Serafina and the Splintered Heart: Chapters 20–30

The angles of her face, the movement of her body, and especially her spirit and mannerisms, were all different.

As Rowena stood up in anger, the air around her compressed and expanded violently, buffeting Serafina back.

Serafina thought about abandoning this idea of approaching Rowena and just skulking back to Biltmore and trying to make the best of her situation, but she hated the thought of it.

When she thought about Waysa, she remembered him looking straight through her like she didn’t even exist anymore. The world was wrecked. It broke her heart to think about enduring another night of this.

“Where do you come from?” Her voice was gentler now, almost kind, as if she’d enticed reluctant spirits from the shadows before.

“The cat!” Rowena hissed, her face blanching as she spun around and peered out into the forest.

“But you’re still here in this world,” Rowena said, her voice filled with uneasiness as she looked warily around her for signs of attack.

It doesn’t matter now, just the ramblings of a troubled soul, nothing of consequence.

Rowena seemed to have so much more knowledge than she did, so much more capability, and yet there was something about her…a hopelessness in her, a feeling of resignation, of giving up.

“A lot has happened since I fought against you,” Rowena said, her voice somber and weary. It was clear to Serafina that she, too, had suffered.

Her claws had slashed through the cloak’s fabric. It could no longer hold what it had captured. The ruptured cloak hurled the inner reaches of its dark void out into the world, and her soul with it.

The sorceress threw wicked spells, one barrage after another, that gashed Braeden’s face, tore at his legs, and threw him against a column.

She watched as he knelt beside the panther and put his hands on her sides, closing his eyes as he infused the cat with his healing power.

“I don’t know what to do, Serafina…” he said as he ripped his shirt apart and tried to stanch her bleeding with it.

The damaged Black Cloak had torn her asunder and flung her pieces out into the world.

“What I did is called scrying,” Rowena said. “It provides a vision of past events, a glimpse into the thread.”

There was something in the look behind Braeden’s eyes that she could not quite fathom, not just the sadness and detachment that she’d seen, but as if he was going through the motions of his life, biding his time, waiting to get to what was important.

She had already read many of the epitaphs chiseled in block letters on these gravestones, and she had no desire to do it again tonight, but as she moved among them, the voices of the dead came alive.

Serafina knew he was scared of what anyone would be scared of digging up a grave, that he’d find her grotesque, putrefied body.

Serafina could tell by the horrified look on Braeden’s face that he didn’t think he was prepared to see what he was about to see. And yet, at the same time, there was something tearing at him, some macabre curiosity, some overwhelming desire for Gidean to keep going.

Braeden looked up at the angel again and spoke to her as if she was not only a living, sentient being but a true friend.

Her restless spirit had crawled out of the grave, carrying with it all the trappings and constraints she remembered of the physical world—the steadiness of the earth, the challenges of physical obstructions, the essence of sight and sound and feeling, pain and hunger and sleep.

For months, Braeden had been pushing his dog away, ashamed of the boy he had become, but now the rift between them seemed as if it was beginning to heal.

They could see thousands of points of light splayed above them, clusters of many stars, Saturn and Mars and Jupiter glowing in all their glory, and the bright swath of the Milky Way galaxy splashed across the glistening heavens.

“That’s all that’s left of her,” Braeden said despondently, pointing at the body in the grave.

“We stay bold, my friend, that’s what we do,” Waysa said. “We fight.”
“Even if we’ve already lost the battle?” Braeden asked in dismay.

“You tried to kill me!”
“Yes, I did,” she said, almost nonchalantly.

Rowena’s goats bleated as they scurried around the lair in terror.

For all her ability to cast spells and change shape, it appeared there were some scars that even a creature of her ilk could not heal.

Before the next attack came, she scrambled to her cache of potions.

Going into the part of her lair that was still intact, she opened a vial and started rubbing a viscous gray mud onto her burned arms and legs, wincing and gritting her teeth against the pain.

Rowena did not wallow in fear and misery.

She pressed her fingers onto her cheeks, wiping in a hard, steady motion, changing the contour of her face as she went.

It was as if Serafina was looking into a mirror, but the girl who was looking back at her was far more beautiful and alluring than she was.

But in the early-morning hours a thick cloud of mist lingered in the mountain valleys and floated along the ridges, drifting slowly, white and eerie, through the trees, obscuring Rowena’s path.

She emerged from the forest trees near the statue of Diana, goddess of the hunt, atop the hill that provided the most dramatic view of Biltmore’s front facade.

It looked like a carriage, with four spoked wheels, lacquered wood sides, and four passengers sitting on tufted leather seats, but it appeared to be moving by its own magical power.

It took Serafina several seconds to realize that it wasn’t her enemy’s dark magic, but some sort of newfangled machine.

The gentleman inside exited first, then offered his hand to help the lady as she alighted in her voluminous gown, carefully navigating the tiny carriage steps in her sparkling shoes.

Still on the lookout for Rowena, Serafina slipped through the line of carriages, up through the congestion of four-legged hoof stompers, top-hatted coachmen, and glittering ladies.