Chapter 8: First Steps North
The dawn departure was a brittle, silent affair. Elara wordlessly pressed packets of food into their hands—more dried meat, hard cheese, a small sack of oats. Her final gesture was to thrust a worn, but serviceable, wool cloak into Seraphina’s arms. “The mist off the Riven gets into your bones,” was all she said, before turning back to her cottage and shutting the door. No goodbyes. Just a closed, wooden face.
The world beyond the cottage was a palette of greys and dripping greens. The mill road was exactly as advertised: a muddy gash through dense pine forests, the sky a narrow strip of milk-white above them. The silence of the cottage was replaced by the squelch of boots, the rustle of damp undergrowth, and the labored breathing of the children.
They lasted an hour.
Leo was the first to falter, his short legs churning through the mud until he simply stopped, swaying slightly. Seraphina moved to him, but Callum was already there. He didn’t ask. He just crouched, his back presented like a broad, leather-clad offer. “Hop on, scout. Need your eyes up high to spot ambushes.”
Leo, too tired for pride, scrambled onto his back, small arms locking around Callum’s neck. Callum stood with a soft grunt, adjusting the boy’s weight. “Light as a feather. You’re living on air, kid.”
Mia watched, her lower lip trembling with exhaustion. Vincent observed her for a tense moment, his mind clearly calculating weight, balance, speed. Then, with a stiffness that betrayed his unfamiliarity with the act, he knelt before her. “Your brother has the superior vantage point. It is a tactical disadvantage. Would you like to correct it?”
Mia stared at his offered shoulders, then at Seraphina. Seraphina gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
“Okay,” Mia whispered.
Vincent lifted her onto his shoulders as if handling volatile ordinance. She gasped, her tiny hands gripping his hair. He flinched but didn’t complain. “Steady. I am your steed, not a tree to be uprooted.”
Kya, the eldest, trudged on beside Seraphina. Her breathing was measured, but her face was pale. After another half-mile of silent, sucking mud, her hand, small and cold, brushed against Seraphina’s. It was a fleeting, accidental touch. Seraphina hesitated. The instinct to pull away, to keep her hands free, to not form attachments that were leverage, screamed in her blood. But this was her daughter, and they were almost free.
She looked down at Kya’s determined, crumbling face. She thought of the loft door, of the men who guarded it. Of the unbearable lightness of a clean nightshirt.
She clasped Kya’s hand. Tight.
The girl’s fingers curled around hers instantly, a desperate, grateful anchor.
They walked like that for a while, the only sound their footsteps and the distant call of a crow. Then Kya, her voice a hushed thing against the forest’s watchfulness, whispered, “Tell me about the capital.”
Seraphina’s breath hitched. She had no stories of spires or bustling markets. Her memories were of filthy straw and fear-scent. She opened her mouth, a refusal forming.
Callum, ahead with Leo, spoke without turning. “It smells like rain on hot stone and baking bread. And horse dung, unfortunately. Lots of horse dung.”
“The bread is better in the lower districts,” Vincent added from the front, Mia bouncing slightly on his shoulders. “The guild bakers near the square use honey from the eastern valleys. The upper city bread is all for show—beautiful, tasteless braids.”
Kya squeezed Seraphina’s hand. “What does… what does freedom smell like?”
The question landed like a physical blow. Seraphina stopped walking. So did Vincent. Callum slowed and glanced back, his face uncharacteristically solemn.
None of them knew. Not truly. Callum’s freedom was a gilded cage of politics and poisoned wine. Vincent’s was a self-imposed prison of duty and cold reason. Hers was a theoretical concept, a word shouted by angry men in the compound, meaning nothing but a different kind of danger.
“I don’t know,” Seraphina said, the truth ripped from her. “But it smells better than this mud.”
A choked laugh escaped Kya. It was a watery, tired sound, but it was real.
Callum grinned. “That’s the spirit. Freedom smells like not having wet socks. A noble pursuit.”
They pressed on, the banter a thin shield against the deepening cold and their own creeping fatigue. The pine forest began to thin, giving way to gnarled, ancient oaks and willows with trailing, skeletal branches. The moon, a pale wafer in the darkening afternoon sky, began to assert itself as the sun failed.
Vincent called a halt as the last of the light bled from the world. They hadn’t reached the Riven. The children were spent, mere sacks of flesh and bone on their carriers.
“Here,” Vincent said, his voice low. He gestured off the path to where the undergrowth seemed marginally less impenetrable. “We cannot make the crossing in the dark. Not with them.”
It wasn’t a clearing. It was a slight reluctance of the forest, a small space where the roots of a massive oak formed a rough, bowl-like depression, carpeted in thick moss. It was hidden, defensible, and miserable.
They made camp with a grim efficiency. No fire. The risk was too great. They huddled in the root-bowl, sharing the cold food from Elara’s packets. The children ate mechanically and then collapsed into a pile, using the bags and the men’s spare cloaks as bedding. Sleep took them in seconds, a swift and total surrender.
The three adults sat in a tense triangle around them, listening to the forest come alive at night. Sounds were magnified: the scuttle of something in the leaves, the hoot of an owl, the endless, whispering sigh of the wind in the willows. The air grew cold enough to see their breath.
“My turn for first watch,” Vincent stated, his hand on his sword hilt.
“I’ll take it,” Seraphina said. Her voice was firm. “You carried Mia for six miles. Your shoulders must be screaming.”
“They are functional.”
“And I am functional,” she shot back. “I slept in a bed last night. You sat against a wall. It’s logic. You said you liked logic.”
A faint, surprised noise that might have been a laugh came from Callum’s direction. He was leaning against the great oak’s trunk, his eyes closed. “She’s got you there, Vince. Out-logicked by the civilian.”
Vincent was silent for a long moment. Finally, he gave a curt nod. “Two hours. Then wake me.” He shifted, trying to find a position that didn’t press on overtaxed muscles, and closed his eyes. His breathing didn’t even out. He was just resting, again.
Callum opened one eye. “You sure, Sera?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t argue. He too slid into a state of apparent rest, but she knew he was listening, just as she was.
The watch was a study in auditory terror. Every snap of a twig was a footstep. Every rustle was a creeping assailant. Seraphina sat with Vincent’s dagger in her lap, the cold metal a familiar comfort. She watched the moon trace its path, her mind circling Kya’s question. What does freedom smell like? It smelled of pine resin and cold mud. It smelled of the sweat on Vincent’s neck as he carried her daughter. It smelled of the faint, clean scent of soap on Callum’s skin from Elara’s washbasin. It was not a single scent. It was a confusing, terrifying cocktail of newness.
Near the end of her watch, a new sound emerged. Not from the forest, but from the pile of children. A whimper. Then a choked-off cry.
Leo was thrashing in his sleep, his small face contorted. “No, no, please,” he mumbled, tears tracking through the dirt on his cheeks.
Seraphina was moving before she knew it, dropping the dagger and crawling to him. She gathered him up, pulling him from the tangle. He was hot, trapped in a nightmare. She rocked him, shushing him, her chin on his matted hair. “Leo. Leo, you’re here. You’re safe. It’s Sera. It’s Mama. I’ve got you.”
He clung to her, his cries subsiding into hiccupping sobs. Across the root-bowl, she saw two pairs of eyes glinting in the moonlight. Both men were watching, utterly still.
“He has them often,” she whispered, her voice rough. “The dreams.”
Callum sat up slowly. “What do you do for him?”
“This,” she said, simply, holding the boy. “You wait them out. You remind them where they are.”
Vincent sat up as well. He didn’t speak. He just watched as Leo’s breathing gradually evened, as the small body went slack with exhausted sleep again. After a long while, when Seraphina made to lay him back down, Vincent reached into his pack. He pulled out his spare shirt, a thing of soft, worn linen. He leaned over and wordlessly tucked it around Leo, adding an extra layer between the boy and the damp earth.
It was a small thing. A practical thing. But in the crushing intimacy of the dark forest, with the child’s nightmare still haunting the air, it felt monumental.
Callum watched the exchange, his expression hidden in shadow. When he spoke, his voice was barely a breath. “We should have burned that place to the ground with everyone in it.”
The venom in his tone was a live wire. It wasn’t princely posturing. It was a raw, unvarnished truth.
“The ledgers are more destructive than fire,” Vincent replied, just as quietly. “Fire ends. Paper condemns.”
“It’s not enough.”
“I know.”
The shared admission hung between them, a pact of a different kind. Seraphina sat between them, holding a sleeping child, and felt the weight of their shared fury, their shared helplessness. It didn’t comfort her. But it didn’t isolate her either.
When the moon indicated two hours had passed, she didn’t wake Vincent. She met his gaze across the gloom and shook her head slightly. Not yet.
He held her look for a moment, then gave another one of his slow, singular nods. He lay back down.
Callum settled again against the tree, his eyes on her. He didn’t insist. He just watched, a silent sentinel in the fragmented moonlight, as she kept her watch over the dreaming, trembling children, the dagger cold and ready in her hand, the forest holding its breath around them.
Sera rubbed her son’s back soothingly as he slept, keeping the nightmares at bay. She had tried over the years not to get too attached to her children, but it was an impossible feat. She spoke softly, mostly to herself, but she knew Callum was listening. “I didn’t let them call me Mama… I tried not to get attached… will they truly be safe? Will I be able… to really be their mother?” She watched the sleeping children. “It’s difficult… when I never had one of my own… and I watched so many other babies die in my arms… how could I possibly let myself get attached?”
The silence after her words was a living thing, thick and cold as the forest mist. Callum didn’t move from his place against the tree. Vincent’s breathing had gone utterly still.
“Hell,” Callum finally said, the word a soft, fractured exhale. There was no charm in it. No silver. Just a stark acknowledgement of a horror he couldn’t shape with wit.
Vincent shifted. In the weak light, she saw him run a hand over his face, a gesture of deep fatigue. “Attachment is a tactical vulnerability. A fact.” His voice was low, stripped of all its usual analytical precision. He looked at the huddled shapes of the children. “It is also the only reason any of us are here. The reason we came to that compound.”
Callum pushed himself upright, the moss whispering beneath him. He didn’t try to offer empty comfort. Instead, he asked a simple question, his eyes on her in the dark. “What were their names?”
The air left Seraphina’s lungs. No one had ever asked that. They were just ‘the losses’. The tiny, silent tragedies. She found the first one waiting in the dust of her memory. “Elara,” she whispered. “The same as… back there. A coincidence. It felt like a joke.”
“And the others?” Vincent asked. He wasn’t pushing. He was standing witness.
Names tumbled out, one after another, soft as falling leaves. “Milo. Lin. A girl I called Wren. She was so small.” Each one was a ghost laid briefly between them. The forest seemed to listen. “I stopped naming them. It was easier. Then Kya came, screaming and furious, and she lived. Then Leo. Then Mia. The living demanded names. The dead… became a weight.”
Callum stood. He moved quietly to the edge of their root-bowl, staring out into the black lattice of trees. His shoulders were rigid. “My brother’s first attempt was a poisoned sweetcake when I was seven.” He didn’t turn around. “I gave it to my dog. He died convulsing at my feet. I didn’t name him either. Couldn’t.”
Vincent let out a long, slow breath, a white plume in the moonlight. “My father presented me with the heads of three men who failed a trade negotiation when I was twelve. He said it was to teach me the cost of poor diplomacy. They were displayed on spikes for a week. I remember the flies. I don’t remember their faces.”
They were not comparing pains. They were building a grim ledger, entry by entry, in the dark. Showing her the shapes of their own prisons. Seraphina felt Leo’s warm, steady breath against her neck. The weight of him was an anchor.
“So,” she said, her voice gaining a thread of solidity. “We all have our graveyards.”
“Seems that way,” Callum said, turning back. His usual grin was absent. His face was all stark lines and shadows. “Mine’s just got more fancy headstones.”
Vincent stood, brushing damp leaves from his trousers. “A graveyard is a defined space. You can walk out of it.” He looked at the sky, judging the hour. “Dawn is coming. We should rouse them before true light. The crossing will be difficult.”
The moment broke, not with dismissal, but with a shift into necessity. The confession hung there, acknowledged. They would carry it now, too.
They woke the children in the grey pre-dawn, a process of gentle shakes and soft words. The kids were stiff, cold, and confused. Seraphina watched as Callum coaxed Leo to his feet, the boy leaning heavily against his leg. “Up you get, scout. River’s waiting. Heard there might be river trolls. You’ll need to be alert.”
“Trolls?” Leo mumbled, rubbing his eyes.
“Nasty business. But they’re terrified of soggy biscuits, which is all we’ve got. We’re perfectly armed.”
A tiny smile ghosted across Leo’s face.
Vincent handed a piece of jerky to Mia. “Chew thoroughly. It will generate internal warmth. It is science.”
Kya stood close to Seraphina, her hand finding hers again automatically. “Is the water deep?”
“Not where we’re crossing,” Vincent assured her, his tone softer than when discussing tactical vulnerabilities. “But it will be cold. Very cold.”
The Riven appeared through the trees as a wide, silvering ribbon, its rush a growing roar that swallowed the forest’s whispers. The mist here was thicker, coiling over the black water. Vincent led them upstream to a place where the banks flattened and the water spread wide, chattering over a bed of round stones.
“The shallows,” he announced, raising his voice over the water’s noise. He didn’t wait. He sat and began pulling off his boots, stuffing his socks inside and tying the laces together. His matter-of-factness was a command.
They all followed, an awkward ballet of cold fingers and stiff laces. The children’s feet were pale and thin. Seraphina’s own, still bandaged, looked fragile against the dark earth.
Callum finished first. He stood, rolled his trousers to his knees, and stepped into the water. He hissed, a sharp, involuntary sound. “Right. Not bracing. That’s a lie. It’s like stepping on a thousand frozen knives.” He turned, holding out a hand to Leo. “Come on. Quick is better.”
Vincent lifted Mia onto his back again. “Hold tightly. Do not let go.” He looked at Kya. “You will hold Seraphina’s hand. Your weight will steady each other.”
Seraphina squeezed Kya’s hand. Vincent offered his elbow to her. A formal, sturdy support. She took it.
The water was an agony. It stole the breath, needled the skin, burned with cold up to the shins, then the knees. The current pulled greedily at their legs. Stones shifted treacherously underfoot. Seraphina locked her jaw, focusing on Vincent’s steady, forward-plodding gait beside her, on Kya’s white-knuckled grip.
Halfway across, Mia began to whimper, the cold seeping through Vincent’s shirt and into her bones. “It hurts,” she cried.
“I know,” Vincent said, his voice strained with the effort of stability. “It is supposed to. It means you are still feeling.”
Callum, ahead with Leo, began to sing. It was a rowdy, off-key tavern song about a drunkard and a pig, utterly ridiculous and loud enough to battle the river’s roar. Leo, clinging to his back, let out a shaky giggle.
Step by torturous step, they clawed their way through the liquid ice. When Callum’s feet finally found the opposite bank, he practically lunged onto the frost-rimed grass, dragging Leo up with him. He turned, reaching back into the water to haul Vincent and Mia up, then Seraphina and Kya.
They collapsed on the bank, a shuddering, gasping heap. Steam rose from their reddened legs. The children were crying soundlessly, the shock of the cold too deep for words. Callum and Vincent were already moving, rubbing small limbs with rough, efficient hands, forcing circulation back.
“Boots. Now,” Vincent ordered, his own teeth chattering.
They dressed frozen feet in stiff, cold leather, the sensation a distant, painful prickling. Seraphina hugged Kya and Mia close, rubbing their backs. Leo let Callum manhandle him into his socks, his small body wracked with shivers.
Callum looked back at the river, now a barrier behind them, then at the dense, unknown woodland ahead. He met Seraphina’s eyes. His were clear, the earlier shadow replaced by a hard, focused light.
“Graveyards are behind us,” he said, his breath a plume. “This side is for the living. Let’s prove it.”
He stood, offering a hand to pull her up. Vincent did the same for the children, his grip sure. Without another word, they turned from the water and walked into the waiting trees, leaving the cold, silvered ribbon of the Riven to carry their ghosts away.