[Seraphine’s POV]
“Rowan—” I gasped, clutching the baby tighter. “They’re coming—”
“I hear them,” he said. His voice had gone flat, all edges. “This way.”
He grabbed my arm and dragged me into the corridor, turning sharply left. Torchlight flashed over his face—smeared with someone else’s blood, jaw clenched tight. Guards poured from stairwells and doorways, steel drawn.
“There!” one shouted.
Rowan cursed under his breath and yanked me into the nearest gap in the wall—a narrow storage alcove packed with crates and old cloth. He shoved me deep inside, then turned and planted himself in the opening.
“Stay down,” he ordered.
“Rowan, I—”
“Hold the baby and stay quiet.”
He stepped into the line of sight, sword flashing free. The first guard rounded the corner at a run. Rowan met him without hesitation—blade sliding under the man’s guard, hilt slamming into his jaw.
The guard dropped, weapon clattering. Two more surged in behind him.
Rowan blocked the entrance with his body, moved like a man who had already decided he wasn’t leaving alive. Steel rang on steel, sparks scraping against the stone. A grunt, a curse, the wet sound of a blade finding flesh.
“Back!” one guard shouted. “We’ve got a traitor and the woman—” His voice cut off with a choke.
I hunched behind a crate, the baby pressed to my chest, breath coming in sharp, shallow gasps. I could feel the tiny heartbeat against my skin. One child. One. The absence of the other felt like a missing limb.
Another guard lunged. Rowan took a blow to the side— I heard the impact, the sucking breath as he staggered—but he didn’t move from the doorway. He pushed the man back with a roar, sword carving through the narrow gap.
Rowan slammed the alcove door-frame with his shoulder, using it as leverage as he drove his sword forward. A body hit the floor outside, lifeless.
“Rowan!” I whispered. “You’re hurt.”
“I’ve had worse,” he panted. “You stay there.”
“I can’t,” I whispered.
“You can and you will.”
“Rowan, she’s not here.”
He spared half a glance over his shoulder. “I know.”
“She should be here,” I said, voice rising. “The other baby—she should be with her brother, she should be in that room, she should—”
“Seraphine—”
“I am not leaving without her.”
More shouts. Someone blew a horn—once, twice—from somewhere deeper in the fortress. Rowan winced, pressing a hand to his side. It came away slick and dark.
“You’re bleeding,” I said.
“It’ll keep,” he muttered.
A cluster of guards sprinted past the alcove, not seeing us, answering another alarm. For a brief moment, the corridor thinned.
Rowan looked back at me. “Listen to me. We can’t stay. Take the baby and get out.”
“No.”
“Seraphine—”
“I am not leaving her,” I whispered, voice shaking. “I will not choose between my children. Not again.”
“Then get him to safety and let Aldric—”
“Do what?” I snapped. “Burn the fortress down around her? Turn my daughter into a message?”
Rowan’s jaw clenched. “He came for them. Both of them.”
“And so did I,” I said. “But I am their mother. I’m not walking away with half of them.”
We stared at each other, breathless, trapped in that small, suffocating space.
“Please,” he said finally, softer. “If you die here, they lose everything.”
“If I leave her,” I said, just as soft, “she loses me.”
The decision crystallized between us. I shifted the baby higher against my chest, tightening the wrap with one hand.
“I’m going,” I said. “You can follow or not. But I’m going to find her.”
Rowan swore under his breath. Then he pushed away from the doorway, sword still raised. “Stay behind me.”
I moved. We slipped into the corridor between patrols, ducking behind pillars, pressing ourselves to the walls when groups thundered past. The air stank of sweat and smoke and fear.
“Nursery will be near the inner rooms,” Rowan said. “Where Blackharrow can keep an eye on them.”
“And where would he stand?” I asked.
“Highest ground,” Rowan answered. “Near the center. He’ll want control of every exit.”
We turned up a narrow flight of steps, then another. Twice we had to duck into recessed arches as men ran by, shouting orders. One caught a glimpse of us and opened his mouth to holler. Rowan’s dagger flew from his hand before the sound could form.
The man dropped. Rowan retrieved the blade, breathing hard.
My heart hammered so loudly I was sure the baby could hear it. I whispered nonsense against his tiny head, words from old songs my nurse once used to sing. Anything to keep him from crying. At last, we reached a quieter passage—older stone, walls hung with faded banners, the noise below muffled.
“This way,” Rowan said. “If I were a lord with stolen royalty, I’d hide them where I could look smug over them.”
We turned a corner—and saw it: a door at the end of the hall, heavy oak and slightly ajar. Light spilled from within—steady, controlled, not the flicker of a barracks or kitchen. A chamber meant for strategy. Or for show.
Rowan lifted his sword. “Stay behind me,” he murmured again.
I tightened my hold on the baby and nodded. We approached slowly. Voices murmured beyond the door—a deeper timbre, faint and distant. As we neared, the baby squirmed in my arms, a small, unhappy sound breaking from his throat.
The voices inside stopped. Rowan met my eyes, counted softly under his breath.
One. Two. Three—
He shoved the door open. The room beyond was not large, but every inch of it felt calculated.
Maps lined the far wall. A table stood to one side, scattered with tokens and sealed letters. Candles burned in iron holders, spilling warm light over everything.
And beside the far wall, carved straight into the stone, stood a cradle. My daughter lay inside, wrapped in cloth, her tiny face flushed and damp from crying. Her eyes squeezed shut, her sobs thin and exhausted.
Standing next to the cradle, hands loosely clasped behind his back, was Blackharrow.
He was not as I’d imagined. Not a hulking brute, not a wild-eyed zealot. His beard was neatly trimmed, his dark hair pulled back with a strip of leather. He wore plain wool over chainmail, no crown and no ostentatious gold.
Only his eyes gave him away. Cold. Measuring. Amused.
“Ah,” he said softly. “The mother arrives.”
My grip on the baby tightened until my fingers hurt. “Get away from her.”
He smiled—a slow, chilling curve of lips. “There she is. My bargaining gold.”
The words made my skin crawl. Rowan took a step forward, blade lifting.
My daughter’s cry rose—thin, wavering, pleading, and something in me broke at the sound.
I lunged toward the cradle. “Don’t you touch her!” I shouted, every thought burning away but one: reach her.
Blackharrow turned his head at the same moment something crashed against the corridor wall outside. The door slammed wider. A blur of motion. The smell of blood and cold air.
Aldric burst into the chamber—face smeared with gore, cloak torn, and eyes blazing with a fury I had never seen unleashed. He didn’t reach for his sword. He didn’t need to.
He looked at Blackharrow like he meant to kill him with his bare hands.