The crows were gone.
The crows took off together, wings beating hard as they cleared the trees. Deer broke from the brush at the sa ti, sprinting uphill without looking back. Even the rabbits vanished into the grass, leaving the road suddenly empty as if nothing had been there before.
Sera noticed it all, her eyes tracking the empty fence posts and bare branches where black shapes had been only monts before. Nothing moved like that unless there was a bigger predator around, and for once, she didn’t think that that was her.
Zubair didn’t look for the animals.
His hands tightened on the wheel as his focus snapped outward, scanning the tree line, the shallow cuts in the land, the rise ahead where visibility collapsed too quickly. The speedoter dipped without conscious thought, his foot easing back just enough to buy ti.
Whatever had triggered the flight hadn’t lingered. There was no stagger to it, no confusion.
That ant intent.
Coordination.
Sothing that didn’t blunder its way through territory but was slowly stalking its prey.
Lachlan leaned forward in his seat. "That’s not normal," he grunted, his eyes scanning the surroundings trying to find the treat.
Psycho didn’t smile. "They’re evacuating," he agreed. "And it’s not for us."
The truck crested a low rise, and the road ahead narrowed into a shallow cut between scrub and stone. The land pinched in around the road, forcing a single, narrow line through it.
Suddenly, Zubair was forced to slam on his breaks in order to avoid the figures who were standing in the middle of the road.
They hadn’t erged from cover or stepped out at the last second.
They were simply there, positioned with the quiet certainty of people who expected the world to make room for them. Their clothing was pale and unmarked, their posture upright and disciplined, their expressions set and unreadable.
Sera stared at the figures blocking the road and felt annoyance before anything else.
They were in the way, and Sera wasn’t having it. Her creature wasn’t warning her, it hadn’t spoken a single word since they left Hope Sanctuary, so there was no way these n were a threat to her.
She pushed her door open, not willing to wait for them to make the first move.
Zubair was already moving, heat pulling tight around him as he stepped half a pace forward. Lachlan mirrored him on the other side, shoulders squared, eyes sharp. Psycho stayed seated, his posture loose but his attention was fully locked on the n in front of him.
The figures, on the otherhand, didn’t react.
They didn’t reach for weapons. They didn’t shift their stance. They simply watched Sera step down from the truck like this was a checkpoint she was expected to comply with.
Then, one of them spoke. "You are not permitted to continue."
The voice was calm. Flat. It wasn’t asking a question or waiting for her to agree with sothing. It was giving her a command, and Sera wasn’t having that.
She blinked once.
She looked past him, checking the narrow cut of road, the scrub pressing close on either side. No vehicles. No visible backup. No sign that this was anything more than a badly tid human roadblock.
She exhaled. "That’s mildly inconvenient," she replied, raising an eyebrow. "Seeing as I am not about to turn around and head back the other way."
The man didn’t respond to her words, in fact, he didn’t respond to her at all, really.
His gaze slid over her shoulders, lingering briefly on Zubair and Lachlan, then on Psycho and Aerenyx like they were secondary considerations.
"You are accompanied by entities that compromise regional stability," he said. "You will turn back."
Sera frowned. "That doesn’t make sense," she replied. "We’re just driving."
Zubair felt it then... not danger so much as wrongness. It was the way the man had said entities like he already knew they weren’t human.
The way his attention kept circling back to Sera like the rest of them didn’t matter.
"Who sent you," Zubair asked.
The man finally looked directly at him.
"That information is not relevant."
Psycho snorted softly. "It usually is."
Another figure shifted slightly, boots scraping stone. The movent was small but deliberate, tightening their formation by inches. Not aggressive. Controlled. asured.
Lachlan didn’t like that.
He stepped closer to Sera without thinking, his body angling instinctively between her and the road ahead. Lightning stirred faintly under his skin, not visible yet, but restless in the sa way that he was restless.
Sera narrowed her eyes to truly study the eight n in front of her.
Up close, they still looked human. Too clean, maybe, but still had the pale skin of a human. But they were too still. Their eyes tracked her movent with unsettling precision, but she’d seen worse.
She stopped a few feet away.
"You’re blocking a road," she said again. "Move."
The man’s expression didn’t change. "You are a threat to the throne and all threats must be eliminated."
That got her attention.
Her brow lifted slightly. "What throne?"
But none of the eight n of them answered.
Aerenyx went very still.
Psycho’s head tilted, his interest sharpening as he started to calculate how long it would take to kill them all. "That’s new," Psycho said quietly. "No one’s ntioned a throne before. Are you so long lost princess?"
Sera looked back at him. "Not that I know of. I think Adam would have been delt with long before now if he had kidnapped a Queen or sothing."
"Yes," he replied with a nod of his head. "You’re not wrong."
The man continued, his voice steady. "You carry influence you should not possess. You walk with Unseelie forces. You destabilize succession. I repeat. You are a threat to the throne and all threats will be eliminated."
Sera stared at him. "You’re making a lot of assumptions for soone standing in the middle of my road."
"You do not belong in Region O," he continued as if she hadn’t said anything. "You were told to leave and never co back. You are now attempting to re-enter Region O, and that will not be tolerated."
"Funny," she said. "I don’t rember asking if I was allowed to do sothing or not. Besides, the Sherrif only said that I couldn’t return to Perdition. He didn’t say anything about the entire region."
She took another step forward and that was when the man finally moved.
Not toward her, but toward his sleeve.
The blade unfolded soundlessly, dark tal sliding free with a precision that didn’t belong to scavenged weapons or human craftsmanship. It drank light instead of catching it, edges too clean, too intentional.
Sera registered it as interesting but not threatening. After all, what type of weapon has she not encountered in her journey? And not a single one was able to do damage.
She didn’t move.
Zubair shouted her na as the blade ca down.
It cut through her torso without resistance, cleaving her from shoulder to hip in a single, perfect arc.
And for half a second, nothing happened.
Then Sera’s body folded.
Her upper half hit the ground first, her hands scraping dirt as her legs collapsed behind her. The impact knocked the air from her lungs in a way pain never had since she had been reborn.
She stared down at herself, confused, unable to process what was going on.
Why wasn’t she healing?
Blood soaked into the road, dark and fast, spreading beneath her like the ground was eager to take it. Her vision blurred at the edges, the world tilting out of alignnt as sensation drained in places it never had before.
"That’s..." she breathed, surprised. "That’s not supposed to happen."
Zubair was already there.
Heat exploded outward as he dropped to his knees beside her, hands hovering uselessly over a wound that refused to obey. Lachlan hit the ground at the sa ti, lightning snapping violently around his arms as panic ripped through him.
"No," Zubair snarled. "No no no—"
The man with the blade looked down at her, finally satisfied.
"It was forged for Seelie blood," he said calmly. "You should never have walked this far with Unseelie at your side, let alone have thoughts about a Seelie throne that belongs to another."
Sera tried to laugh.
It ca out wet.
Oh.
So that’s what they thought she was.
Too bad that word didn’t an anything to her.
Her vision dimd further, the edges of the world collapsing inward. She felt hands on her — Zubair’s heat, Lachlan’s shaking grip — heard voices rise and blur, vows and denial tangling together.
She focused on Zubair’s face.
"Hey," she whispered. "You’re hovering."
His expression broke as panic set in. "Stay with ," he demanded. "You don’t get to leave. Not now. Not now that we have all the ti in the world to be together."
She tried to answer but her mouth wouldn’t cooperate.
The world tipped.
Darkness rushed in hard and fast.
And Sera took her last breath.
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