Abandoned by the Duke, I'm the Divine Seraph novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Dark Relic
The relic stays dark for Rowan, the Duke casts him out before the court and keeps his sister, and the court mage vanishes with the stone.
The bronze relic on the Rite Hall wall stayed dark when I touched it.
I stood there with my palm flat on the cold wings, and nothing happened.
Behind me, three hundred people in velvet and fur waited for a miracle.
Every year on the first day of winter, the Duke of Thornfield made every ward of his house touch the relic.
The Seraph, the old stories said, would come back one day as a child of no name.
Duke Osric had raised two such children from his gate.
I was twenty-two, and I had been a stable ward in his house for all of it.
"Again," the Duke said.
I pressed harder.
The bronze felt like a frozen door.
Leofric laughed from the front row, and his friends laughed with him.
He was the Duke's son, twenty-five, blond and pleased with himself.
He had called me "gate-brat" since we were boys.
"Enough," said the Duke.
He stood from his chair, grey at the temples, in black velvet that cost more than my whole life.
He did not look angry.
He looked like a man who had added a column of figures for years and found the sum was zero.
"Rowan Ellesmere," he said, and the hall went quiet.
"You came to my gate in a basket, half frozen, with a bit of silver on your neck."
"I fed you for twenty-two years because I thought you might be something."
"You are a stable hand."
My face went hot.
"Your Grace, I never asked to be anything."
"No. You only ate."
Some of the court laughed again.
The Duke lifted one hand, and two guards came down from the wall.
"From this hour you carry no place in this house," he said. "No bed, no meal, no name of mine."
"Take your coat and go."
I looked past him.
My sister stood at the end of the second row, in her plain grey dress, her brown plait over one shoulder.
Linnet was sixteen.
She had come to the same gate six winters after me with the other half of my locket.
She was staring at me with her mouth open, and tears already on her face.
"And the girl?" I said.
The Duke smiled very slightly.
"Linnet stays. She has shown a small gift. She will be a mage-ward in my keep."
"She comes with me."
"She does not."
"Rowan, don't," Linnet whispered.
I didn't hear her properly.
I was already walking.
I crossed the stone floor, past the first row, and the guards reached for me.
I ducked the first one.
I put my shoulder into the second and heard his breath leave him.
Leofric stood up in front of Linnet with his hand on his sword hilt, grinning.
"Careful, gate-brat. She's my father's property now."
I hit him.
It was a clean, hard punch, and it landed on his mouth.
He went back over his chair, and the court screamed.
I got one hand on Linnet's sleeve.
"Come on, now, Lin, run."
A guard's club caught me across the back of the knees.
I went down on the stone.
Then they were all on me, boots and fists and the pommel of a sword.
I curled around my head.
Through the pounding, I heard Linnet calling my name.
"Rowan! Rowan!"
I heard Leofric spit blood and laugh.
"Throw him in the snow. Let the wolves have what's left."
They dragged me down the long hall by my coat.
They dragged me through the courtyard, where stable boys stared and would not meet my eyes.
At the main gate, two men swung me once and let go.
I landed in a drift outside the wall.
The gate boomed shut behind me.
Snow was falling in thick wet flakes.
I lay there with a split lip and one eye swelling closed, and I listened to the keep go on without me.
Then I put my hand to my chest, where the silver half locket hung under my shirt.
It was hot.
It had never been hot.
It burned through the cloth, and a pale gold light shone out from under my collar.
From inside the keep, the alarm bell began to ring.
A man's voice shouted across the wall, loud enough to carry.
"The court mage is gone! Ilsabet Corvane has fled with the black stone!"
I got up on one knee in the snow, and the locket kept burning.
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