Seraphina's Lament (The Bloodlands Book 1)

by Sarah Chorn

  “If you could read my mind,” Neryan replied, “you’d know he left us as soon as we entered the city, and we haven’t seen him since. I have no idea where he is, Eyad.”

  “You are my slave, I never freed you. I have every right to every part of you. I own you. You are nothing. You are less than nothing. I may not have much life left in me, but you belong to me and I will make use of you. I will know your secrets.” Eyad stepped forward, feet kicking water. He let out an angry grunt. “Get rid of this fucking water, Neryan.”

  “No.”

  Eyad stood stunned, silent, face going pale, a man suddenly realizing that he wasn’t the master here, not anymore. “Get rid of this water!”

  “I refuse.”

  And there it was. Twin powers, both bent on their own form of destruction, each unwilling and unable to move from their position. Eyad was weak, and Seraphina was unstable. Neryan was in the middle of it all. Water would keep Eyad away, he’d be too afraid to slip and he was too frail to handle the fall, and it would keep Seraphina’s fire banked if she did wake up. It was a small barrier, but Eyad seemed unwilling to push through it. Up to his ankles now, he stood back against the wall like it was the only thing keeping him standing.

  “You—” Eyad said.

  And Neryan suddenly realized that there was only one way out of this. There had only ever been one way out of this. The world disappeared. Seraphina disappeared. Eyad disappeared. He didn’t want to die, or be cornered, a slave at the mercy of this man. He just wanted to live. It had always been that simple, and that complex. Seraphina was bent on revenge, but Neryan just wanted to see the sun rise again tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that, and after that. Maybe he was a coward, but this wasn’t his fight. It never had been.

  He felt water, felt it inside him and around him, in his lungs, on his skin. He was breaking apart, more element, less Neryan. His senses expanded, and suddenly the world felt so very small. The palace was just a speck, and Eyad mattered not at all.

  He heard someone shouting, felt water surging, more shouting. The chains around his wrist didn’t matter. They weren’t impediments, not really.

  Eyad could not chain a god.

  Seraphina was slumbering and burning. When she woke up, she’d explode, and that was right. She should explode. Burn the palace down, but Neryan was done. Done living a half-life. Done worrying about everyone else. Done being dictated to. He was tired of being a man at war, a soul divided. To be human or not, to please Seraphina or not, to feel his survivor’s guilt or not. It was exhausting being ripped in half like this. And he was so very tired.

  “I’m drowning,” Neryan said. His voice sounded different to him, deeper, all liquid and depth. “I choose to drown, Eyad. I will not swim anymore. I am an ocean in a raindrop. My body can no longer hold me.”

  Neryan dissolved. Became water.

  Floated away.

  Down the hall, toward the voice in the belly of the world that was calling his name.

  He was needed. He was called. He would answer.

  And just like that, the Water Lord was born.

  The Ascended

  Sharpening

  He was coming.

  Lyall stood beside the stone slab in the center of his barrow, and smiled whilst he sharpened his knife.

  Seraphina

  Seraphina dreamed.

  She was undefined, like the quiet between heartbeats, or the pause between thoughts. She was the sound the world made before the storm broke.

  And then…

  She stood in the middle of a large, empty desert; blue sky above, the sun glaring down at a red world below. Waves of rust-colored sand stretched out in all directions as far as the eye could see. She thought she was alone at first, nothing but her and all that land and sky with infinity stretched out between the two like a sacrifice. She squinted her eyes until she saw someone on the horizon—a figure, outlined by the setting sun, a dark shape gradually taking form through the shimmering mirage of the desert. Seraphina moved closer.

  Soon, the figure became a woman; but she was unlike any woman Seraphina had ever seen before. She was tall and slender, almost masculine in build, with broad shoulders and small hips. Her skin was gray, with shimmering blue whirls all over it. Her black hair hung in braids down to her waist. Seraphina saw her back first, covered in a mass of scar tissue, puckered and leathered by age and time. It was the wings that made her step back with fright, though. Long, and once strong, they dragged on the ground when she walked. Where once there may have been feathers, all that remained were blackened, charred bones sticking out near her shoulder-blades, arcing up and then down in a dramatic V to drag on the ground. They looked like the bones of two giant hands, fingers trailing across the sand.

  She drew near, and the woman looked at Seraphina over her shoulders. It was her eyes that held her attention, froze her in place, made her feel naked and exposed. They were large and silver with no whites, and they gleamed like mirrors, seeming to see and reflect everything at once. Looking into them was like falling into the sea and getting sucked under the waves.

  The stranger turned back to face the setting sun, breaking contact with Seraphina. The world around them looked to be on fire—brilliant, burning, and beautiful. When she spoke, her voice, low and steady, sounded like boulders smashing together.

  “Peace,” she said, the word rumbled through the drama of twilight, “is not a natural state. Conflict is what defines us. It is written into our bones and sinew. We rage. Against each other. Against ourselves. Against thoughts. Against the very world itself.” She paused and the silence felt like a thunderstorm. “For in the end, what would we be if we couldn’t rip each other apart?”

  “Who are you?” Seraphina asked. The woman was a stranger but somehow, she felt connected to her; like their souls were cut from the same cloth.

  “You may call me Dreshti,” the woman replied, still not looking at her. “I am one who has Become before.”

  “Where am I? What is this place?” she glanced around; saw nothing but red sand dunes and shimmering heat. “Did you bring me here?”

  Dreshti shrugged a shoulder, the bones of her wings shifting uncomfortably with the motion. “In a manner of speaking, yes. But you opened the door.”

  “What is happening to me?” she asked, her voice on the edge of pleading. She hated the obvious need in her words.

  There was a long, low sigh. “You are changing, Seraphina. You are Becoming.”

  “Becoming?” Seraphina asked, taken aback. Worry tore through her, so powerful she was almost sick with it.

  She was so tired of worrying. She was exhausted by the cloying fear that choked her up and tore her down again and again. She couldn’t run nor hide from it. It was always there, carved into the scarred skin of her back, and the pain in her leg that ate away at her sanity. None of this was ever going away. Eyad had seen to that. He’d made sure his mark would remain on her for the rest of her life. It would always be there, etched into her skin like a gaudy tattoo. It was part of her now.

  “You are both Becoming,” Dreshti explained. “You and Neryan—both preparing to ascend. Ascending is hard. You have to break every part of yourselves before you can Become. Your brother is drowning, as is his nature, and you are burning.”

  “I don’t want to lose control,” she replied in a small voice. She felt like a child again, small and ignorant.

  “Ah, well, Neryan took that choice from you. He is already Becoming, and soon you will too. You have already begun. It is the nature of things.”

  “I don’t want to lose my humanity.”

  Dreshti turned her full attention onto Seraphina, her mirrored eyes boring into her. It was more intimate than anything she’d ever experienced, and she suddenly felt pierced; half of her in agony, and the other half in rapture. “If you do not Become, Seraphina, you will both die. Your mortality is finished. That story has ended. You need to stop fighting this. You will Become, or you will die. That is the end of it.”


  She felt the truth of those words slam into her. She didn’t want to face it, but there it was. She was already changing and she knew it. She’d known it for some time, since before she’d escaped Eyad and before she’d found Neryan again.

  “I don’t want this,” she whispered. “I don’t want any of it.”

  Dreshti offered her a sad smile. “You do not have a choice. You may hold onto your humanity for a time, but I suspect it will not be for long. You are outgrowing your humanity, and you know it. The world knows it.” She sighed, sounded almost wistful. “We are ready for you. We have been waiting for so very long.”

  There was a pause before she continued. “Life is a lot of things, Seraphina; hope, pain, desire, need, and everything in between. Life is uncomfortable, but it is also fulfilling. Life can hurt. It can hurt more than the worst abuse, and the most intense release. Life is the most some people can ask for, but you’ve outgrown life. Life is choking you. All the parts of you are churning and turning. Changing. You’re a tornado wrapped in a cocoon. Soon you’ll break free. You’ll spread your wings, but you won’t fly. You weren’t meant for something as mundane as flying. You were meant to burn. You will Become, and you will burn.”

  “I don’t want this,” Seraphina whispered again. She felt a tear carve its way down her cheek, a silent lament. For herself. For the future. For the world she’d destroy when her fire and all the cold rage fueling it was released into it.

  “We don’t get to decide what trials we face, we just get to decide how we face them.” Dreshti studied her. “I’m coming to you, Seraphina. I will be there soon, and you will need to be ready for me.”

  Dreshti faded, the earth rumbled, and Seraphina…

  …woke slowly.

  Pulling herself from the dream felt like she was being born. She stretched, groaning as her leg straightened out. Her body was coiled tight. Outside, the wind howled. Rain pelted stone walls, hissing through the tiny crack of a window and spraying her with icy water. How long had it been since she’d felt cold and wet? Where was she? Stone walls. Stone floor. Stone ceiling and that tiny slit window. The realization hit her like a punch.

  The palace. She was back in the palace. She couldn’t remember anything after talking with Neryan in that apartment. She fell asleep, and now this.

  Eyad had found her. Eyad had…

  Panic started to fill her, but the room was wet, soaked through, and it made it hard for her to do anything with her fire, which was probably why she’d been put here, she realized belatedly, a security measure of sorts. It was burning down low, but she couldn’t bring it out, not here. Not with that rain spraying through the small slit in the stones. Anger rose in her, sharp and cutting.

  The storm outside sounded like the world was tearing itself apart and some part of her, the part she’d been smothering, was stretching, waking up and yearning for freedom. It ached to be part of that storm.

  No.

  She closed her eyes, pulled herself up to sit, and with teeth clenched pushed that part back down deep. The cold and wet bit into her. Her joints were swollen and aching, her body seemed full of fire, her back and leg a scream wrapped in skin. Gods above and below, she was sick of hurting; sick of this constant pain, of the nagging ache and the energy it took just to push through it, to exist beyond it. She rubbed her leg as though that would do her some good.

  Lightning flashed, and she jumped as the sky exploded into peals of thunder. It sounded like the heavens were laughing.

  She wanted to burn. This storm was making her want to step out of her body like it was clothing she was tired of wearing.

  No, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t become fire. The intensity of her element frightened her but more than that, the possibility of losing control of it was terrifying. She’d never controlled anything in her life. This was one thing she could press her will on. Fire or not, mortal or no, it would be her and her alone who decided.

  She wasn’t aware someone else was in the room until she heard their voice. She grimaced. It was a soft sound, muted, almost unimportant. A fly buzzing.

  “What?” she asked, but with her fire raging through her, the words boomed in the room, sounding like an earthquake.

  “Peace,” Eyad said. He was stood by the doorway, watching her with obvious concern, braced as though to run at a moment’s notice. “Speak softly.”

  “I wasn’t born to be soft,” Seraphina replied, suddenly feeling the fullness of her rage for him. All that hate and anger rushing to the surface. She was not his to command. Not anymore. “I am jagged edges and shattered glass. I have come to break the world.”

  She tried to stand, but her right leg gave out and she fell back on the ground with a humiliating cry and splash of water. Here she was—belittled, broken, bent, and sitting on the floor in front of a man she couldn’t seem to defy. Her cane was gone. That beautiful cane Vadden had made her was nowhere in sight. He had taken everything from her. Again.

  “Isn’t it ironic how hope keeps your heart beating just to slaughter you in the end?” he asked.

  She wondered if irony had a flavor. Perhaps it was tart like lemons, or sweet as summer berries. She wondered if he gorged himself on it until he was sick. She imagined him so full of irony he was bursting. She hoped he choked.

  “What do you want?” She asked. She could burn him with a thought, and she wanted to but she was curious. She wanted to know what he had planned before she put an end to him. Fire was humming in her, eager to break free; but the steady spray from the window kept her somewhat in check. Eyad’s eyes moved over her, and she realized, for the first time, how sick he seemed to be. Wasting away. A shadow of the man he had been when she’d run.

  She’d spent most of her life thinking that he was somehow more than human. That he was a supreme, supernatural force, the be-all and end-all of her existence. But right here, right now, he was just a man. An exhausted, sick man, and nothing more than that. It was almost disconcerting to see him like this, robed in finery, but barely holding on. Humbled.

  A guard stood at the door, showing her the boundaries of her prison. As if there had been any doubt.

  “For now? I will keep you here. The lower levels of the palace were flooding, so we moved you up into a third-floor room. When the storm breaks, and I see what the damage is, then we’ll talk again, decide our next steps.”

  “This storm,” Seraphina replied, gingerly leaning her back against the wall. “Is tearing Lord’s Reach apart. You’ll be the king of nothing. An emperor with no throne.”

  “I don’t need a throne to rule, Seraphina. I haven’t sat on that throne once. It’s in storage somewhere, in fact. You know that. The Sunset Lands are still mine, as are you. You and Neryan, well, at first you two were interesting, and then you made yourselves useful. That’s not my fault, is it? If someone exposes a weakness, how could I not exploit it? Neryan ran right to the very counter-revolutionaries I’ve been trying to corner. And you. You laid yourself out for me when you let him escape. You were so ready and willing to be a sacrifice. You bent yourself, you broke yourself, and you destroyed yourself. I just stood by and let you do it.”

  He paused, walked slowly, haltingly, across the room, steps punctuated by thunder and brilliant bursts of lightning.

  “Was it worth it?” He waved an arm outside. “I may have lost a city this night, but you’ve lost yourself. Somewhere along the way, you’ve become nothing more than clay waiting to be formed. I know who I am. That’s the difference between us. You’re nothing, and I am everything.”

  “I intend to destroy you in a moment, so tell me what you want. I am morbidly curious.” She demanded.

  He leaned against the wall. Not looking the least bit surprised. “Where is Vadden?”

  “He left as soon as we came into the city. I haven’t seen him since. I assume you’ve had me for a while. Why haven’t you picked it out of my mind?”

  He nodded, acknowledging her words. “Do you know where he went?”

&nbs
p; “Why are you asking me this? You can just find the answers.” She tapped her forehead with a finger. Her rage was burning bright, but she wanted answers first, answers from this pathetic creature before her, more man than master now.

  She would humble him. Soon.

  “I could enter your mind before, but now it is as slippery as Neryan’s was.”

  Neryan. Why hadn’t she asked about her brother yet? How could she have not wondered where he was? What Eyad was doing to him? A surge of panic stabbed her.

  She could feel him, she realized. She could feel him stronger than she’d ever felt him before. They’d always had a bond, and it had grown stronger as their elements started to take over; but she’d never felt him like this, like he was everywhere and in everything all at once. As though she could reach out and touch him, even though he wasn’t here. Where was he?

  “Where is my brother?” She asked.

  Eyad looked uncomfortable for an instant. His gaze flicked to the window, eyed the rain falling outside, spraying inside, covering her, and seemed to relax.

  “Neryan has vanished,” he finally said, and she flinched. She felt the inferno build inside of her in a sudden, shocking reaction to his words. She reeled herself back in, gaining control over herself. It hurt worse than the wounds that had scarred her back and twisted her leg, worse than the beating Eyad had given her all those years ago, worse than anything she could imagine. But there were more important matters for her to focus on.

  “He’s gone,” she said, thrusting the words at him like a sharp blade, the stab ending in a wound that cut true. He grimaced and rubbed his chest as though she’d pierced him there.

  “I didn’t do anything to him,” he finally said. “He just turned into a pool of water and vanished. How can I track a raindrop in a storm like this?”

  His words fell on her like so much water. Her brother had vanished. He was gone. He had changed. Her other half. Would she ever see him again? Was he okay?