Chapter 2. The Night She Ran
1168 Words
“Keep your eyes shut, baby. Just keep them shut.”
Seraphina’s voice cracked as the wind sliced at her cheeks, and her boots sank deeper into the soaked earth. She gripped the small bundle tighter against her chest, barely registering the branches whipping at her arms or the distant shouts growing louder behind her. Her pulse drowned out the thunder. Leaves slapped her face, dirt sprayed up her legs, but she didn’t stop running.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into the child’s ear, brushing trembling fingers through damp curls. “I’m so sorry.”
The baby didn’t cry anymore. That was worse. That silence, so unnatural for someone so young, gnawed at her sanity. His small fingers clenched into her jacket as she pushed forward through the trees, lightning breaking the sky open above them in flashes that revealed blood smeared down one of her sleeves.
“Don’t look,” she begged. “Please don’t look at me like this.”
She didn’t know how far she had run from the estate. Ten miles? Twenty? She’d lost count after the first crash of wolves through the underbrush. The river is closed now. She could hear it. Cold, black water with a current strong enough to carry anything, even sins.
“Seraphina!”
A man’s voice, raw, commanding. Kael.
She flinched like she’d been shot. Her foot caught on a root, and she stumbled, nearly collapsing to her knees. The baby whimpered, a tiny sound, and it nearly broke her. She pushed up again, panting, lips cracked from the wind and guilt.
“Keep going,” she told herself. “Keep going, or they’ll take him.”
Branches cracked behind her, fast. She veered left, down the slope toward the sound of rushing water. Moonlight broke through the clouds and lit the world in silver, just long enough for her to see the glint of something ahead, a narrow footbridge. Her legs were shaking now. Every breath tasted like rust.
“I should’ve told him,” she whispered. “I should’ve told him everything.”
Another memory slammed through her, Kael’s face, broken and furious, bleeding from the corner of his mouth. The council chamber was ablaze behind him. Her own voice screaming his name, her body trapped between two shifting wolves. Blood on stone. The scent of betrayal.
He had begged her to stay. And she had run.
“I’m doing it again,” she gasped. “But I have to.”
The bridge groaned under her weight. The river snarled below. One slip, and she wouldn’t be able to catch herself, not with the child in her arms. Not like that.
She reached the other side just as a howl ripped through the trees. Not a wolf. A man in agony.
Kael.
She collapsed behind a boulder, pressing the baby into the curve of her body, shielding him from the cold, the noise, the memory of what she’d done. She didn’t dare speak anymore.
The child’s eyes were open now, wide, dark, and ancient in ways no infant’s eyes should ever be. He stared at her without blinking, without crying, without judgment.
“You won’t remember this,” she whispered. You won’t remember how much it cost. But I will.”
She kissed his forehead once, then pulled a strip of cloth from her coat. With shaking hands, she bound it around his tiny wrist, an old symbol carved in embroidery thread, the only piece of her mother she still had left.
She laid him gently in the hollow of the rock, wrapped tight in a cloak of animal fur and laced with the warmth of her own body heat.
“I’ll come back,” she promised. No matter what happens. I’ll find you.
Her hand lingered on his cheek for one second longer than she should have. One breath. One heartbeat. Then she turned and ran again.
Not toward the river.
Not toward the voices.
But into the part of the forest she’d sworn never to enter again.
Behind her, the baby remained silent.
“You let her get away?”
Kael’s voice rang through the woods like a blade. He stood at the edge of the bridge, boots soaked, hands clenched at his sides. His eyes scanned the rocks, the river, the empty trees, but there was no scent trail left. Nothing but blood. Hers.
“She was bleeding,” he whispered. “ She was, ”
Thorne appeared behind him, coat slick with rain. “There’s nothing out here. She vanished.”
Kael didn’t answer.
“She couldn’t have gone far. She wouldn’t just leave you like that, not after, ”
“She did.”
Kael stepped onto the bridge, one boot at a time, as if each plank could splinter under his weight. He looked over the edge. The water churned. The trees breathed.
“She left,” he said again, softer this time. She didn’t just run. She ran from me.”
The wind howled through the trees like a living thing. Somewhere deeper in the forest, a scream echoed, swallowed by rain. Seraphina collapsed beneath a cluster of thorn-brushed pine, clutching her stomach, blood still trailing down her arm.
Every breath came jaggedly. Every heartbeat screamed Kael’s name. But she didn’t stop. She couldn’t.
Because she had seen what the council had planned for the child.
Because she had heard the words they whispered about his blood.
Because love was not enough. Not anymore.
“Did you check the borderlines?”
Kael's voice cut through the command hall like steel. He stood over the map table, eyes wild, hair soaked from the storm.
“She couldn’t have crossed the river with a child,” Thorne said. She didn’t have help. No magic. No backup.”
“Seraphina didn’t need help,” Kael muttered. “She’s not... ordinary.”
Nyra stood in the corner, arms crossed, lips tight. “She’s reckless. Dangerous. Always has been. Let her go. She made her choice.”
Kael turned to her slowly, something unspoken burning behind his eyes. “She didn’t just leave me. She left something else behind.”
His voice dipped, hushed, more to himself than anyone. “She left something behind.”
Thorne narrowed his gaze. “What are you thinking?”
Kael shook his head once, but the wheels were turning.
“She was bleeding,” he said again. But there were no signs of her collapse. Nobody. No trail. Only one reason she’d disappear like that without finishing what she came to do.
He stepped back from the table, breathing slowly.
“She wasn’t just running from me.”
His voice fell into the quiet like a revelation.
“She was hiding something.”
And far beyond their reach, in the hollow of a stone tucked beneath moss and pine, the child blinked once and let out a soft breath.
Ath.
It was the only sound in the forest that night.
A promise kept.
An oath waiting to be fulfilled.
- Writer
