Seraiah took a tentative step into the room. Without a fire in the hearth, cold leached through the stone of the castle walls, turning the air inside frigid. She still wore the cloak she’d borrowed in Baromund, as she refused to set foot in her former home, but it did little against the bitter chill intent on settling into her bones.
Once Seraiah had picked herself up out of the snow on the day they’d arrived in Ratha, she’d decided she didn’t want to know what might be in her home. She wasn’t yet ready to find out if Papa had disappeared along with everyone else or if something else had gotten to him first.
Kestrel suggested taking rooms at the Grumbling Bear Inn, so that was what they had done. Like the inn in Baromund, the downstairs had appeared as though people had vanished in the middle of what they were doing. Upstairs, the rooms to be rented had been empty. Unlike Baromund, Ratha didn’t see many—if any—visitors. The four of them had dusted things off, found linens, and claimed the empty rooms for their own.
In the days since, Seraiah had been on a search for clues. There had to be something here that could tell her what had happened or where everyone had gone.
She needed to know this wasn’t her fault.
While Sterling worked at her training, Seraiah worked at hers. Every day, she attempted to summon a vision, but every night when she fell asleep, she dreamed of Lonan. She tried using various objects she’d found around the inn, but the trouble was, she didn’t know the people they belonged to. She had no connection to them. The easiest thing to do would have been to go to her old house and find something of Papa’s, but instead, Seraiah had come here to the castle.
The room was small and sparse, but it looked exactly like the one she’d seen in her vision of Ariya. The rest of Ariya’s family had lived elsewhere on the grounds, but since Ariya was a lady’s maid, she was provided a room inside the castle itself. Seraiah had only been here once before since Ariya usually met her at the library.
She crossed the space to a wardrobe. Inside, she found it stuffed with dresses she recognized. If there were any missing, she couldn’t tell. Seraiah lifted one ink spotted sleeve, remembering the last time she’d seen Ariya. Her friend had found her in the scribe room with a puddle of spilled ink and tears in her eyes. She’d promised to find a way to help Seraiah rescue Sterling, and she had. If not for her, Seraiah might never have met Kai or Kestrel.
Seraiah dropped the sleeve. She didn’t want to imagine how everything might have turned out differently had she never left with them.
Leaving the wardrobe, she passed to the small washstand with a looking glass hung above it. A pitcher next to the basin held water with a sheet of ice over the top. Two hair ribbons, one dark green and the other yellow, lay on the other side. Seraiah touched the green ribbon. The ends were frayed from use. It had the potential to work for her visions.
She tucked it into her pocket, leaving the yellow one behind.
Then she turned to the bed. It was made up and appeared unslept in. A single pillow leaned against the wooden bed frame. Either Ariya kept her room neat, and they had disappeared during the day or . . .
Seraiah could not consider the alternative.
She stepped closer and saw the hairbrush on the table next to the bed was free of any hair. The chipped paint on the wooden handle, however, indicated the brush was not new. A white handkerchief was tucked beneath it. She lifted the brush and set it aside before reaching for the piece of fabric.
She paused before her fingers could make contact.
Small spots marred the otherwise pristine handkerchief. They were faded as though someone had washed it but hadn’t been able to remove the stains. Her mind flashed back to Ariya in her vision. She’d been tucked in bed, holding a handkerchief just like this one to her mouth as she coughed, leaving flecks of blood behind.
“Find anything?”
Seraiah jumped, pulling her hand away from the handkerchief. Kai stood just inside the doorway, but she hadn’t heard him arrive.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “This is Ariya’s room, at least. I took one of the hair ribbons to use for summoning a vision.”
“But?”
“But I’m not sure she went missing.” Her eyes went back to the speckled handkerchief. It should have been burned, not washed, and returned to this room. That was how they tried to stop the spread. They burned everything the infected had come in contact with.
Kai stepped up behind her and looked over her shoulder at the table. “What do you see?” he asked, sending a shiver up her spine that had nothing to do with the cold.
She explained her vision and her fear.
“You won’t know until you try,” Kai said. “There are people who have survived the fever, aren’t there?”
Seraiah shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of, and I can’t say I would trust my visions, given my lack of skills.” She left the handkerchief where it was. It might work better than the hair ribbon, but she didn’t dare touch it even if it had been washed.
“You’ve done the best you can with what you have. Speaking of, I have something that might help,” Kai said, backing up to give her space as she crossed the room again to close the open wardrobe. Even with no one here, it felt wrong not to leave things as she’d found them.
“What do you mean?”
Kai pulled something from a pocket beneath his cloak and held it out to her. “I should have given it to you sooner,” he said, “but it kept slipping my mind, what with rescuing Sterling and everything else we’ve encountered since.”
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
“What is it?” Seraiah took the small book from him. It was wrapped in worn brown leather, with no markings on the outside.
“It’s the old elven court seer’s journal.”
Seraiah’s eyes flicked up to meet his. “Where did you get this?”
“Surprisingly enough, Virelai gave it to me, and she didn’t even make me pay for it.” His lips quirked up at the corners. “I was reading it that night.”
He didn’t need to specify which night he meant. She knew all too well.
“And I’ve been carrying it around ever since,” he continued. “I didn’t get far in it, but maybe there’s something there that you can use. Something I missed.”
“I—thank you.” Her thoughts raced at the possibilities this book could contain. The things she could learn. The people she might protect.
“Seraiah—”
Whatever Kai had been about to say was cut off as Sterling pushed into the room behind him.
“Have you seen the greenhouses here?” Sterling asked. “I mean, they are mostly all dead now since there was no one to water them, but have you seen how big they are?”
Kestrel entered behind Sterling, and suddenly the little room felt crowded.
“I’ve seen it, yes,” Seraiah said, hugging the journal to her chest. There were many places in the castle she had seen thanks to her job in the library and her friendship with Ariya. It had been hard not to be jealous of everything when there was so little to go around in the city.
“Did you find anything?” she directed the question to Kestrel. The two of them had been searching on the castle grounds while she and Kai had been inside.
Kestrel shook her head. “Nothing new. You?”
“Nothing,” Seraiah echoed, “but there are still many places to look. We can try again tomorrow.” She was losing hope that they would find any clues left behind. She had a feeling if they were going to learn anything, it would be from her visions—if only she could summon one.
----------------------------------------
Ren slipped through the crowded streets of Daralis, the capital of Himera, keeping his eyes downcast. He tugged on his gloves to make sure they were in place—a nervous habit he couldn't manage to break. It felt odd to not be wearing his black mage’s robes after years of nothing else. If he was truthful, he sort of missed them. The memory of Sterling telling him he was part of a cult for wearing them made him smile, but the smile faded as quickly as it had come. He hated that he’d been a part of the group holding her captive—he hated a lot of things he’d done in his life—but he was planning to make up for it.
Instinctively, Ren reached with his mind for the mark he’d left on Sterling's sister. Not only did his necromancer abilities grant him power over the dead, but it offered him a bit of sway over the living as well.
He’d discovered this by accident when he’d placed a similar mark on his younger brother before his hands had been completely stained with the darkness of death.
They’d been fighting over a toy. Their family had been poor and could afford very little to keep the children entertained. As the oldest, Ren felt he owned the right to play with any toys first, and his siblings would have to wait until he was finished.
One day, his younger brother, Balder, decided he didn't like this and wanted to fight the status quo—even then he had a brave little soldier's heart. Balder made a grab for the wooden block, but Ren was faster. His hand shot out and latched around his brother's thin wrist.
"Ow! You're hurting me, En!" Balder whined as he wiggled and tried to pull away.
Ren only squeezed tighter. "It's mine, Bal. You have to wait until I say you can play with it."
The younger boy stopped squirming and nodded his head, a glazed look having overtaken his eyes. The wooden block fell from his fingers, immediately forgotten. When Ren let go, there had been prints of his fingers left behind. His mother found the marks later that night and assumed they were bruises. She sent Ren to bed with no dinner as punishment for playing rough.
A few days passed, and the bruises should have healed, but they didn't change. The marks remained, as did his brother's obedience. He never again tried to take a toy from Ren.
It hadn't been long after the incident when Ren had been sent away—not for leaving those marks on Bal, though, but for something much worse.
The mark he’d left on Seraiah pulsed—a slow, steady beat. It had grown stronger the moment he’d entered the human world, which meant she was probably here as well, but it was still faint enough that he knew she wasn't nearby.
He could go through the trouble of finding her, and therefore, finding Sterling, but there was some business he needed to take care of first. Besides, what was the fun of tracking her down when he could compel her to come to him?
Ren gave a little tug on the mark binding them and waited for the answering pulse. Sterling had talked nonstop about Seraiah, so he knew the sisters were close, and it was unlikely Seraiah would let Sterling out of her sight. Hopefully, they would both come at his call, and then he could explain things—fix what he had done. He just hoped Sterling would forgive him.
His shoulder bumped another man passing in the opposite direction.
"Hey, watch where you're going." The man glared at Ren.
"My apologies, sir."
When Ren’s eyes met his, the man ducked his head and mumbled something before hurrying off into the crowd. He must have seen something in Ren's face that frightened him. Ren smiled as he watched the man get eaten up by the crush of people before he turned and continued on his way.
It took him a while to find the right street, but he finally located it. It was less crowded, and the people didn't look at him sideways with suspicious eyes. Those who wandered here were used to seeing rough characters in this poorer part of the capital.
Ren watched the house from across the street, trying to remember if it looked the way it had when he was a child. No matter how he tried, he couldn't seem to recall the little details of the place he had called home at the beginning of his life.
As Ren observed it now, he realized he didn't even know if his family still lived here. For all he knew, they could be dead or maybe moved far from this place to avoid something like this—avoid the son with the strange ability to raise the dead from returning to haunt them again.
He shoved his hands in his pockets as he stared at the little house that had seen better days. It leaned slightly to the left as though a strong wind had blown it that way, and it had stuck. The paint was peeling off the wooden door in long curls and a forgotten linen hung from the drying line. One of the stone steps leading up to the door had crumbled away at the corner, and the little patch of dirt next to the stairs where he and his siblings used to play was now sprouting weeds. Everything about the place seemed older and more run down than he remembered. It couldn't possibly have been like this when he had lived here. He remembered a cheerful house full of noise and activity.
As he stared, lost in memories, the front door opened, and a woman stepped out. Her dark hair, streaked through with gray, was pulled back away from her face, and she wore a simple but clean dress. There was a no-nonsense manner about her that seemed familiar to him as she stepped off the front step and headed down the street. Her gaze darted across the road to meet his and briefly in that moment—he knew.
"Mother."
Then the moment was broken, and the woman hurried on, off to run errands in the city.
Ren glanced back at the house, which remained quiet. Why was she alone? If she was still here, were the others around as well? Was his father still in the army, or had he returned home? Did his siblings still live in the city? The questions crowded his mind.
He shook himself. He needed to stop this.
They had sent him away and made it abundantly clear they didn't want him. His own mother hadn't even recognized him. He had only wanted to see the place once more for himself, and he wouldn't come back.
Ren forced himself to walk in the opposite direction the woman had taken. The urge to look back at the house was strong, but he resisted, pushing himself deeper into the city and away from his childhood home.