Gidean lunged for another attack, biting into Rowena’s side. She struggled frantically and escaped the dog, then turned to flee. Braeden clutched the shredded Black Cloak and pulled it from her just as she dropped over the railing’s edge and disappeared into the dark of night.
Serafina lay wounded in human form on the stone floor of the Loggia, unable to move. Rowena’s spells had torn her chest and stomach with gaping wounds. When she tried to take in a breath, a lightning bolt of pain shot through her ribs. She tried to move her bloody arms and legs, but they lay uselessly around her. All she could do was watch the dark red pool of her own blood spread slowly across the floor. She knew she was going to die.
The black fragments, the inner darkness of the Black Cloak that had been riven by her claws, floated all around her in the Loggia and began to drift with the wind.
She tried to tilt her head to see if Braeden had survived the battle, but her neck moved in a painful jerking motion. When she finally managed to look over, she saw a terrifying sight: it wasn’t Braeden, but the body of a black panther—her—lying wounded on the floor beside her, the panther’s flesh torn in the same way hers was, her sides bleeding and her bones shattered.
Both she and the panther were moments from death.
She knew it was the end.
She tried to look for Braeden, but she could not see him.
“Braeden…” she gasped, blood gurgling in her throat.
Finally, he came into her view. Her heart leapt when she saw that he was still alive. But his head dripped with long, jagged cuts, and he dragged his leg behind him. She watched as he knelt beside the panther and put his hands on her sides, closing his eyes as he infused the cat with his healing power. He caressed the cat’s head and spoke to her in words that Serafina couldn’t hear, running his hands down the length of her long, furred body.
When he was done with the panther, Braeden moved quickly over to her.
“Braeden…” she tried to say again, but her voice was so weak she knew he couldn’t hear her.
As he frantically examined her wounds, she could see how badly she was hurt reflected in the grimace of his face.
“I don’t know what to do, Serafina…” he said as he ripped his shirt apart and tried to stanch her bleeding with it. He couldn’t heal humans the way he could animals.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t want to go…Please say good-bye to my pa…”
But with a heavy grunt of pain, he gathered her up into his arms. “Hold on, Serafina…” he told her, a fierce determination in his voice.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and tried to hold on to him the best she could, but she could feel her strength waning, her consciousness drifting into a swirling black void.
Braeden carried her outside into the darkness, struggling on his bloodied leg, but unwilling to give up.
“Stay with me, Serafina…” he said as he carried her, and she clung to the sound of his voice.
As blood dripped down onto her shoulder and neck, she didn’t know whether it was his or hers. They were both shaking, bleeding, and terribly wounded, holding on to each other with their last hope. But Braeden kept moving, carrying her through the darkness.
He took her down into the gardens and set her on the ground outside the master rosarian’s shed. Then he shouldered open the door, stormed in, and came out with supplies—old wooden apple crates, a hammer and nails, and other tools. He quickly made a crude stretcher-like box with shallow sides, and dragged her body into it. Then he fastened the end with a rope, called Gidean over, and the two of them began dragging her across the ground toward the trees.
She drifted in and out of consciousness as Braeden and the dog pulled her through the forest, Braeden dragging his bloody leg behind him.
When Braeden finally reached the graveyard, he dragged her to the foot of the statue in the angel’s glade and begged for the angel’s help. “Take care of her!” he shouted, his voice cracking. “You have to save her!”
As Braeden pulled away from her, Serafina reached out with her last strength and grasped his arm. “Don’t leave me here,” she whispered hoarsely. “Don’t leave me…”
“I’m not going to leave you, Serafina,” he told her. “I promise you, I will never leave you!”
As she lay dying, with the blood seeping from her body, she looked up at the stars above her head and thought it was the last time she would ever see them. Her body was getting cold now. Her limbs were numb. The pain was receding. She could feel her life slipping away from her, her eyes closing for the last time.
Then she heard the sound of digging. She saw the blurry image of Braeden frantically digging a hole in the ground in the middle of the angel’s glade.
The last thing she saw was Braeden dragging the crude coffin that contained her lifeless body into the bottom of the grave he had dug. His only hope was to bury her in the place of eternal spring.
“Take care of her,” Braeden begged the angel. “I will find a way to put her back together again!”
And then Serafina saw no more.
The darkness that followed was so black and so long that she did not stir.
Finally, a girl’s voice came into the darkness. “You must return now.”
When Serafina opened her eyes, she found herself standing in the forest bog by Rowena’s lair just where she had been. A warm summer breeze drifted through the trees. The vision was over.
Rowena was standing there alone. Her voice was filled with emotion when she said, “Now you know what friendship is.”
Serafina, realizing that Rowena, too, had seen what Braeden did on the night of the full moon, looked at her old enemy in amazement. “And so do you…”
“And so do I,” Rowena said.
Serafina sat down on a log and gazed absently at the things around her. All she could think about, all she could feel, was the vision. She knew now that the Loggia was where she had died. Died…Was that what happened? She’d been buried, that much was certain. But she wasn’t truly dead, was she?
Had Braeden saved her?
She thought about what he must have gone through. He could never let anyone know what truly happened or the horrible thing he’d done. He had dragged the bloody body of his best friend through the forest and buried her. And he hoped that she was still alive when he did it.
In the days that followed, he must have been filled not just with the sadness of losing her but with a terrible guilt. As he lied and covered things up, deceit must have mixed with anguish. His body had been hurt and his heart torn as cruelly as hers.
After months of sorrow and healing, he must have just been finally finding his way back into the world when she crawled from the grave and began to haunt him. She remembered how her presence had upset him. He had seemed so frustrated and hopeless.
Her vision of the night of the full moon was over, and she finally knew what had happened to her.
She thought about her body lying in the grave in the angel’s glade all those nights.
She thought about the young black panther she’d seen running wild in the forest.