Seren Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 26

Seren Nightshade buried the crown before the scouts crested the ridge. She dug with her hands under a hollow yew, ten paces from her cottage door, and pushed the cluster of amethyst points down into the wet dirt. A witch was allowed to want power. A witch reaching for a seat in the pantheon was not. Someone had talked, and now the gods had sent hunters to end her before she finished climbing. Hank watched from the doorstep, tail flat. The black cat had been her familiar since her mother died and left her the cottage, the craft, and the quiet, dangerous idea that a mortal woman could take a throne. Seren covered the crown with moss and stood. Her purple mohawk was damp with sweat. Her long black skirt dragged mud. "Inside," she told Hank. He did not move. He was staring past her, into the pines. She heard the horses then. Two, maybe three. Coming slow, the way people came when they already knew where you lived. Seren went into the cottage and took the whip down from its hook above the hearth. Dark thornwood, wrapped in pale crystal teeth. Her mother's weapon. She had never used it on anything that could bleed. On the table sat a shallow iron dish holding a small heap of pale ash flecked with living embers. She had stolen it three nights ago from a shrine the pantheon thought forgotten. The ash of the first fire any god had ever lit. Any mortal who ate it earned the right to stand in the circle of thrones and be judged. That was the law the gods had written and then hidden. She had planned to eat it at the next full moon, with preparation, with ritual. She had planned a lot of things. A branch cracked in the yard. A man's voice said her name, gentle, the way you speak to a horse before you cut its throat. Seren looked at the dish. She looked at the door. If they took her now, they took the ash, and no witch would ever try this again. She tipped the dish to her mouth and swallowed. The embers went down like swallowed coals. Her knees hit the floor. Hank yowled. Something enormous turned its face toward her from a great distance, and she felt herself counted, weighed, noticed. The door burst inward. A tall figure in gray filled the frame, blade drawn, eyes wide at what he saw kneeling in the firelight. Seren rose. The whip uncoiled in her hand. Her mouth tasted of old smoke and iron, and under her skin something new was moving, slow and bright and not hers yet. "You're late," she said. She struck first.