Page 30 of A War of Crowns

But he couldn’t leave. He couldn’t just abandon Mysai, not when the people still fighting within needed him the most.

Not when there was any hope at all his brother might yet still be alive inside.

Chapter eight

Seraphina

Two weeks.

It had been two weeks since last she'd received a report from Mysai. None of the usuri they sent demanding news from the fort returned. Only silence seemed to await them across the Straight.

“You’re going to make your fingers bleed again,” Duchess Edith warned under her breath, snapping Seraphina back to the present. There she sat in the royal library, chewing her fingernails again.

What was left of them, at any rate.

Seraphina stopped at once and dropped her hand back to her lap. She pasted on a smile. Across from her sat Olivia and Sir Tristan. Both watched her with entirely too keen an interest.

Though the knight had originally suggested he and Olivia play a game of Sovereign when he first joined their table, her dear friend had declined and insisted she wished to play againstherinstead.

Seraphina’s eyes skimmed the cards she held in her left hand. It was a decent hand. She could easily win.

But her heart was no longer in the game.

“It’s your turn, Your Majesty,” Olivia reminded her.

Seraphina laid her entire hand of cards facedown on the table and slid them toward Sir Tristan. “Tristan will finish the game for me.”

Those words caused the knight’s face to brighten.

But Olivia frowned. “Where are you going?”

“I wish to find a map of the Straight,” Seraphina explained. When Olivia rose from her seat, she frowned at the other woman. “Stay,” she ordered, earning for herself an even more sour look from her oldest friend. “And finish your game of cards. I’ll only be a moment.”

Laying her hand atop her godmother’s shoulder, Seraphina added in a stage whisper, “You must stay as well and chaperone these two for me, Your Grace, while I find my map.”

Though Sir Tristan ducked his head and cleared his throat, suddenly devoting the entirety of his attention to studying the cards now gripped in his hands, Olivia stared up at her. Her friend’s eyes were like twin amber daggers, promising revenge at the earliest opportunity.

Seraphina presented a sweet smile.

Chuckling, Duchess Edith patted her hand and promised, “I will stay right here and ensure nothing untoward happens, Your Majesty.”

“You two are utterly ridiculous,” Olivia complained as she unhooked her flask from her belt. She took a swig. “I canhearyou, you know.”

But Seraphina was already off, threading her way down an aisle between two bookcases. If Drakmor was going to continue to ignore her missives, then she would just have to settle for inviting His Majesty to an in-person meeting.

But justwherethey could meet was the ultimate question.

She had no desire to sail all the way to Drakmor, just as she knew the king would have no desire to sail all the way to Elmoria. Which left precisely one option available to them.

Nerina Reef—the deserted island their two kingdoms had both claimed for their own since the days of the Great Conquest.

Alyx made for a comforting weight about her shoulders while she walked. By the time she made it halfway through the first aisle of books, though, the winged serpent’s contented purrs shifted to a warning hiss.

Seraphina turned, prepared to chastise Olivia for fleeing from Sir Tristan yet again. But it wasn’t Olivia stalking her through the library. It was Lord Tiberius.

Her stomach fluttered the moment he offered her one of his bright smiles.

“You’ve been avoiding me all week,” the baron accused as he drew in close. “So I finally thought to just come find you myself.”

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