Chapter 55: The Bloodied Inheritance
The Fell Pass didn’t just look dead; it felt gutted. The wind scouring the narrow ledge was a thief, stealing warmth and sound and hope in equal measure. It whistled through stone teeth that looked chewed rather than weathered. Seraphina clutched the reins, her knuckles white, Kya a small, trembling anchor against her chest. Ahead, Callum led on a sure-footed gelding, Leo’s arms locked around his waist. Behind, Vincent brought up the rear, Mia dozing fitfully against him despite the jarring pace.
They’d been climbing for two hours. The baying of the hounds had faded, swallowed by the vast, hungry silence of the mountains, but the absence of sound was somehow worse. It meant the hunters were close enough to move quietly.
“Hold up,” Vincent called, his voice clipped. He dismounted, handing a sleeping Mia down to Seraphina before pressing his ear to the cold stone of the pass wall. His face, illuminated by a sliver of moon escaping the clouds, was all sharp angles and grim focus.
“What is it?” Callum whispered, drawing his horse around.
“Hooves. On the lower switchback. Shod, not ours. They’ve found the trail.”
Seraphina’s blood turned to ice water. The children felt her stiffen. Kya looked up, her eyes wide and too old for her face. “The bad men with the dogs?”
“Different bad men, sweetheart,” Callum said, his tone deceptively light. He swung down, gesturing for Leo to stay put. “Probably think they’re getting a bonus for bringing us in. Let’s not make it easy for them.”
The path here was a cruel joke—a ledge barely wide enough for the horses single-file, with a sheer drop on one side and a concave wall of slick, black rock on the other. No cover. Nowhere to run.
Vincent pointed with his chin ahead, to where the pass kinked around a massive, tooth-like boulder that had fallen from the heights eons ago. “That bend. We can’t defend this. We need to get around that, find a choke point.”
They urged the weary horses forward, the animals’ shoes slipping on the damp stone. Every scuff echoed like a declaration. Seraphina could feel the wrongness of the place seeping into her bones, a dull counterpoint to the frantic drum of her heart. It was like the blight at the manor, but older, deeper—not a sickness, but a scar.
They rounded the boulder. The path didn’t improve. It narrowed further.
“Brilliant,” Callum muttered, staring at the treacherous stretch ahead. “Vin, take the kids and Sera. Go. I’ll bottleneck them here.”
“Don’t be an idiot. One man against a company? You’ll just die theatrically.”
“I’ll die slowly. That’s the point. Give you time.”
Their eyes locked in a familiar, furious argument. Seraphina dismounted, setting Mia down beside a shivering Kya. She stepped between them, her voice low. “No one is dying theatrically. There has to be another way.”
“There isn’t,” they said in unison, their temporary unity almost funny.
The sound of approaching hooves was distinct now. A laugh, crude and carrying, bounced off the stone. “Think they’re up in the rocks, Captain! Smell that fear!”
Vincent’s hand shot out and closed around Seraphina’s wrist. He pulled her roughly behind the shelter of the giant boulder, out of sight of the approaching ledge. The children huddled at their feet. Callum remained in the open, his hand resting casually on his sword hilt, a reckless silhouette against the grey sky.
“What are you doing?” Seraphina hissed.
Vincent’s gaze was locked on Callum, but his words were for her, rapid and low. “The ledgers from Blackwood. The early ones, from Silks. I’ve been piecing it together. The timeline.”
“What timeline?”
“Your mother. Lady Elara. She was taken from the Archduke’s estate when you were four. The ledgers mention a ‘high-born breeding pair, the female with progeny.’ It lists two children.”
The world tilted. The howling wind faded to a dull roar in her ears. “Two?”
“A girl of four. And an infant, unspecified. The entries stop for that ‘pair’ after a few months. Then there’s only you.”
Seraphina shook her head, the motion jerky. “No. She miscarried. At Blackwood. Just after we arrived. I was with her… it’s one of my first clear memories there. The straw. So much blood.” The metallic scent of it seemed to flood her nostrils even now, twenty years later. “There was no baby.”
“Are you certain?” Vincent’s eyes finally cut to hers, piercing. “Could a four-year-old, terrified, in a new hell, tell the difference between a miscarriage and a live birth? Especially if the child was taken immediately?”
The question was a physical blow. She saw it again: the dark, crowded stall, her mother’s terrible silence, the blood-smeared woman called Gratha bustling in, bundling something in rags. She’d thought it was… waste. Something to be discarded. Her mother had turned her face to the wall and hadn’t spoken for days.
“They took it,” she whispered, the truth solidifying like a spike of ice in her gut. “They took a baby.”
Callum’s voice, loud and dripping with false bravado, sliced through the night. “Evening, gentlemen! Bit late for a mountain stroll, isn’t it?”
A horse snorted. The sound of weapons being drawn was a raspy chorus. “Prince Callum,” a new voice drawled—the Captain. “The Inquisitor will be pleased. He does so love a family reunion.”
“I’m not his family. I’m the regrettable draft that keeps blowing out his ceremonial candles.”
“Witty. Where’s the woman? The heir?”
“What heir? You seen an heiress? All I see is rock and bad decisions wearing uniforms.”
Seraphina pressed her back against the cold stone, Vincent’s arm now a bar in front of her, holding her in the shadow. She could hear the smile in Callum’s voice, the calculated provocation. He was buying seconds. Vincent’s revelation was burning a hole through her concentration.
A second heir. A sibling. Lost in the machine of Blackwood. Sold, or… worse. The implications swarmed, dark and venomous.
“Take him,” the Captain ordered.
The clash of steel was immediate, a sharp, ringing cacophony that violated the pass’s sepulchral quiet. Seraphina jerked against Vincent’s hold. “Callum!”
“He knew the play,” Vincent ground out, but his face was pale. He peered around the edge of the boulder. “He’s holding the ledge. They can only come at him one at a time.”
It was a brutal, efficient form of suicide. Callum stood where the path was narrowest, his sword a gleaming extension of his will. He cut down the first guard who lunged, shoving the body over the edge. The scream was short, ended by a distant, wet crack. The second came more cautiously. Callum was a whirlwind of controlled violence, parrying a thrust, kicking a knee, his dagger finding a gap in armor. But a third was already pushing past the second’s falling body. And a fourth waited behind.
He couldn’t keep this up. The math was simple and cruel.
The wrongness of the mountain pressed in on Seraphina, a suffocating blanket. It was in the moss, in the water seeping from the rock, in the very air. It was a scar of old, deep magic, a place that had been hurt. Her panic, her grief for a father just lost, her terror for the man currently fighting and for a sibling she never knew—it churned inside her, a storm seeking ground.
Kya whimpered, pressing her hands over her ears. “It’s too loud, Mama. The mountain is sad.”
The mountain was sad.
The understanding was instant and instinctual. Seraphina dropped to her knees, shoving her bare hands against the damp, moss-covered stone of the pass floor. She didn’t reach for the dagger’s quiet. She let the scream in.
She poured every ounce of her terror for Callum, her fury at the hunters, her desolate grief for her mother and the stolen child, into that point of contact. She didn’t command. She shared.
The mountain reacted.
Not with violence, but with a profound, shuddering sigh. A deep, subsonic groan traveled up through the stone into their bones. The ledge beneath the feet of the advancing guards rippled. It wasn’t an earthquake. It was a recoil, a flinch of pain made manifest.
A web of hairline fractures shot across the path where they stood. The guards stumbled, their formation breaking. One cried out as his foot sank into a suddenly soft-seeming patch of gravel and stone. It wasn’t an opening for attack; it was the landscape itself rejecting their weight.
Callum, braced and expecting solid ground, used the moment of their confusion. He feinted high, then dropped, sweeping his blade in a low arc across the lead guard’s ankles. The man toppled with a shout, colliding with the man behind him.
But the Captain, hanging back, had seen. His eyes weren’t on Callum. They were fixed on the boulder, on the faint glimmer of movement in the shadows. “The witch is here! She’s doing this! Archers!”
Two men at the rear nocked arrows.
Vincent moved. He shoved Seraphina back down behind cover, stepping clear into the open himself, his sword raised. “You don’t want to do that. Your Inquisitor wants her alive, remember? The Emperor wants her. You kill her, and your fate will make falling off this cliff look like a sweet release.”
He was buying time again, playing the diplomat with steel in his hand. An archer hesitated.
The Captain snarled. “I want the Prince down. Now! Kill him!”
The guard facing Callum, newly wary of the ground, lunged in a desperate, wild swing. Callum parried, but his boot slid on the fractured stone. He staggered, his balance gone for one critical second. The guard saw his chance, raising his blade for a killing overhead chop.
A small, fierce cry split the air.
A vine of thorny mountain bramble, dead and brittle-looking, uncoiled from a crack in the wall above the guard’s head. It didn’t lash. It fell, a dry, tangled net, directly onto the man’s face and helm. He choked, blinded, his swing going wild and clanging harmlessly against the rock.
Callum didn’t question it. He regained his footing and ran the man through.
Everyone froze. The guards stared at the dead man entangled in inexplicably mobile brambles. The Captain’s face was a mask of superstitious fear.
Behind the boulder, Seraphina was clutching Kya, whose eyes were squeezed shut, tears tracking through the grime on her cheeks. “I made the angry plant help,” the girl whispered, trembling. “It didn’t want to, but it was sorry for the mountain.”
Seraphina held her daughter tight, awe and terror warring within her. Kya was already able to do at nine what she had only just learned to manifest at twenty-four. “Good job, Kya. But save your strength, okay? That probably took a lot out of you.” She stroked her hair, whispering softly, feeling rather drained herself.
She stroked her hair, whispering softly, feeling rather drained herself. The unnatural stillness that followed Kya’s intervention was more frightening than the clash of steel. Up on the ledge, Callum wiped his blade clean on a dead man’s tabard, his eyes scanning the remaining hunters. There were five left, including the Captain, all now hesitant, their confidence shattered by stone that moved and dead vines that attacked.
“Witchcraft,” one guard breathed, making a warding sign with his free hand.
“It’s rockslides and bad luck, you superstitious fool,” the Captain snapped, but he didn’t sound convinced. He pointed his sword at Callum. “You’re still just one man.”
“And you’re standing on a very unhappy mountain,” Callum called back, his voice echoing faintly. He took a deliberate step back, widening the gap between them. “Seems like a poor tactical position, frankly.”
Vincent seized the moment of distraction. He grasped Seraphina’s shoulder, his touch firm. “We go. Now. While they’re arguing about theology.” He herded the children toward the horses, his movements quick and efficient. Mia was crying silently, huge tears tracking through the dust on her cheeks. Leo was statue-still, his small hand gripping the saddle leather as if it were a lifeline. Kya looked back once more, and the path where the hunters stood suddenly fell away. Leaving no way of the soldiers approaching further. Callum backed up until he was behind the rock, safe and sound.
Seraphina forced her legs to move, the revelation about a sibling a cold, heavy stone in her belly. She helped boost Kya up, then swung into the saddle behind her. “What if it’s true?” she murmured, the words ripped away by the wind. “What if they’re out there?”
Vincent mounted behind Mia, his face a closed door. “Then we find them. After we survive the next hour.”They urged the horses into a risky trot on the treacherous path, the animals snorting in protest. Behind them, they heard the Captain’s roar of frustration, followed by the order to advance. The hunt was back on, but the hunters’ pace was wary, chastened.
The pass wound upward, the air growing thinner and colder. The scent of damp earth and wrongness intensified, clinging to the back of the throat. The ledge finally opened onto a broader, sloping shelf littered with the skeletal remains of ancient pines, their white wood gleaming like bone in the moonlight. It wasn’t safety, but it was space to breathe.
“Dismount,” Callum ordered, sliding off his horse and helping Leo down. He was breathing heavily, a fresh cut bleeding sluggishly along his ribs. “We can’t outrun them on horses up here. They know the terrain better.”
“So we make a stand here?” Vincent asked, scanning the scree-filled slope above them. It was a better defensive position than the ledge, but still dire.
“We give them a reason not to follow.” Callum’s gaze landed on a precariously balanced slab of rock near the path’s entrance to the shelf. It was the size of a cart, held in place by a fragile cradle of smaller stones and rotten roots. A calculated push could send it down, sealing the route behind them. Or bringing the whole mountainside down on their heads.
He moved toward it without explanation.
“Callum, no,” Seraphina said, understanding dawning. “That’s not a reason, that’s a gamble.”
“My favorite kind.” He started digging his fingers into the dirt around the base slab, testing its stability. “Unless you and Kya want to have another heart-to-heart with the geology?”
The sound of approaching hooves became distinct again, a relentless tattoo. Vincent cursed, low and vehement. He positioned himself between the children and the path, sword ready. “Make it quick, then. Or don’t. But decide.”
Seraphina joined Callum at the rock. The wrongness here was a palpable hum in the stone, a chronic ache. She placed her hands on the cold surface, not to push, but to listen. The mountain’s pain was a vast, lonely song of fracture and erosion. She poured a different feeling into it—urgency, a plea for a single, specific release. Not an attack. A suggestion.
The rotten roots holding the slab groaned.
“That’s it,” Callum gritted out, bracing his shoulder against the rock. “Now, a little muscle, darling. For dramatic effect.”
Together, they pushed. The slab shifted with a grating shriek of stone on stone. For a terrifying second, nothing happened. Then, with a sound like a deep sigh, the cradle of smaller rocks gave way.
The slab tilted, then fell, gaining momentum as it crashed down the entrance path. It didn’t just block it; it triggered a secondary cascade of shale and debris, a roaring, dust-choked avalanche that filled the air with the smell of pulverized stone and ancient damp. The sound of the hunters’ advance was utterly swallowed by the landslide’s thunder.
When the dust settled, the path behind them was gone, replaced by a fresh, steep slope of loose scree. Silence returned, deeper and more complete than before.
Leo let out a shaky, awe-filled breath. “Whoa.”
Callum slumped against a petrified log, pressing a hand to his bleeding side. He looked at Seraphina, a tired, genuine smile touching his lips. “Teamwork.”
Vincent didn’t relax. He was staring at the newly-made rubble slope, his head cocked. “They’ll find another way. Or go around. We’ve bought minutes, not a reprieve.” He turned, his eyes finding Seraphina’s. “We need to keep moving. Silverwood is still two days’ hard ride through the lower valleys. We need to be under my father’s roof before that Inquisitor catches his breath.”
The name ‘Silverwood’ landed like a blow. The first stop in the machine. The place where de-humanization began. Seraphina stiffened; she remembered the stables, the bags over heads, the feeling of being cargo. Kya buried her face in Seraphina’s tunic.
“He’ll help us?” Seraphina asked, her voice hollow.
“He’ll help the rebellion,” Vincent corrected, his tone devoid of its usual cold certainty. He sounded almost weary. “He’ll help proof. He’ll help a legitimate heir to a southern duchy. Whether he helps you… that will be the negotiation.”
Callum pushed himself upright, wincing. “Then we make sure you’re the only game in town. Documents, ring, scary earth-moving abilities. The full package.” He limped toward his horse, every movement telegraphing pain he’d never admit to. “But first, we get off this haunted rock. I don’t like the way it’s looking at me.”
They mounted up again, a slower, more painful procession now. The shelf eventually fed into a steep, pine-choked descent on the northern side of the pass. The trees here were alive, but twisted, their branches clutching at cloaks and hair as if trying to hold them back. The wrongness persisted, a background drone in the blood.
As they picked their way down, Seraphina found her horse beside Vincent’s. The children, exhausted, were nodding in their saddles. She kept her voice low, for him alone. “The baby. In the ledgers. Was there a name? A… designation?”
Vincent didn’t look at her. His profile was sharp against the gloom. “No name. Just ‘infant, female.’ The entry after the miscarriage note simply says ‘asset relocated.’ No destination.”
Asset relocated. The sterile, ledger-keep’s term echoed in the silent spaces between the trees. A person, reduced to inventory. A sister, lost. Seraphina’s grip on the reins tightened. The obsidian dagger at her thigh felt suddenly inert, a tool for silence when all she wanted was to scream questions into the void.
“We’ll find the route,” Vincent said, the promise stark and unadorned. “After Silverwood. After the capital. We’ll follow the chain back to its first link. I swear it.”
It wasn’t comfort. It was a mission statement. And in that moment, it was the only thing that kept the howling grief at bay. She gave a single, sharp nod, mirroring his own grim language. Ahead, Callum led them down into the embracing darkness of the valleys, toward a refuge built on complicity, with the echoes of a landslide and the ghost of a stolen child clinging to their heels.
“I’ll bet the Emperor has her… he might’ve groomed her to be his personal… you know…” She didn’t say the next words out loud. Breeder, sex slave, toy. The same things the Emperor wanted to do to her. Maybe he’d never taken her to the palace itself because he already had her sister.
The thought was a silent venom that spread through her veins, cold and paralyzing. It made a horrific kind of sense. She stared at Vincent’s back, the words stuck in her throat, too terrible to give sound.
The descent from the Fell Pass was a grim, silent ballet of exhaustion. The twisted pines gave way to dense, normal forest, the air thickening and losing its sharp, scarred edge. The normalcy of chirping insects and damp leaf mold felt like a lie. Callum’s breathing had developed a faint, wet hitch on the inhale. He kept shifting in the saddle, trying to find a position that didn’t pull the gash on his ribs.
“You’re bleeding through,” Vincent said, not looking back. It wasn’t a question.
“It’s picturesque. Adds to my mystique.”
“It’s leaving a trail. Dismount at the next stream.”
They found one, a shallow ribbon of silver cutting through mossy stone. The children slid to the ground and simply sat, too tired to move. Callum’s dismount was less graceful, a controlled stumble. He peeled back his leathers and tunic, revealing a nasty, deep slice. The edges were already an angry red.
Vincent rummaged in a saddlebag for a sewing kit and a flask of strong liquor. “This will hurt.”
“What’s new?” Callum took a long swig from the flask, his eyes finding Seraphina’s. He offered a weak smirk. “Don’t watch if you’re squeamish, darling. It’s just embroidery.”
She watched anyway. Vincent’s hands were steady, his focus absolute as he cleaned the wound with liquor and began stitching the flesh together with quick, neat jerks of the needle. Callum’s knuckles were white where he gripped a rock, but he didn’t make a sound. The only sign of pain was the rigid line of his jaw and a fine tremor in his thigh.
Seraphina moved to the stream, cupping water for the children. Kya drank, then stared at her own reflection in the trembling surface. “The mountain is farther away now. It doesn’t hurt as much.”
“That’s good, sweetheart.”
“But you still hurt.” Kya’s large, knowing eyes lifted to hers. “Inside. A new hurt.”
Seraphina had no answer. She just smoothed her daughter’s hair. Leo came over, leaning his head against her shoulder. He didn’t speak. He just absorbed her silence, a small, warm weight of solidarity.
Behind them, Vincent tied off the last stitch and cut the thread with his teeth. “Try not to get killed for at least a day. I’m running out of thread.”
Callum took another drink, his color returning. “Noted.” He nodded toward the dense woods ahead. “Silverwood land starts about a mile east of here. The house is another five miles in. We’ll hit patrols soon. Your father’s, or the Crown’s. Could be either.”
“My father’s,” Vincent said, with a certainty that bordered on grim. “He wouldn’t let Crown troops freely roam his woods. His cooperation has limits, and his pride defines them.” He packed the kit away, his movements brisk. “We let the patrol find us. We look pathetic. We ask for sanctuary.”
“We are pathetic,” Callum grunted, pulling his tunic down with a wince.
They remounted, the children stiff and quiet. The forest here was manicured, the underbrush cleared, the paths wide enough for carriages. It felt watched. After twenty minutes, a horn sounded—a short, melodic note that echoed through the trees. Within moments, six riders in forest-green livery emerged from the gloom, bows half-drawn.
The lead rider, a man with a weathered face and cautious eyes, took them in. The blood, the dirt, the exhausted children. His gaze lingered on Vincent and his expression shifted from suspicion to weary recognition. “Lord Vincent.”
“Captain Revin,” Vincent acknowledged, his voice flat. “We require passage to the house. An audience with my father. Immediately.”
The captain’s eyes flicked to Callum, then to Seraphina and the children. Understanding, and a deep, professional dismay, settled on his features. He’d seen cargo like this before, coming up from the south road to the estate’s back gates. He knew exactly what, and who, was arriving at his lord’s front door.
“The Duke is… engaged with guests, my lord.”
“What guests?” Callum asked, his tone deceptively light.
The captain swallowed. “An emissary from the capital, my lord. Arrived just last evening.”
Vincent and Callum exchanged a look. The Inquisitor moved fast. Or the Duke had summoned him.
“Even better,” Vincent said, his voice dropping to something cold and dangerous. “We’ll join the party. Escort us in, Captain. Now. And if one of your men peels off to run ahead, I’ll know.”
The ride to Silverwood House was a blur of towering oaks and cultivated dread. The estate was beautiful, all grey stone and creeping ivy, gardens laid out with mathematical precision. It looked nothing like the rough stone and fear of Blackwood, but Seraphina’s stomach coiled tighter with every stride. She remembered the scent of lemon polish and hay, the feeling of smooth wood beneath her fingertips as she was led, blindfolded, from a carriage to a stifling little room to be “prepared.”
They were taken not to the main entrance, but through a side courtyard to a private receiving room. The captain left them there, surrounded by portraits of stern Sterlings. The air smelled of beeswax and old money. Mia clung to Seraphina’s leg, hiding her face.
The door opened. Duke Sterling was a taller, older, harder version of Vincent, with iron-grey hair and eyes that held no warmth at all. He was not alone. A thin, meticulous man in the stark black and silver of the Imperial Inquisition stood beside him, a faint, polite smile on his lips.
“Vincent,” the Duke said, his voice like gravel shifting. “You’ve brought… complications.”
“Father,” Vincent nodded. “Inquisitor. This is the rightful heir to the Southern Archduchy, Seraphina of Harold’s line. She bears proof. And this,” he added, his gaze icy, “is Crown Prince Callum. Your future emperor, if our current efforts succeed.”
The Inquisitor’s smile didn’t waver. “Prince Callum. We’ve heard much of your… adventures. And the woman.” His eyes scanned Seraphina, not with lust, but with a clinical appraisal, like a butcher sizing up a side of meat. “The Archduke’s reported demise is tragic. Stabilizing the South will be a priority for the Crown.”
“Stabilizing it under whose control?” Callum shot back, leaning casually against a bookcase, projecting an ease he couldn’t feel. “Yours?”
“The Empire’s,” the Duke interrupted, his gaze locking on Seraphina. “You have documents?”
She pulled the satchel from her shoulder, withdrew the iron-banded tube, and slid out the parchment with Harold’s seal and signature. She walked forward and placed it on the desk between the two men, her mother’s silver ring glaringly evident on her finger. She said nothing.
The Duke read, his face impassive. The Inquisitor peered over his shoulder. “In order,” the Inquisitor murmured. “And the, ah, issue of progeny? A sole heir simplifies matters.”
It was the opening. A test.
Vincent answered, his voice cutting through the quiet room. “She is the sole surviving heir. Harold confirmed it with his final breath.” The lie was smooth, absolute. He didn’t glance at Seraphina. He was erasing the sibling from the record, here and now, before the Inquisition could ever take an interest.
The Inquisitor’s gaze lingered on Seraphina a moment longer, then he nodded, as if filing away a minor fact. “Very well. The Crown, of course, offers its protection during this transition. You will be conveyed to the capital, where you can be properly situated and your claims formally recognized by the Emperor himself.”
The unspoken words hung in the perfumed air: caged, and legitimized only if you comply. This was the offer. Sanctuary as prelude to a gilded prison.
Seraphina looked past the Inquisitor, to the Duke. This man had allowed Blackwood’s wagons to use his land. He had heard the whispers, seen the faces, and chosen profit and prudence. Now he stood, saying nothing, letting the Inquisitor dictate terms in his own home.
“Your hospitality is noted,” Callum said, pushing off the bookcase. “But we’re tired. We’ll stay the night, under Duke Sterling’s roof, and decide our path in the morning. Imperial escort can wait. Unless you’d like to start a civil war in his drawing room, Inquisitor. It’s a nice rug. Blood is hell on silk.”
The Duke’s eyes flickered, finally, with something like annoyed respect. He gave a curt nod. “Captain Revin will show you to rooms. We will… confer further in the morning.” It was a dismissal, a postponement. A tiny sliver of space.
As they were led out, the Inquisitor’s voice followed, smooth as oil. “Rest well, my lady. The Emperor is most eager to finally meet you. He has waited a very, very long time.”
The door shut. They were in a wide, empty hallway. The children were trembling.
Vincent’s hand found Seraphina’s elbow, his grip vise-tight. He leaned close, his whisper a bare vibration in the air. “He knows about the other one. He was probing. My father’s ‘guests’ didn’t arrive last night. They’ve been waiting for us.”
Callum touched his ribs, his expression grim. “We’re not staying the night. We’re walking out of a trapped house.” He looked at Seraphina, then at the three small faces looking up in exhausted terror. “Ideas?”
Seraphina looked down the long, polished hallway, then at the dark, leaded windows at its end. She remembered the stables. The back routes. The way the “goods” were moved unseen.
“I know the way out,” she said softly.