Seren Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 4 of 26

Seren carried Hank home in the crook of her arm. The runes on his flank still glowed under her sleeve. Dawn was a gray line at the trees. She had hours, maybe less, before someone came looking for the hunter she had killed or the one who had run. She needed a god who would seat her, and she needed the cat to last until one said yes. In her kitchen she pulled herbs down from the beam and worked fast. She bound a small bundle with twine — the flowering stems her grandmother had called Cat's Cradle, meant to hold a familiar together when something bigger than the cat was riding inside him. She tied the bundle to Hank's collar. His breathing steadied. The glow under his fur dimmed to a safe ember. Then she sat at the table and made her list of gods. She crossed off the seated ones first. Naming any of them would drag them into treason. Her closest friend's face came up and she pushed it down and drew the line through it herself. That left the exiles and the fading. She went to the fading one first, at the shallow bed that had once been his river. He stood in cracked mud with his hair moving like nothing was moving it. "I need a god to seat me," she said. "Before dawn tomorrow." River looked at the cat. "I can't. I don't have enough left in me to seat a mouse. If I tried, I'd take the words with me when I go." She thanked him and left before he could apologize. She found the exile next, in the birch stand where he watched the sky he no longer owned. Isaiah Moon did not wait for her to speak. "You're carrying the rite in the cat," he said. "I can smell it." "Will you seat me." "Yes." She waited for the price. "You take the throne I lost," he said. "Not a new one. Mine. When you sit, the pantheon has to look at me again. That's the favor." She thought about it for one breath. "Done." He reached for Hank. The cat let him. Isaiah put two fingers on the sigils and the glow answered him, then stopped. His hand went still. "Someone else is on the words," he said. "Old. Nightshade blood." The air behind Seren cooled. She turned. A woman stood at the edge of the birches in a dark dress, white hair to her waist, small crown of purple flowers. Belladonna. The first of her line. Fading at the root, and here anyway. "He can seat you," Belladonna said. "He cannot anchor you. Exile blood won't hold. Mine will." "What do you want," Seren said. "The one who cut my root. You find them. After." Seren looked at Isaiah. He nodded once. Two gods. One seat. A debt to a moon and a hunt for an ancestor. She had her rite-finishers. She had not yet paid for them. "Tomorrow before dawn," Seren said. "Both of you. At the hollow tree."