Chapter Eleven: The Other Seer
1108 Words
Serrin Draveth stalked into the clearing like she already owned it, every step screaming confidence, like she'd played out this win a hundred times in her head.
"Little Seer," she said again, circling the edge of the clearing, her fighters fanning out behind her in practiced formation. "You've had your gift for what an hour? Two? And you think that's enough to stand against me."
"Ivy, don't," Rhys said under his breath, already shifting his weight between me and the nearest fighter. "You don't know what this costs yet."
"I know what staying quiet has cost me my whole life," I said, and stepped forward before I could talk myself out of it.
Serrin's smile stretched wider, hungry and bright, like I'd just handed her the prize she'd been waiting for.
I shoved away every thought about limits. All I could see was the ceremony hall, the laughter, every lie I'd swallowed for twenty-two years just to survive. Speaking had always felt more dangerous than disappearing. But I let all of it burn through me, sharp and hot, and I met Serrin Draveth's eyes without flinching.
"Tell me why you really want me," I said. "The truth. All of it."
Nothing happened. Serrin's smile stayed fixed, and a cold wave crashed through me. What if it wasn't working? What if I wasn't strong enough? Then, suddenly, her mask slipped.
Not with fear.
With relief.
"You don't understand what you are," she said, and her voice had changed, stripped suddenly of its practiced venom. "You think I want to erase the Seer bloodline. I don't. I am the Seer bloodline."
The clearing went silent.
"That's not possible," Mira said sharply from behind me. "The Draveth line was never"
"The Draveth line was never officially Seer-blooded," Serrin said, words spilling out of her now like a dam breaking, exactly the way Kaelan's had in the ritual circle. "Because my grandmother hid it. Because she watched the Ashford throne s*******r every confirmed Seer they could find, and she made sure her line disappeared into an ordinary noble house instead of a grave." Her hands had curled into fists. "I've spent my entire life waiting to know if the gift would wake in me. It never did. Not once. And then a nobody from a nothing pack gets rejected in front of two hundred witnesses, and the trauma of it cracks her open like an egg."
"You're jealous," I said slowly, understanding landing cold and strange in my chest.
"I'm owed," Serrin snapped. "The old prophecy is clear only one true Seer wakes each generation. One. If you're the one who's awakened, then I never will be. Sixty years my family waited, hid, sacrificed everything to preserve that bloodline, and fate handed the gift to you instead."
"That's not my fault," I said.
"No," Serrin agreed, voice gone quiet and almost gentle, which was somehow more frightening than her fury. "It isn't. But I've spent my whole life being told I was meant for something extraordinary, and I am not going to watch that taken from me by a girl who didn't even want the gift until an hour ago."
The world tilted sideways.
I felt it before I understood. Something wrong bloomed behind my eyes, hot and dizzying. Warm liquid slid over my upper lip. Blood. My knees gave out.
"Ivy!" Kaelan's voice, sharp with alarm, and then his arms were around me before I hit the ground, golden eyes wide with a fear that had nothing performative in it at all.
"The gift has a cost," Mira said grimly, appearing at my other side. "I warned you. Compelling a truth that large, from someone with that much to hide it takes more than you have to give yet."
"She's weak," Serrin said, something predatory sliding back into her voice now that the confession had passed. "Fitting. Take her."
The fighters surged forward.
Everything after that came in flashes. The world spun, blood thundered in my ears. Rhys was a blur of gray and rage, slamming into the nearest fighter. But it was Kaelan's voice that sliced through the chaos, sharp and commanding in a way I'd never heard before.
"Stand down." He hadn't shifted, hadn't raised a hand he simply spoke, and something in the command made two of Serrin's fighters actually hesitate. "By royal blood right, I am invoking Crown Protection over this territory and everyone standing on it. Any wolf who draws blood here tonight answers to the Ashford throne directly including you, Serrin."
Serrin's eyes flashed. "Your father would never"
"My father isn't here," Kaelan said. "I am. And Crown Protection doesn't require his permission to invoke only his blood. Which I have." His arms tightened around me, and I felt, distantly, the bond thrumming steady and fierce beneath his skin, holding something back that wanted very badly to break loose. "So decide right now, Serrin. Kill someone under Crown Protection tonight, in front of witnesses, and you hand my father the legal justification to end the Draveth line by morning. Is that really the trade you want?"
The clearing held its breath.
Serrin's jaw worked, calculation warring visibly with fury. Finally, she stepped back, gesturing sharply for her fighters to retreat.
"This isn't finished," she said, eyes locked on me, blood still trickling from my nose onto Kaelan's sleeve. "You awakened tonight, little Seer. That means the prophecy is already deciding between us. And I intend to make sure it decides in my favor."
She vanished into the trees, her fighters trailing after her. The clearing echoed with silence and the sharp, metallic tang of my blood.
Kaelan didn't let go of me.
"Invoking Crown Protection without my father's authorization," Rhys said quietly, crouching beside us, gray eyes sharp with understanding of exactly what that meant, "is going to get back to him within the hour."
"I know," Kaelan said.
"He'll strip you," Rhys pressed. "Title, standing, the succession itself, if he decides you've overstepped."
"I know that too." Kaelan looked down at me, blood-streaked and barely conscious in his arms, and something settled in his expression that looked, for the first time since I'd known him, entirely certain. "It was still the right call."
Mira knelt beside me, pressing a cloth to my nose, her words about rest and recovery blurring into the background. My vision tunneled, the world fading to gray at the edges.
The last thing I heard before the darkness swallowed me was Rhys's voice, low and strange, drifting to no one in particular.
"My mother hid a Seer once," he said. "It's why the Ashford throne killed her."
Then nothing.
- Writer
