~Serah POV~
"They're coming... for both of you." Tristan's voice shut the camp down like a blade.
No one argued as orders flew: wagons packed, children bundled, blades checked the mercenaries moved with an ugly efficiency; fear makes people fast.
I felt the baby spin, a small, real thing inside my hollowed chest, and the world contracted to two words: keep breathing.
"Serah," Tristan said, low, "stay near me don't show fear."
"You think I'd leave you?" I snapped, because saying it kept me from saying the other truth: I didn't want him dying because I had been weak.
His jaw tightened. "Then don't get killed doing something stupid."
We moved along a beaten track, boots soft on wet earth the night smelled like smoke and someone's unfinished prayer. From the trees came the first sound of them... a wet, sucking noise, like mouths drawing breath.
"Hunters?" I asked.
"A blend," Tristan said. "Human hunters backed by blood-magic, I'm sure Jethro sends the worst when he wants a result."
"Wait, Jethro knows where we are? Why after me, he denied me and the baby publicly" My stomach dropped.
I remembered his dismissal in the council how he'd declared me worthless and he knew I was carrying his blood before he threw me out; he'd called it a lie then so nothing about his hatred ever meant incapacity for calculation.
Tristan glanced at me hard. "He denied it publicly to shame you but privately, he changed his mind."
Suddenly a twig snapped close by and figures detached themselves from the dark with black-hooded hunters, the Veylen crest on their chests gleaming in the moon. Behind them, the air wavered, and shapes slid: low, lithe things stitched from shadow and dried blood.
Their leader stepped forward, torchlight licking his features, he smiled with the kind of politeness that meant murder. "By Lord Veylen's order," he said. "Lady Serah Duskbane, you are to come with us if you don't want Lady Lydia to fully secure your space."
Heat rose to my face. "I'm not his toy," I spat. "I'm not..."
"Quiet!" The hunter's voice made the world small. "Orders are orders so surrender peacefully and the child will be spared or resist, and be burn alive."
Tristan's hand went to his sword. "You'll not take her!"
The leader looked amused. "Many say that when they are about to die."
A shadow slid from the trees, closer it mouthed something in a voice that sounded like my mother's. "You've brought nothing but disgrace to our family." The word stabbed me like a dagger.
I dropped to my knees without meaning to and panic clawed up my throat. "They're using my mother's voice."
"He will use anything," Tristan said, cold. "Don't listen!"
"Then what do we do?" One of the mercenaries asked Tristan with a low voice as his hand shook on his spear.
"Plan A," Tristan said, fast: "Try to talk them down by buying time, split to the west if they attack and move civilians. If that fails, Plan B.... we move to the river because water hurts the shadows."
The leader's torch narrowed to me. "You will come with us because Lord Veylen will decide the child's fate."
Then I remembered my father's letter and his signature their denouncement, the way they'd closed the Duskbane name on me. "My parents sold me already so I belong to nobody the day Jethro sent me away!" I said.
The leader laughed softly. "You're such a fool my lady, you better to join the winning side now." He gestured, and the shadow-things shifted closer, curious, drooling.
Tristan came to me. "If they try to force you, run for the river I'll hold them."
"You can't hold them forever." My voice cracked.
He leaned down so his mouth brushed my ear. "I don't need forever I just need a enough time." He straightened. "Stand up and speak."
"Speak?" I stared at him.
"Tell them Jethro has no right over you, tell them he's a liar, make them see that your life is not something he owns."
Tristan meant to rally me but the mercenaries meant something else: self-preservation. The hunter leader raised his hand, a slow, arrogant movement and the shadows growled, then the world exploded.
They attacked like a blade through foam... fast, ugly, and close, one shadow leapt and latched onto a mercenary, sucking at his throat. The man's scream tore the night apart as Tristan's sword clashes I wanted to look away, to curl into the soft nightmare of sleep, but the baby stilled like it felt everything.
"Don't run," Tristan barked to me as he fought.
I grabbed a short blade from a fallen man, hands slick with sweat I drove steel blindly notching a cut into one, and a hiss answered like teeth on cloth. I tasted iron on my tongue and realized my palm bled where a talon had grazed me.
"Serah!" Tristan shouted, ducking as a hunter tried to flank him.
He sliced through the man's arm, then another shadow bit the ground near my boot and the soil erupted in black wings. One of the hunters broke from the line and ran straight for me, eyes wild, he aimed for my belly.
"No!" I lunged and the blade shoved into my thigh, I scream of pain.
"Get her up!" Tristan roared.
Mercenaries screamed; a man wrapped a cloak around me and hauled me up which made my breath frantic.
The hunter leader watched us with a slow, satisfied look. "Lord Veylen wanted a public ending, he wanted your surrender but I have orders: bring the child or burn her alive."
I spat blood and grit. "Then you'll have neither!"
He shrugged. "A lord's pride costs less than a life if the result secures lineage."
And then something impossible happened, my child moved, not like a kick but like a pulse of light from inside me, a single, bright beat that knocked a shadow off its feet and made the hunters react like dogs hit by wind.
Everyone stopped and the forest held its breath.
Tristan staggered back, eyes wide. "What...?"
The hunter leader's mouth was trembling as he reached for the collar at his neck that bore Veylen's seal the emblem Jethro used to claim things, his fingers trembled.
"My lord will want proof," he whispered, and for the first time the words sounded afraid. "If the child can do that…if the child—"
Tristan looked at me like I'd become a different thing. "Serah, your child—"
I felt the same pulse again, a faint warmth against my bone, it was small and trembling and not at all like the things the healers described, but it happened.
"The child has power," Tristan breathed.
From the trees someone laughed ... a sound I knew too well. Lydia's laugh, high and close, but she wasn't there.
The hunter leader exhale hard. "The order changes," he murmured. "She must be brought alive to the Lord, no more burning or killing! Secure her by force if you must ... but nothing must happened to the child."
In the pause that followed everyone heard something else: hooves in the distance, a banner passing the road, distant orders shouted reinforcements, Veylen was already mobilizing.
Tristan dropped to one knee, clutching his side. "We can't hold them long."
I pressed a hand to my belly that the baby kicked again, like someone answering from the dark, and the heat under my palm flared.
Around us men shifted, Jethro wanted the thing he'd said he never wanted, because now the child was a prize and Lydia wanted a sole claim while my parents had sold me to save themselves.
Tristan looked up, eyes raw. "We should run to the west old ford, there's a boat there and...."
A horn split the night from the road, a single rider broke through the trees, cloak streaming but face hidden. He reined in, threw back his hood, and the firelight hit a sigil on his breastplate.
That's Duskbane and my breath left me, the rider dismounted and walked straight toward us, hand raised in a peculiar salute his voice was calm as a judge.
"For the record," he said, loud enough for every mercenary to hear, "House of Duskbane rescinds nothing and we bear no claim, no obligation, and no shame, so any child the woman claims is not our blood."
The rider's laugh was like knife, that's funny and painful that they refer to me as the 'woman' now.
Tristan's face went from relief to ice. "They sent him."
The sad part is that, the rider has my father's face ... smiled at me the way a man smiles at a stranger. "Lord Veylen prefers certainty, we do what preserves our house."
My knees buckled the world lurched and behind my father marched a small company of riders — Duskbane pennants snapping in the cold wind. I had promised myself I would not break in front of anyone.
Tristan reached for my hand and I grabbed it, and together we ran, while behind us the hunters shouted and the Veylen banners unfurled like a promise of worse to come.
We ran, and the night answered with the sound of hooves and a name I could no longer strike from my memory: Veylen.
Somewhere in the thicket, a human voice, soft, patient... said, "Bring the child alive, the Lord chooses."