Abandoned by the Duke, I'm the Divine Seraph novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Fugitive

Rowan tracks Ilsabet to a mill, breaks her wards and ties her, and the stone sticks to his palm while her scar bleeds.

I found the first burned ward at dawn, painted on a fence post in soot.

It was a ring with a line through it, and it was still warm.

I put my hand flat against the wood.

The locket on my chest gave one small tug.

I followed the tug.

Three warded fence posts later, I came down a hill into a valley with a frozen millpond and an old stone mill.

Smoke rose from the chimney.

I tied the horse in a stand of alder and went the rest of the way on foot.

The mill door had a ring painted on it.

I stepped over the threshold, and the air bit my skin.

A ring of white fire flared up around my boots.

I jumped back, and the fire jumped with me.

"That's far enough," said a woman's voice from the loft.

She stood at the top of the ladder, a tall figure in a dark travelling cloak with a black braid over one shoulder.

I had seen her in the Duke's hall a thousand times, at his right hand.

She had grey eyes and a dry mouth, and she held a short iron rod in her burned left hand.

Ilsabet Corvane, court mage, twenty-eight years old.

She looked at me properly for the first time in her life.

"The stable boy," she said. "Of course the Duke sent you."

"The Duke threw me out."

"And then sent you."

"Yes."

She tilted her head.

"Cheap. Even for him."

"Where's the stone?"

"Where you'll never get it."

She flicked the rod.

The ring of fire leaped up to my chest.

I did the only thing a stable hand knows how to do with a wild thing.

I went straight at it.

I threw my coat over the flames, dove through the gap, and came out the other side on my knees with my sleeves smoking.

She swore and swung the rod.

I caught it in both hands.

It was hot enough to blister, and I held on anyway.

I pulled, and she came down the ladder after it with a cry, and we hit the dirt floor together.

She was strong.

She got a knee into my ribs where the guards had kicked me, and I saw white.

I rolled her over and pinned her wrists above her head with my forearm.

She glared up at me, breathing hard, her braid half undone.

"Get off me," she said.

"Tell me where the stone is."

"Get. Off."

"My sister is in Greywall because of you."

"Your sister is in Greywall because of the man you're working for."

"I'm not working for him."

"You rode out here with his purse in your belt."

I stopped.

She was right, and she knew it from my face.

Her mouth twisted.

"Brilliant. He sold you a rope and you tied it on yourself."

I took a length of cord from the saddle bags and tied her wrists.

She didn't fight me, which worried me more than if she had.

I went through her bag with the cord around my wrist, so she couldn't kick it.

There was a heel of bread, a folded map and a flask of water.

At the bottom, wrapped in black cloth, I found a stone.

It was black glass, the size of a hen's egg.

It felt warm, like a living thing asleep.

"Don't touch it," said Ilsabet sharply.

Her voice had changed.

"I've got it," I said. "That's all I need to see."

"Rowan, put it down."

It was the first time she had said my name.

I looked at her.

She was no longer glaring.

Her face had gone white to the lips, and she was staring at my hand.

"Put it down," she said. "Now."

I turned the stone over in my palm.

Something under my coat, against my chest, went hot as a branding iron.

The locket.

The stone gave a deep hum that I felt in my teeth.

When I tried to open my fingers, they would not open.

The glass had stuck to my skin.

"What is this?" I said.

Ilsabet cried out.

She curled over on the dirt floor with her tied hands against her chest.

The old burn scar on her left forearm split open, and blood ran down her wrist.

She looked up at me, with her teeth bared in pain.

"Please," she said. "Rowan. Please stop."

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