[Seraphine’s POV]
Torches burned in iron brackets along the walls, throwing jagged light across the stone. Men in dark leathers moved in steady patterns, their boots scraping against rock, their breath ghosting in the cold air.
Rowan’s hand brushed my elbow. “Head down,” he murmured. “You’re a tired healer, not a queen.”
I pulled my hood lower, fingers brushing the embroidered edge. Elowen’s old pattern. The same she’d used for the twins’ swaddling.
Aldric walked on my other side, cloaked, his posture that of a commander but his bearing deliberately muted. A stranger might mistake him for a mid-ranking officer. No one who knew him would.
We reached the outer gate.
A guard stepped in front of us, spear lowered. “State your business.”
Rowan answered before I could open my mouth. “Healer from the southern passes,” he said, jerking his chin toward me. “Sent for by your mistress. One of the brats is fevered.”
My breath snagged at the word brats. I kept my head bowed.
Another guard snorted. “Blackharrow doesn’t send for strangers.”
“His midwife does,” Rowan shot back. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Word came down the path. I was ordered to escort her and this captain.”
The guard’s eyes slid to Aldric. “You don’t wear our colors, captain.”
“I wear whoever pays me,” Aldric replied, with his voice roughened and accent flattened. “Tonight, that’s Blackharrow.”
The lie sat easy on his tongue. It shouldn’t have.
The guard studied him a beat longer, then shrugged. “You can stow your pride in the yard. If the healer’s here by Elowen’s order, take her in. Quickly. The lord wants the infants ready before dawn.”
Ice slipped down my spine. The gate creaked open, and we passed through.
Inside, the fortress crawled with movement—guards at every archway, servants with buckets, and the smell of smoke and boiled meat. Rowan leaned close.
“Don’t speak unless you must,” he breathed. “If they stop us, let me answer.”
I nodded, clutching the herb pouch at my belt like it might keep my legs from shaking. We moved through a narrow corridor, followed by the chill draft that seemed to seep from the stone itself. At a fork, Aldric slowed.
“I’ll circle to the upper levels,” he whispered, just for us. “Look for advantage, find where they’re kept.”
Rowan’s jaw tightened. “We shouldn’t split.”
“We must,” Aldric said. “Three together draw more eyes.”
His gaze flicked to me—one beat, two—and something in it made my chest hurt.
“Stay with him,” he told Rowan. “Protect her.”
Rowan nodded once. “I will.”
Aldric slipped into the shadows of the right-hand passage and vanished. I turned left with Rowan, past an alcove where two soldiers were gaming with dice. One barely glanced up. The other did.
His gaze slid over Rowan, over my bowed head—and snagged on the edge of my cloak.
“Hold,” he said.
Rowan stiffened beside me. The soldier stood, squinting:
“That stitching,” he said, stepping closer. “Hold up your cloak.”
Every instinct screamed no. I forced my hands to move, lifting the hem just enough for the embroidery to catch the torchlight—delicate blue thread in a pattern of curling leaves.
The soldier’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve seen that before.”
My mouth went dry. “It’s… an old Eryndale pattern.” My voice came out softer than I intended. “Traded on the pass.”
He shook his head. “No. The midwife… The foreign one, she had cloth like that and used it on the little ones she brought in.” His gaze sharpened. “Where’d you say you came from?”
“South,” I murmured. “Villages by the river. I sew my own work.”
He looked unconvinced. “Strange coincidence.”
Rowan stepped forward, frowning. “You questioning her sewing now?”
“I’m questioning why she wears the same pattern as Elowen’s brats,” the soldier said.
My skin crawled. Brats. My children.
“They’re not her brats,” Rowan snapped. “She’s here to keep them alive. Or would you rather explain to your lord why his bargaining chips died of a fever?”
The man’s eyes flicked to me again. “Lift your hood,” he said. “Let me see your face.”
Blood pounded in my ears. I began to raise my hands—
Rowan grabbed my wrist. “Enough.”
The soldier scowled. “You don’t give orders here.”
“And you don’t waste time harassing a healer when your lord’s expecting his toys to be polished and pretty,” Rowan growled. “Elowen will have your hide if we’re late. She screamed herself hoarse last time someone delayed her.”
He pitched his voice low on the last words, like gossip shared between men who’d both seen too much.
The other guard looked over. “He’s right, Bram. That woman terrifies the lot of you. Let them through. I’m not standing between her and her babies when she’s in one of her moods.”
“…fine,” Bram muttered. He jabbed a finger toward me. “But if I find out you’re lying about where you got that stitchwork, healer—”
“You can take it up with Elowen,” Rowan cut in. “She’s the one who sent for us.”
The name did its work: The soldier stepped back. Rowan dragged me away before my knees gave out. We turned down the next passage, his grip bruising on my arm.
“Keep walking,” he murmured. “Don’t look back.”
“I thought he’d see it,” I breathed. “I thought—”
“You did well,” Rowan said. “You lied like you were born to court.”
“That’s not a compliment I wanted,” I muttered.
He huffed, almost a laugh, but his eyes stayed sharp, scanning every doorway.
We moved deeper into the fortress—past a storeroom, a line of sleeping pallets, a narrow stair leading up. Somewhere above us, boots scraped stone.
A muffled grunt. Then another. I glanced up just in time to see a shadow move against the far wall.
Aldric.
He pressed one man against the stone, hand clamped over his mouth, blade buried cleanly between the ribs. Another lay crumpled at his feet. The movements were so swift, so precise, that if I’d blinked, I would have missed it.
Rowan pulled me into a side alcove until the bodies slid silently down. Aldric met my gaze across the dark—a flash of eyes, cold and furious and desperate. He wiped the blade on the dead man’s cloak and melted back toward the upper corridor.
My stomach twisted. I turned away before I lost the thin contents of it.
“Come,” Rowan murmured. “We’re close.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
He bowed his head. “Hear that?”
At first, I heard nothing but the drum of my own heart. Then—faint, so faint I thought I imagined it—a soft, broken sound. Not the sharp wail from the mountainside.
A little whimper. A restless breath.
I moved faster. We took another turn, then another, the walls closing in. The air changed—warmer here, touched with the scent of herbs, milk, stale sweat. A nursery.
Rowan slowed at the next corner. “Careful,” he whispered. “If Elowen is anywhere—”
I didn’t let him finish. I stepped around the corner and froze.
Elowen stood in the narrow room ahead, torchlight painting shadows across her face. Beds of straw and blankets lined the walls, and a basin steamed in the corner. In her arms, swaddled in a familiar blue-stitched wrap, lay one of the twins.
My son—or daughter, I couldn’t tell from here—silent, bundled, pressed to the same chest I had trusted with my life.
Elowen’s eyes lifted to mine. They were full of something terrible—regret and steel, grief and a fanatic light that made my blood run cold.
“Seraphine,” she whispered. And I couldn’t move at all.