Chapter 7

Seraphina.

My heart clatters like falling crockery. My skin is hot. I can feel the blood beating in my ears.

My feet carry me swiftly through the forest, despite the dark. They step deftly over roots and fallen branches. They know more than my mind does.

Though we’ve only lived here a short time, I am coming to know everything about this wood. The darkness embraces me tenderly. It’s as though this wood knows me, has always known me.

I feel a wetness on my face and realize I am crying. I the tears away as I run. The moon shows the way through the trees to our meager hut.

There is no thinking as I run. There is only feeling. Only the residue of the moment with the piercing blue eyes across the water.

I run harder.

When I reach the hut I unthinkingly fling the door open. It swings and slams against the wall with a crack. I stand in the doorway just panting. I made it. I am safe — for now.

“Seraphina?” says a scared voice from the dark in the hut.

“Ivy!” I cry. I am starting to remember where I am and I realize I woke up my sister.

The small form of Ivy emerges from the bed in the corner of the hut.

“What happened Seraphina? You’re shaking,” says Ivy with alarm. Despite her young age, she knows the signs of a traumatizing encounter. This isn’t the first time I’ve come home in a state.

“Ivy darling, I’m alright,” I say, breathing heavily. In and out. In and out.

“No you’re not. You’re crying,” says my sister.

Sure enough, I feel tears dripping from my chin to my collarbone.

I also now see that I’m naked.

“Ivy…” I start but can’t finish. My throat is blocked by tears.

Ivy, too young to be this skilled in caring for me, brings me a tunic from a peg on the wall. I crouch down and she slips it over my head. Then she hugs me tightly.

My body is wracked with sobs. I shake in the embrace of my little sister.

“Tell me what happened Seraphina,” says Ivy in a calm voice. I curse myself that she knows how to do this, how to talk to me like a scared horse. She’s too young…

What I want to tell her is that this time it’s different. This time I’m not reeling from a terrible encounter with a man who attacked me.

I am flooded with emotion. Something within me has broken. The walls I have built up — for the safety of me and Ivy — are starting to come down. I am overwhelmed by the thought that there would be a man who could see my beauty without wanting to possess it, ruin it.

The flood is huge, torrential, keeps me from speaking.

“Seraphina,” says the child softly.

But I can’t say anything. My mind cycles over the images of the night. The alabaster figure with the sculpted body across the river…

He saw me. He saw my face. Without my veil. Without a covering.

Not just my face — my whole, uncovered body!

Ivy pulls away from me gently and moves to the hearth of our small hut. She grabs the poker and rakes the coals left over from cooking our evening meal. She puts a few small logs from the pile on the coals and blows on them. They catch flame in an instant.

She pours water from the bucket into the small pot hanging above the fire. Hot water. Tea.

“Come here,” she says, gently guiding me to the stool by the fire.

Only nine years old and already tending the hearth like a matron six times her age. That’s what happens when you grow up without a mother. Only an older sister who fails to care for you over and over. Only an older sister who is cursed to be hunted for—

For my beauty.

Mother was hunted as well. She was hunted for the love of our father, a common man. But maybe she was hunted for something else.

Mother knew a lot of little tricks. She could fill a pot with a few whispered words. She only did this when she thought I wasn’t looking. But I knew she was different.

She was different from the other townspeople, of course, being a lady of noble birth. Even though she wore the clothes of a commoner and her hands were worn from work, the way she spoke always betrayed her.

The world won’t understand you Seraphina, I remember her saying to me when I was very young. These people don’t know what true love is.

True love was useless to her as the angry townspeople lashed her to the stake, and the pyre beneath her caught fire like a tinderbox.

“Talk to me Seraphina,” says Ivy, snapping me away from my memories. “Please.”

Again I try to summon words to describe the night. I remember the moonlight, the figure rising from the water.

I remember feeling unafraid. I remember feeling…beautiful. Powerful and steady in my beauty. Perfect in the night, in the water, perfect to behold.

At this, I am again wracked by sobs.

I don’t know if my mother was a witch. But I know that I am different because of her. Not just her noble birth, but something else. Something that is harder to describe.

Something that has always felt like a curse since I came of age. This face. This body. The way that the world salivates over me.

And something more that pulls me into the woods, in the moonlight, in the water.

That something was very strong tonight. That something lit the water like lightning. That something was visible in the ice-blue eyes of the stranger across the water.

I let out a sigh and try to breathe steadily. I straighten myself up on the stool and look Ivy in the face.

“Ivy, darling,” I say with a weak smile on my face, “I am alright, really. Something strange happened. I can’t tell you now, but I will.”

Ivy’s sweet eyes look at me sadly and her brows knit a soft furrow. But I can see she is less worried. Somewhat.

The truth is too difficult to say, even to myself in my own head. After a lifetime of being hunted for how I look. A childhood cut short, both for me and Ivy.

He saw me. My mind turns over the thought like a smooth stone. He saw me. And I—

I liked it.