Chapter 43 - Bitter Truths

  “Fate is a game for fools, a pretty story the weak tell themselves when they surrender. I refuse. I have shattered prophecy under my heel and carved my own path in its stead. Once, I was cast as a villainess destined to kneel; now I sharpen my smile like a blade and choose who kneels before me. Mercy? Justice? These are but gilded words, and I’ve learned that power is the only truth in a world of masks and knives. I will take what I desire, become what I must, and if the Heavens deem it sin, then I shall outwit the heavens as well. For I am Seraphina de Sariens, and I was not twice-born to be but a footnote in someone else’s legend—I was born to be the author of my own.”

  - Attributed to Lady Seraphina de Sariens before the battle of Valaine’s Fall.

  Seraphina was on the war-path.

  A harsh midday sun glared off the puddles of last night’s rain, turning the cobbles into shards of dark glass.

  Towing her maid and flanked by three of her loyal Knights, Sir Frest at point and Adraine and Filippe to her flanks, they pushed deeper into the seedier warrens of Meridian. Day-market hawkers bawled over crates of overripe fruit, and the distant smell of the docks hung in the air.

  “Where is Haze?” Seraphina asked of her white serpent.

  “The man-woman?” the lazy Hydra hissed inside her mind, its tone languid.

  “For the seventeenth time, Cornelia, Haze is not a man-woman. There is no such thing. She is a girl, and that is the end of it. Full stop.”

  Across the magical link that bound mistress and familiar, Seraphina could almost feel Cornelia shrug, despite the creature’s distinct lack of shoulders. Memory flickered. Weren’t some animals capable of changing their sex? Did that apply to Hydras?

  “And do not ever even think about changing into a man,” she warned. “I have quite enough to manage as it is.”

  “She’s over there.” Cornelia’s head poked out from the front of Seraphina’s bodice and darted forward, pointing toward a gaudy fa?ade two doors down the street. Painted rabbits, pink and winking, frolicked above an archway swathed in cheap silk banners.

  “Hadraine, Filippe… what are you staring at? This is hardly the first time you’ve seen Cornelia.” Her rebuke cracked like a whip.

  Hadraine blinked, cheeks pinking as he looked slightly away. “I did not realize she could be quite so, well, imposing, my lady,” he stammered, tugging at his steel gorget as though it had grown too tight. Filippe merely nodded, his swallow bobbing.

  “Cornelia can grow quite large when she’s hungry,” Seraphina said coolly, stroking the serpent’s head as it looped around her neck. “Luckily for you two, I fed her just a bit earlier. Now: the pair of you will enter that building and fetch me Haze. Knock heads together, rip up floorboards, and so on. Whatever it takes, I want her out here, and I want her out here this instant!”

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Just a note,” Sir Frest interjected, tone polite but strained, “The Bouncing Rabbit is a… house of ill repute, milady. You do understand that Finleigh might otherwise be engaged?” He kept his gaze resolutely fixed on a distant chimney.

  “And how, pray, do you know the name of the establishment, Sir Ferdiad Frest?” Seraphina’s eyes flashed.

  “It’s written right th…”

  The green of her eyes became as chipped emeralds, silencing him. “I care not what Finleigh is doing. To repeat myself, I want her here, now. Unless you wish me to march inside in person?”

  Filippe and Adraine snapped to attention. “At once, Lady Seraphina!”

  The bouncers at the door flew inward under their armored assault. The blonde girl could hear a great clamor erupting from within as the pair of Knights scattered painted courtesans and startled patrons alike as if they were hawks hunting pigeons.

  And Seraphina remained on the sun-washed street, her anger simmering beneath a veneer of a patrician’s poise. A few minutes later, far too slow for her liking, the Knights returned with their quarry.

  A bedraggled, rather frightened-looking Haze knelt before her in nothing but her underclothes. Her once carefully styled hair hung in limp, tangled locks, and her eyes—those normally sharp eyes—had a strange, unfocused sheen. No, Seraphina corrected herself. It was worse than strange. There was a glazed, dreamy vacancy to them, as if Haze were drifting through some drugged reverie far from the opulent mess of this brothel hall.

  She looked pathetic. And that, more than any shred of sympathy, dulled the edge of Seraphina’s ire.

  Dust. The Bard had clearly been taking the narcotic Dust.

  Seraphina’s jaw tightened. That particular ruinous indulgence was one she might, perhaps, be marginally—just marginally—responsible for. The Lehman’s Bank had many hands, and not all of them were clean. Still, she hadn’t told Haze to take it. That mattered. Somewhat.

  Sir Gravens, ever the image of chivalric gallantry, stepped forward and solemnly removed his cloak. He draped it over the shivering girl’s shoulders. Haze gave him a weak, unfocused smile, her lips twitching as though she half-recognized him from some happier dream.

  Seeing this display, blunted some of her annoyance and made Seraphina shake her head.

  “I want Haze brought to the house,” she said crisply. “Give her a room—lock it, if you must. A heavy lock, please. She is not to leave. Water, bread, and a small allotment of our sugar candies. No wine, no meat. Not for a few days at least.”

  She glanced over her shoulder.

  “Settle damages with the proprietor here, and if they make silly noises about it, refer them to our Captain Fanzazino. Miriam—if you please.”

  That name. Her name. Miriam stiffened like a scolded child. Her mistress must be quite put out if she used her full name instead of Milly.

  “Err… milady,” the maid stammered haltingly. “I may have forgotten to mention… your mother may be arriving later today. I was just about to tell you when…”

  Seraphina’s head turned with the slow precision of a knife being drawn from its sheath. “Why,” she said in a voice carved from winter frost, “must I always be surrounded by such remarkable incompetence? You had ample time to tell me on the way here…”

  “But you didn’t look like you…”

  “Miriam.”

  That single word cracked again like a whip.

  “Yes, milady!” the girl squeaked.

  “Just do what I say, please,” Seraphina snapped. Her gaze lingered, cold and imperious, until the maid turned and fled to obey.