TVisTV Book 3: Chapter 45 (RAW) (Patreon)

Chapter 45- A Stage for a Reckoning

“There’s a sin , a fearful sin, resting on this nation, that will not go unpunished forever. There will be a reckoning yet… it may be soon or it may be later, but it’s coming as sure as the lord is just”

- Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave.

She woke with the taste of stale sleep on her tongue and the weight of plate and mail still clinging to her as if the armor had grown roots in her flesh. Something soft cradled the back of her skull—a lap padded with silk and patience. The air inside the tent was warm and close, thick with her mother’s perfume. Somewhere beyond the canvas, a horse stamped and snorted, and a kettle began to sing its thin, hungry song.

When Seraphina’s eyes fluttered open, the first thing she saw was a face.

Older and infinitely more composed.

It was like looking into a polished mirror that had learned to lie. The same pale hair, the same cut of cheekbone, the same aristocrat’s mouth meant to issue commands and hide them in courtesy. Only the eyes were different—because time had sharpened them and power had filled them. Her mother’s gaze rested on her with a brightness that might have been amusement, might have been appetite, might have been both. There was glee there, wanton and unashamed, as if Seraphina’s discomfort were a private jest being savored.

Heavy was the crown of deception on Seraphina’s neck. She could feel it even lying there, that invisible circlet of secrets. Anaselena expected something. More than that—Anaselena knew. The girl could see it in the slow certainty of her breathing, in the stillness of her hands, in the way her smile never quite reached her eyes. 

“You obey,” her mother said softly, “yet you disobey, daughter of mine… and you think you have won some small victory?”

The words were gentle, almost tender. The meaning was not.

Her fingers stroked Seraphina’s. A gesture that was all at once affectionate, possessive, and unarguable. “You have only made things more difficult for yourself. But then, again, that has always been your habit. Rebelling against those wiser than yourself, a common curse of the young.”

Seraphina’s throat was dry. She forced herself upright, groggy and ungraceful, the joints of her armor complaining as she shifted from her mother’s lap. She rose to her feet and found her balance as best she could, fists curling at her sides until her gauntlets creaked. 

The battle was far from over. It had merely changed weapons.

“Darling,” Anaselena called out, voice clear as a drawn blade, “we are leaving.”

The world moved as if in answer to her call; a moment later, the flap rustled, and Seraphina’s father stepped in. 

“We are, my love? I have just talked to the quartermaster, we have enough supplies for a good few more months…” he asked, the question already a concession. His brow furrowed, confusion playing at the edges of his face like a child tugging on a sleeve.

Her mother smiled at her father. “Yes, it seems our daughter has failed to perform correctly.”

Seraphina felt the heat of humiliation rise behind her eyes and forced it down. Tears were the currency of weakness, and she would not pay her mother with them.

“Ana…” Anatoli began, that weary softness in him that Seraphina both loved and hated. The real Seraphina. “Really, we can’t just—”

“But we can,” Anaselena cut in, smiling. The smile thinned by a hair. “And we must. Our daughter has made our position here quite untenable. She has, as usual, underdelivered.”

Under delivered. Words that spoke of a disappointment so profound it bordered on primal. She clenched her fists harder at her sides.

“I am sure dear Sera did her best,” the duke said quickly, as if best were a shield that might turn aside current perceived failures.

“And since when was it good enough to merely try, my darling heart?” Anaselena sighed long and languid, the sound of a woman burdened. 

She reached up and patted Anatoli’s cheek with the same ease she used on Seraphina, a practiced tenderness that was all ownership and no mercy. “You need to shave again,” she added, almost conversational. “I do not like beards.”

“Yes, yes, I will,” Anatoli said at once, not unkindly. “But we simply cannot just leave. Why the insult is…”

Anaselena’s face shifted, not into anger, but into something sterner and colder. Seraphina thought of statues in the old chapel back home in her Korea, pale marble saints with perfect mouths and empty eyes, carved to look serene while they watched men burn. Her mother wore that same serenity now.

“And that,” she said, “is why Seraphina will deliver our apology… and receive the King’s apology in turn. That will be the way of things.”

The way of things. As if the world itself were arranged for her convenience.

“You have seen this?” Anatoli asked, and for a heartbeat, there was real fear on his face. It was honest and almost ugly in its sincerity. “Will Sera be quite safe?”

“Oh, she will be quite safe,” Anaselena spoke with the calm of someone arranging a seating chart. “Safer, in fact, than if we stayed camped outside these walls like beggars hoping for scraps of notice.” Her eyes flicked to Seraphina, bright and cruelly attentive. “It seems she has made friends with the Church, of all things.”

Seraphina’s stomach tightened. Friends was not the word she would have used. Allies were forged and temporary at best; friends were a luxury.

“Well,” Anaselena went on, lightly, “daughter, it appears you have fulfilled your honorable promise…” The emphasis on honorable made it sound like an accusation. “…and so it falls to you to deliver the formal dissolution of your betrothal to the King. Do you understand?”

Do you understand? Not will you—as if Seraphina’s will mattered. Each word landed like a small barb, designed not to kill but to irritate, to fester, to remind her where she stood. 

“Is that altogether wise, my love?” Anatoli ventured, the protest small as a candle against the wind. “The King… they say he is not quite well with all of the recent purges of witches…”

“Only the poor are called witches and warlocks, my baby bear,” Anaselena replied, and the pet name made the words more cutting, not less. She patted his cheek again, possessive as a cat. “We are certainly not from that social stratum.”

It was such a neat cruelty, dismissing terror and mass death as something that happened to other people. The shield of the truly privileged

“And besides,” Anaselena added, “this is what our darling Sera wanted all along. A chance to play peacemaker, and who are we to deny her that?”

Seraphina held her tongue. She could feel the trap in those words, every word a tooth biting into her plans.

“Well,” Anatoli said, glancing at Seraphina with an appeal he did not know how to voice, “if that is what Sera wants…”

“It is,” Anaselena said sweetly, and her sweetness had sharp teeth. The smile she gave her husband promised warmth if he obeyed and cold if he did not. “It is, my dear. So let us return to our lands. It has been rather taxing, this little picnic outside the capital, without actually enjoying the capital.”

A picnic. Seraphina almost laughed and almost choked on it. The arrogance of the character that was Anaselena de Sariens truly knew no bounds.

Anaselena crossed the small space between them with unhurried grace and came to stand before Seraphina, her gaze serene.

“Well then, Sera,” she intoned, holding her daughter’s shoulders. “You will do what you have to do. And you will try not to stain our family name any further with your groveling to the father of that insulting boy Velens, our so-called King.”

Velens. The name dropped like a stone into a well with no water. Yet, for all of that, it still hurt when it hit the bottom.

“You always did have a knack for cleaning up his messes,” Anaselena continued, mild as milk. “In that regard… one might even call you a saint.”

There was venom there, just the faintest dash. The young girl’s mind scrambled for a reply sharp enough to cut, clever enough to sting. She had wit. She had intelligence. Yet in this contest, she could not find the blade she needed.

Because it was not a contest, it was a sentence being read aloud.

Seraphina could do nothing, could say nothing. And so, she smoothed her expression into softness she did not feel. The girl stood still as Anaselena leaned in and kissed her forehead. The gesture might have been tenderness, if tenderness had not been used as a collar.

When her mother stepped back, Seraphina could still feel the press of that kiss like a seal stamped into wax.

Outside, the kettle’s thin song rose higher, and somewhere in the camp a man shouted for the horses.

***

The Church was placated, the situation apparently resolved thanks to Seraphina’s mercy. All that remained was to pay the piper’s due: to deliver, in effect, the de Sariens’ acquiescence. But Seraphina would make sure the King understood he had made no friends, and that there would be a price for so-called surrender.

Looking back, she watched men begin the long, punishing work of breaking down a great host, a process she knew would eat most of the day. The army was not a thing that simply vanished; it had to be unstitched, piece by piece. Pikes stacked, shields nested, tents collapsed into sodden bundles. Horses steamed in the cold, flanks slick, tack clattering as grooms wrestled straps and buckles with raw, reddened hands. The soldiers moved like ants over a carcass, quick and tireless, faces set in stern cast that spoke of hardened men. Likewise, the Church, seeing that her father, Lord Duke Anatoli de Sariens, was truly withdrawing, was also preparing to leave. It was a victory of sorts, purchased at the cost of one of Seraphina’s strongest cards.

She and her more martially inclined companions were mounted now: Gravens and Frest in half-plate on destriers, polished to a mirror sheen, and Desdemona in a light red dress of autumnal hue on a palfrey that picked its way with delicate, nervous steps. Seraphina had Eloise escorted back to the Meridian by the rest of her knights, despite her protests, with Miriam alongside her. Seraphina did not think a Palisa slug, pyres, and burning wood made for a wise combination. And, she would not risk Eloise’s safety in the capital. It was a balanced group, strong enough to show force, small enough to retreat in haste, or melt into the streets of the capital if required.

The next part would be intriguing: passing through the city’s main gates as the daughter of the man who had parked an army outside its walls. Seraphina drew glances, she knew, more than usual. Aranthia was a warlike country, but even so it was rare to see a woman, let alone a young girl, clad in the full accoutrements of war atop a warhorse. It was a statement made in leather and steel, in posture and silence. Her armor creaked with each shift of the saddle. The horse beneath her carried the smell of sweat and iron, and the faint sour sting of fear that no amount of discipline ever fully masked.

As her party approached, the guards, despite outnumbering her escort by a score, gripped their weapons that little bit tighter. Leather groaned under clenched fists. Spears dipped, then steadied. Their eyes hardened, not with courage so much as with a weariness born from having to deal with something well above their station. These were the gatekeepers of a city that had all but tasted a siege.

She decided to let Frest handle this. Delegation, after all, was an important part of leadership.

The former-bandit-turned-knight rode up to the worn and worried, yet disciplined guards. Their mail hung heavy, their surcoats stained at the hems, boots crusted with old mud and something darker that did not wash out. Words were exchanged. Fingers pointed in Seraphina’s direction, quick and sharp. Gold could not solve this problem, but the authority of her station could. To refuse entry threatened to upend the fragile calm that had just been bought with bloodless concessions. Like all things, it was still a dance: to be seen neither as aggressor nor supplicant, neither threat nor prey.

Clearing the gates, Seraphina’s party rode down the main thoroughfare of a capital gripped by fear. The street was broad, meant for processions and celebration, but now it felt like a corridor through a sickhouse. Shopfronts stood half-shuttered. Faces watched from gaps in doors and from windows smeared with soot. The air was thick with smoke, perfumed and cloying, and it sat on the tongue like sweet rot. It rose from pyres that burned more than mages alone. The King had not been idle in his purge, in his madness, finding those he deemed traitors in every shadow. You could feel it in the way people flinched at hoofbeats, in the way they looked away too quickly, as if eye contact alone could be taken for confession.

Why was Seraphina coming here? Was it pride? Heroism? No. It was to open the next chapter this game seemed hellbent on forcing her into, but on her terms. If the board demanded a move, she would choose where the piece landed, even if the square was soaked through. She wanted this over.

And now the Royal Palace loomed before her. Not the military fist that was Castle Aran above the cliffs overlooking the coast, but this newer seat in the city’s heart, another fortress wearing the manners of a home. It was ostensibly meant for a monarch’s siblings, yet the King, it seemed, had decided to take it for himself now that his brother was long dead. Seraphina had been here many times before, at least some version of her had in memory. It had once been a place of light and laughter, marble bright as milk, banners clean and proud, fountains running clear. Now soot stained its facade in ugly streaks, as if the building itself had been struck and bruised. The courtyard fires still burned, sending up greasy coils that blackened the pale stone. The air around the palace tasted of pitch and scorched wood, and beneath it all was the faint, unmistakable hint of char that no incense could fully smother. 

It was rather a most unwelcome sight.