Page 54 of A War of Crowns

“There’s no need to beg me for anything, Your Majesty,” the stranger rumbled at last, breaking the silence which had fallen between them. His voice was deep and rough. Gravelly and unpleasant. If mountains could speak, they would possess such a voice.

Seraphina’s jaw nearly tumbled to the beach at his words.

The sound of another man chuckling lured her attention away from the little man and toward another fellow who lingered several paces behind the first. She blinked when she finally took note of him. Had he been standing there the entire time?

She hadn’t noticed.

But perhaps that was because the second man was rather average in size and monochrome in hue—the sort of man who could easily become lost in a crowd. His skin was bronze. His hair was bronze. And even his eyes were bronze, though with a canted quality tothem that put her in mind of Oracle Tsukiko and her Shield, Ichiro.

Was this new man part Kunishi?

Seraphina’s curiosity only lasted a moment, though. And then she remembered her previous indignation.

The little man had called her Your Majesty.He knew who she was. And yet he had not bowed. He had not apologized for grabbing her.

Her father would have had him flogged for such insolence.

Seraphina was just about to tell him as much when the rude man leaned to the side and glanced around her. His frown deepened at whatever it was he saw there. She followed his lead and tossed a look over her shoulder.

But she saw nothing at all.

“Where are your guards?” the man asked.

“Why is that any ofyourconcern?” she posed back with a lift of her chin.

But the little man did not relent. He but speared her with his one eye—dark and expressionless as it was—and observed, “You should not be wandering the beach alone.”

So many questions bubbled to the forefront of Seraphina’s mind, each one more desperate to be voiced than the last. The sheer clamor of it all left her paralyzed for a few moments before she finally decreed, “I am perfectly safe.”

What was there to fret about? Her Master of Ceremonies and Her Lord Constable, Sir Easome, had both ensured Nerina Reefwas fit for her arrival. All the pirates and the smugglers who had once made the island their port were surely gone by that point.

Were they not?

As if sensing her sudden shred of doubt, the strange man looked up at her and quietly asked, “Are you?”

A note of alarm trilled its way through her blood, sending her pulse to racing. She took another step back. “Is that a threat?” Seraphina whispered, though every fiber of her being told her to run. To scream.

The ship was still close. Her guards could be there in moments.

But would that be quick enough?

“Oh, no, Your Majesty,” the taller man said. He even had the decency to bow while he did so. “The Crow isn’t the sort of man to make threats, you’ll find.”

Time rattled to a halt. The wind stood still. All of Nerina Reef fell away, consumed in an instant by a ravenous darkness which roiled in from all sides.

She heard screams in the distance. She tasted ash on the air.

Seraphina recoiled from it all.No. She didn’t wish to See. She never wished to See again.

But it was too late. There it was—the strange crow. The gruesome, blood-drenched crow bound by chains.

The crow bearing only one eye.

“Who are you?” Seraphina demanded as the world came flooding back all at once. Time resumed. Her breath returned.

But the stranger did not answer.

Seraphina set her jaw and stepped toward the Crow. But where she advanced, he retreated, frowning all the while.

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