaft of light spilling through the open doorway.
Gasping, she tumbled to one knee, landing hard against the soft earth just before the cottage. Blinking against the light, she cautiously dared a glance upward.
The Crow released his breath on a slow hiss. “Sera…” One of his hands lifted to knock the flat cap clean off her head. Her hair spilled free. “Should I be flattered that you’re now spying on me personally instead of just sending your attack weasel?”
She hated the way he said her name. She hated the way hespoketo her.
Low. Rough. Almost intimate.
Like they meant anything at all to each other.
“Let me go,” she whispered, trying to rip her arm free.
But his grip merely tightened. “Not until you tell me why you’re skulking about out here.” Though she still couldn’t see his face well, she could hear the shift in his tone when he growled, “I could have killed you.”
Annoyed. Her Crow was annoyed with her again.
Movement flashed past the corner of her eye, almost too fast for her to track. Olivia. “She said to let her go,” her friend snarled just as she embedded her dagger straight into Aldric’s boot, stabbing his foot.
He roared in pain, releasing her arm at once.
“No!” Seraphina shouted again, but it was too late.
With his other foot, Aldric stomped hard on Olivia’s right hand in retaliation. Something crunched. A string of curses and death threats tumbled from her friend’s lips.
From further within the cottage, a woman’s voice boomed, “What in the name of the Lord is going on out here?” Suddenly, another figure appeared—a Lothmeeran woman taller even than Olivia and twice as broad, with deep russet skin, a head of close-cropped gray curls, and dark brown eyes agleam with suspicion.
She stood with one of her strong arms wrapped protectively around the shoulders of the pretty Drakmori Aldric had been playing Sovereign with. But her other hand held a longsword still housed within its scabbard. A scabbard emblazoned with the golden sun of the Lord overlaid atop a flaming sword.
The emblem of a holy knight—a member of the Church’s military forces.
