“Yes, I know. You should have finished her off!”
“You don’t understand,” Waysa said. “She wasn’t just suffering from the wounds from the battle on the Loggia. I know what wounds from dog bites and panther claws look like. Something else had gotten her. I found her curled up under a fallen tree, shaking in misery. Something had beaten her savagely, broken her bones, tore into her flesh, even burned her. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I don’t understand,” Braeden said, fear gathering in his eyes. “You mean, like some sort of animal? Or a wicked curse? What do you mean something else had gotten her?”
“I don’t know what attacked her, but it was the most disturbing thing I have ever seen,” Waysa said.
“But she was our enemy, Waysa. Why didn’t you destroy her right then when you had the chance?”
Waysa looked down at the ground. He didn’t know how to answer Braeden’s question. “You’re right that I may have made a terrible mistake,” he admitted. “But when I saw her there lying on the ground, suffering so badly, I just kept remembering the night Uriah killed my sister. I could not save my sister from death. No matter how hard I fought, I did not have the strength and speed and fierceness I needed to protect her. But as I was looking at this helpless, wounded girl on the ground, I realized that I could save this girl. I have been fighting for a long time now, but that is not what I was before. It’s not all I wish to be. My mother and my grandmother taught me that sometimes you win the battle not by fighting, but by helping and healing. Sometimes there is more than one path to follow. It is not always clear which way to go, but I wanted to follow the du-yu-go-dv-i, the right path, at least the best I could. When I saw Rowena lying there like that, something stayed my claws. Do you understand?”
For a long time, Braeden did not look at his friend, could not look at him, for he did not want to forgive him, but finally he looked up at him and he nodded. “All right. Tell me what happened next.”
“I picked her up and carried her to a safe and hidden place. I bound her wounds and I helped her through the days and nights that followed. I gave her water and food and a place to sleep and heal.”
“Then what happened?”
“On the night of the quarter moon, I came back and she was gone. She just disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“She slipped away. I looked for her for several nights, but she had become nothing but mist in the swamp.”
“The creature you spoke of, the storms and the swelling rivers…”
“I don’t know if she’s causing all that,” Waysa said. “Or if that creature is the thing that attacked her and caused those terrible wounds.”
Serafina couldn’t help scanning the forest around them. Waysa had seen the storm-creech. And he knew something was coming.
Braeden looked down again at her body lying in the grave.
“But is this how it’s all going to end, Waysa?” Braeden asked. “With Serafina in the ground?”
“We stay bold, my friend, that’s what we do,” Waysa said. “We fight.”
“Even if we’ve already lost the battle?” Braeden asked in dismay.
“Especially then,” Waysa said. “This war isn’t over. We stay strong and we stay smart. You still have the cloak, right?”
“I still have it.”
“Keep it well hidden. Keep it safe. The cloak is our only hope. And whatever’s coming, we’ll fight it together.”
Braeden nodded his agreement. “And you keep the panther safe.”
“I’ll do my best,” Waysa said solemnly. “Stay bold!”
With this, Waysa leapt into the forest, changed form in midair, and bounded away on four legs.
Braeden watched Waysa go. He and Gidean remained at the side of the grave alone. He seemed to be thinking about Waysa’s words, trying to understand what he should do next.
Then he slowly turned back to the coffin and looked at her body in the grave.
“Come back to me,” he said to her.
“Believe me, I’m trying,” she said as a pang of sadness moved through her.
Braeden replaced the lid on the coffin and slowly, almost reluctantly, pushed the dirt back into the grave and reburied her.
When the work was done and he was about to leave, he looked up at the angel.
“Take care of her,” he told her, and then he turned and headed back toward Biltmore.
Serafina wanted to follow him, but she let him go. There was nothing she could do to help him in that direction. She had to join them in their fight against the coming darkness, and she could see only one path to follow.
That night, Serafina made her way through the bog and crept up on Rowena’s lair. The sorceress had just returned from one of her hunts with a satchel full of herbs she’d collected. She had also captured a flask full of cicadas and flies, which she dutifully fed to her growing clutch of hungry plants. Her hood was down, her long red hair hanging around her shoulders. Her face was solemn like before, filled with thoughts that Serafina could not fathom.
“I can feel you,” Rowena said as she fed a fly to a carnivorous plant. “There’s no sense lurking out there.”
“What did you mean when you said much has changed?” Serafina said, staying where she was.
“Much is always changing,” Rowena said.
“But what specifically were talking about when you said it?”
“I meant that you had no idea what had happened since you took your little catnap in the grave.”
“Then tell me,” Serafina demanded.
“From the tone of your voice, it sounds like you already know,” Rowena said, seeming to realize that Serafina had seen Braeden and Waysa.
“No. Not all of it.”
“You’ve seen all the pieces. You just have to put them together,” Rowena replied. “You just don’t want to accept it.”
Serafina thought about what she was saying. “You mean that I’m dead.”
“Of course you are. Or as good as. You’re on your way.”
“And a dark force is attacking Biltmore…”
“You already know that. It always has been. Nothing’s changed at all, and yet everything has. The world is circles, and the circles are broken.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Serafina said.
“There can be no sense in the world to someone who doesn’t want to understand it. You look at me, but you don’t see me. That’s what I meant.”
“What do you mean I don’t see you?”
“You see your enemy.”
“You tried to kill me!”
“Yes, I did,” she said, almost nonchalantly. “And you me.”
“Waysa found you and he saved you.”
“Yes, he did,” Rowena said quietly, her tone guarded, like she didn’t want to talk about it, or her feelings about it, but maybe what Waysa did was the exact point. “There are many paths…”
“Are you the cause of all these storms in the forest? Are you going to attack us? Are you trying to destroy Biltmore? What are you doing here?”
“I’m trying to survive.”
“But you’re speaking in riddles,” Serafina said.