Page 8 of A War of Crowns

Her people weredying,a fact which hammered at her conscience day and night—a staccato reminder of all the lives lost since Arath had first rained fire down upon Fort Mysai four months ago.

She didn’t have an exact number of the lives lost. Such a sum would be impossible to calculate.

And yet here sat her War Council, bickering like a pack of schoolboys after the Duke of Coreto had incited yet another argument amongst them. Her eyes skimmed across the lot of them, these councilors of hers—minus her Spymaster, who was conspicuously absent thatmorning.

But there the rest of them sat, arguing over logistics, resources, and strategy while her people in Mysai suffered.

“We should just leave Mysai to the Arathian vultures,” Coreto insisted yet again with a sneer. “It is not worth the manpower and resources we have expended already to hold it further.”

Seraphina pressed her lips into a thin line before asking, “You would suggest we abandon our people and simply leave them there todie, Your Grace?”

Coreto’s icy eyes snapped her way when the older man answered without pause, “I would suggest we cut our losses now, yes.”

Losses. The very word was like ash on her tongue.

Since when could a human life be weighed like gold?

“Don’t listen to him, Your Majesty,” her Lord Constable, Sir Easome, interjected. “If we lose Mysai now, who knows what we might lose next?” The gray-haired knight shook his head. “We can’tafford to show such weakness to those Arathian devils. Not now. Not with your reign so new.”

Coreto barked out a laugh. “Are you truly suggesting Arath would be so bold as to invade our shores? With what ships? They are a desert nation, Easome.”

But Sir Easome ignored the Duke of Coreto. His eyes remained on her when he growled, “Perhaps the duke is so eager to see us withdraw from Mysai because he sympathizes with the desert witches?”

Seraphina heard her godfather, Percival Umberly—the Duke of Varoa and Lord Chancellor of the Realm—suck in a breath from his place seated at her right.

Beside him, her godmother, Edith Umberly, attempted to interject, “There is no need to resort to such insults—”

But Coreto simply spoke over her to coldly ask, “You would dare question my family’s loyalty to my face?”

Sir Easome immediately lobbed back, “I would question why the only witch worshiper in the room would suggest we concede Mysai to the witches, yes.”

Father would never have lost control of his council like this.

That familiar sense of inadequacy pooled within Seraphina’s stomach while she but watched—an outsider within her own council chamber. What didsheknow of war? What did she know about ruling a kingdom?

Nothing. She knew nothing.

No one had prepared for this.

Seraphina lifted her voice and sliced through the growing tension with a decree of, “No one will be questioning anyone’s loyalty here at this table—”

But the Duke of Coreto was already on his feet and shouting over her words, “This insult willnotbe borne.”

For the briefest of moments, Seraphina saw her father’s face swim to the forefront of her thoughts. How pale he had looked in the wake of her older brother’s death. How weak.

As if someone had just pricked him with a needle and drained all the life he had left from his body.

Though she desperately tried to root herself in the moment, to fix her attention upon the words being spoken right then and there at the half-circle table dominating her council chamber, her mindcareened elsewhere against her will. To another time. To other words that had cut her so deeply then.

That cut her so deeply still.

“You will spell the end of House de la Croix andall that my forefathers worked for. Our royal line will die withyou.”

Seraphina squeezed her eyes shut and bowed her head.Outwardly, she no doubt appeared to be indulging in an impromptu moment of prayer. Inwardly, she tried to claw her way back to the present.

No, she commanded her wayward thoughts even as they replayed for perhaps the ten thousandth time everything she wished she had said to her father in reply.

Not now.

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