Page 112 of A War of Crowns

Now it was his turn to snatch her mare’s reins. He kept her pinned in close while he demanded, “Then tell me what you want from me.” When she didn’t immediately answer him, his features twisted further when he demanded a second time, “Tell me, Seraphina. I am not my brother. I take no pleasure in these games.”

For a single, mad moment, she considered doing just that.

Telling him what she wanted.

I dream of you every night, she could have said.Except it’s more like a nightmare because you’re a giant, one-eyed crow covered inblood and bound in chains. And I’m still trying to ascertain what it all means.

He would think her mad if she did. But perhaps she was.

Perhaps she was going mad.

Swallowing hard as she studied Aldric Hargrave’s face within that nearness, Seraphina tried to glean what she could from that one dark eye of his when she softly informed him instead, “Sir Dacre is awake.”

His answer was immediate, his tone just as flat as ever when he asked, “Why are you telling me this?”

She pressed her lips together, fighting hard against a sudden urge to strike him again. Violence was not the answer. It so rarely was. She knew that.

But there was something about this man in particular that made her want to reach forward and topple him off of that high horse of his.

“Because I thought you might wish to know you did not kill him,” Seraphina breathed into that space between them. “And because I want to know what sort of man you truly are underneath all those scowls of yours.”

She searched the weathered crags of his face, his every scar, his every line. She scoured every inch of his visage for any hint of even the smallest shred of remorse.

What she found was yet another frown.

“Why do you care?” the Crow growled.

“Because,” Seraphina tried to answer, but the sheer intensity of his gaze forced her to break eye contact first. She skimmed anotherglance about the forest and whispered, “Because I simply need to know.”

A sudden jerk on her mare’s reins sent Seraphina gasping as she lurched in her saddle. Her gaze snapped back to the Crow at once. She narrowed her eyes at him.

But he simply cocked his head and asked, “Is it a want or is it a need?”

She made a face. “What does it matter?”

“These are two very different things.”

Seraphina scoffed and tried to wrench her horse’s reins from the prince’s grip. But he held them firm within his iron grasp. “I am not going to sit out here in the middle of the woods and arguesemanticswith you. Unhand me,” she demanded.

“Not until you answer me,” the Crow snarled, his breath hot against her skin in the unnaturally cool air of the season. “What do you want from me? Why do you care what sort of man I am?”

“Because I need to know if you are my ally or my enemy,” Seraphina finally snapped, far more loudly than she had intended. In the wake of her shout, a flock of birds nesting in a nearby tree startled and burst into the air in a flurry of wings.

Likewise, the Crow showed more of a reaction to those words than she had as yet ever seen from him. His saddle creaked when he shifted his weight. His brow furrowed when he suddenly looked away.

She already knew what he was going to say before he even uttered the words.

“You truly are a kirei if you think I am your ally, Your Majesty,” the Crow rumbled beneath his breath. At last, he let her mare’s reins slip through his fingers.

Seraphina swallowed and gripped those reins all the more tightly as her mind raced. What was she supposed to say to that?

What was she supposed to do now?

Ever since that fateful day Alyx had first arrived in Goldreach bearing the dark news of Arath’s betrayal, Seraphina had begged the Lord on High for an answer. She had prayed for guidance as to just how she was to win this war and end the bloodshed.

But wasthisman truly it? Was Aldric Hargrave truly the way forward?

Or was he to be her ruin? The end of her—and the end of all things?

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