Page 147 of A War of Crowns

But what about the Arathian troops in Arlund?

What about her vision?

“Let him go, darling,” Duchess Edith whispered. “We’ll find another way. There’s always another way.”

“No,” Seraphina exhaled as she shoved herself to her feet, her body shaking. Though the wound swiped across her stomach had seemed to improve in the wake of her own Truth-Reading, she still felt weak.

Tired.

But she had to do something. This was wrong. All of it was wrong. She couldn’t just let him leave.

She couldn’t let it end this way.

“Stop!” she cried out again. “Aldric Hargrave, I forbid you from leaving this room.” Those words were met with just as much of a reaction from the Drakmori prince as her last had been, though.

None at all.

Time seemed to slow in the moments that followed. The walls of the throne room pressed in close. The air shifted. She smelled ash on an unseen wind.

It was coming.

The vision was coming.

“Please, no,” she whispered to no one in particular. Not now. She couldn’t stand to watch it again now. The end of all things. The streets filled with bodies.

The blood. The smoke. The darkness.

But the vision did not listen. It never did.

It swept over her, consuming all in its path. The throne room fell away. Her godparents melted into nothing. Olivia was nowhere tobe seen. Sir Tristan was gone. Her guards were gone. The Twelve Sons vanished while she watched.

There she stood on blackened sands as the stars fell from the heavens. At her feet, the one-eyed crow lay dead in its chains. At the sight, a great dread crawled its way up her spine. She knew in her heart all was lost in that moment.

She didn’t know how she knew. But it was done.

It was over.

She had failed.

“Aldric,” she whispered while that great darkness swept across the land, devouring everything it touched.

Screams echoed on the wind.

Smoke billowed across the midnight sky.

“Aldric, please.” Fingers shaking, Seraphina stretched out a hand toward the dead crow. Perhaps if she could justreachhim, perhaps if she could touch him, she could undo what was done.

Perhaps she could free him from his chains at last.

But the corpse of the crow crumbled into ash before her fingers could ever touch its bloodied feathers. It was gone.

A rumble of thunder cracked across the world, bringing with it an ominous peal of laughter that echoed from the darkness surging ever closer. The sound chilled her to her core.

She had truly failed without even having learned what it was she was supposed to do in the first place.

What strength was left in her legs gave way and Seraphina fell to her knees on the ebon sands. Wind howled. The crow’s abandoned chains clattered against one other within that gale.

She bowed her head against the rising storm and waited for the darkness to finally consume her. Any moment now, it would wash over her and swallow her whole.

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