Reborn as the Villainess's Bodyguard, I Refused to Stop at Bodyguard novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Out of the Dark

Haruka put her own gloved hand over his.

"The dead of the Mercy Axe belong to the Captain," she said. "That's the Law of the Axe, Your Highness. No hand but mine on the lid until she's in the ground."

"I am your prince."

"You are. The law is older than you."

Aldric's fingers tightened on the wood.

Behind him, the curtain of the black carriage drew back a hand's width.

A woman's voice came out of the gap, low, and dry from coughing.

"Aldric."

He went rigid.

"Leave the dead alone," Queen Imelda said. "You have had what you came for."

The curtain fell shut.

Aldric took his hand away.

He looked at Haruka, and for the first time that morning there was no smile on his face at all.

Then he walked off across the square, very straight, with his guards closing around him.

Corwin wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

"Cart," Haruka said, and her own voice shook. "Now."

Seraphine woke to the sound of the sea.

She lay a long time without opening her eyes, listening to something large and slow breathing in and out beyond a wall.

The bed was wide and the sheets were clean.

The air smelled of salt and woodsmoke.

Then she opened her eyes and the ceiling was timber, with a swallow's nest in the corner.

A long grey light fell in through an open window.

Haruka sat in a chair beside the bed with her boots off and her cloak still around her shoulders.

She had not slept.

"Is it the fifteenth?" Seraphine said. Her voice was a croak.

"It's the fifteenth. You're in Merrow Lodge. You're alive."

Seraphine put a hand to her own throat and held it there.

"Say it again."

"You're alive."

"Again."

Haruka laughed, and got up and sat on the bed and said it a third time, into her hair.

Seraphine clung to her until her fingers hurt.

Then she pushed away and went to the window on shaking legs.

The lodge stood on a cliff above a small cold bay.

The water beyond the grass was the colour of slate, with white lines running in.

Gulls turned over it.

"I have never seen the sea," she said.

"That was one of the three secret ones, wasn't it?"

"You knew?"

"I guessed. You looked at the window every day as if it should have more in it."

Seraphine pressed her forehead to the frame.

"Eleven," she whispered. "No. Twelve, I think. I have lost count, and I do not have to count."

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