Seraphina Nightwing's Arc

Chapter 7 of 9

Seraphina carried the sealed letter into her tower at dawn. She set it on the stone table and unpinned the small seal brooch from her collar. She pressed the pin's edge along the wax and broke it clean. Beneath the written words, faint lines bloomed where the pin touched. A second message rose to the surface, naming the hour Lord Casven would ride to bury her in court. She did not flinch. For two years she had built a hidden hold in the frozen peaks, a pale castle of ice where every letter Casven ever sent, every bribe he ever paid, every name he had pressured, sat copied and sealed. He did not know it stood. He did not know she had been gathering his weight while he gathered hers. She whistled once from the balcony. The blue roan stallion came down from the clouds with his herd behind him, lightning bright along their flanks. She mounted without a word. The fifty guards rose from the courtyard and followed her into the sky. They met Casven on the open road between the hills. He raised his dark twisted wand and called her old words back at her, loud enough for his riders to hear. Seraphina lifted a small bundle of papers in answer. She read three lines. His riders lowered their blades. She read three more. His own captain turned his horse and rode away. Casven charged. The blue roan met him in the air. The fight was short and clean. Her guards took his wand. Her stallion took his banner. By midday his hand was bound and his seat was empty, and the ice hold in the peaks was opened to every lord who wished to read. Seraphina rode home along a ridge where a tall bright crystal had grown from the rock where his wand fell. She did not stop to look back. The seventh seat was hers to claim now, and no one held her old words over her head anymore.