Seraphina Nightwing's Arc

Chapter 9 of 9

The morning after the royal pair settled in, Seraphina walked out alone to gather flowers for their new stable. The path led her to a wide meadow she had never crossed before, where the sky held a long, soft sunrise and tall sunflowers with black-tipped petals leaned over cornflower blue blooms. She knelt and began to cut stems. A shadow passed above her. She looked up and saw a pegasus the color of sea green water, with teal wings spread wide. A man rode on its back, straight and calm, a circlet bright on his dark hair. The pegasus landed in a drift of baby blue mist that curled up from its hooves and hung in the air like slow smoke. The rider slid down. He smiled at her. She smiled back before she had time to think, and her chest went tight in a way she did not trust and could not stop. He told her he was a prince from a kingdom past the eastern peaks. He had been searching for a queen who tamed pegasi. She told him plainly who she was. He did not flinch. He stepped closer, and she did not step back. Before the day was over, Seraphina had given orders. Workers marked the misted ground where his pegasus had landed and began a tall monument to hold that pale blue shimmer in glass. Against the cliff near her royal stable, she set the plans for a new haven of diamond and sapphire walls, wide enough for one sea green stallion to live beside her Queen and King. That night she stood at her window and watched lamps move along the new foundation. She had a crown, a herd, and now a prince who looked at her without weighing her. The arc of her old plan had not closed. A new thread had been tied to it, and she did not yet know if it would hold her steady or pull her off her feet.