Her name was the first word out of his mouth.
She would have started, slightly, but the only reaction the sound of her name provoked from the silver mare was a faint widening of her eyes; it was only when he continued that she took a half of a step back, her stomach lurching beneath her as she acknowledged what he was asking of her – it was almost enough for her to miss his appointment of Avdotya as Reagent. In fact, had the dark mare not moved to the center of the crowd, steps guarded and perhaps reluctant, Seraphina might have simply remained where she was. As things stood, she followed behind Avdotya in a stark silence, expression unreadable. She didn’t know how she felt. (Sometimes, she didn’t know if she really felt at all.) As she took her place at Maxence’s side, gaze fluttering across the crowd, she felt as though she had been pulled out of her own skin. Her eyes scanned the mares and stallions in front of her without really looking at them, and, vaguely, she caught the names of Maxence’s Champions and Warden. (Fitting choices, really – even, reluctantly, Inkheart. She was not sure if she could stand her philosophies, but her devotion couldn’t be understated.) She catalogued the his descriptions of the laws and filed them away for later reference, because, with the ground pulled out from beneath her hooves, she could think of nothing else to cling to. (Had she ever had anything but the law? Anything but Viceroy? Anything but blind orders, blind loyalty? Had she ever had Seraphina?) Those were the laws of her kingdom. She was the emissary, the advisor, the diplomat – but she had been bred for war, carved for war, melded and reformed and broken into blind loyalty and detachment. This was what her kingdom asked of her, and, now, her sovereign was asking something else of her.
Just another job, she told herself. She would learn. She had to learn, because, in some, strange way, she wanted this. She remembered her youth, spent in far-off lands chasing the whims of her sovereign, then returning to the Mors – home was little more than another war zone, full of the dead, the starved, the lost. Viceroy had never hidden the horrors from her eyes, nor had he ever allowed her to fight them. He had simply taught her to survive. This was a chance to prevent history from repeating itself, to keep the horrors of the past in the past – or, at least, the power to try. Seraphina very rarely found herself wanting anything, but, dipping her head in prayer, she found herself wanting to believe that they could be more than the Day Court of her youth, that they could be better, that Maxence could be different, that maybe, just maybe, she could be more than what she had become.
(Solis, is this what you would have of me?)
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
