Arcadia's Love (Book TWO)

Our Precious Song

"Of course. His rules of engagement. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."

"Look ridiculous." Well.

"Have you considered heels?"

"They've taken Sera. And their baby. The Doctor's getting some people together. We're going after her, but he needs you, too."

Oh I wished that I could... "I can't. Not yet, anyway."

They both blinked at me. "I'm sorry?"

"This is the Battle of Demon's Run. The Doctor and Seraphina's darkest hour. He'll rise higher than ever before and then fall so much further, and she will shatter for the both of them, and I can't be with them till the very end."

"Why not? She is your best, best friend." Amy told me, and she was so much more than that to me. She was the person I loved most in the Universe, her and dad.

"Because this is it. This is the day they find out who I am."

Sera:

She was gone... Another baby, my Melody. She was alive, my perfect little song, but they took her away from me. And now I had to watch this, this army, rally them into killing her father, my Doctor. "He is not the devil. He is not a god. He is not a goblin, or a phantom or a trickster. The Doctor is a living, breathing married man, and as I look around this room I know one thing. We're sure as hell going to fix that. Because we have his one weakness." Everyone cheered.

I was watching from the window, scratching at my arms, already with big red welts and scabs across them. I needed the pain, I, I needed to stop myself from cracking. And then a voice came from behind me. "Sorry. I shouldn't be here. I'm meant to be at the thing. I brought you something. Your child's name in the language of my people. It's a prayer leaf and we believe, if you keep this with you, your child will always come home to you."

Glaring at her, I let my eyes burn gold threateningly. "Can I borrow your blade?"

"Why?" She asked, confused.

"Because I've got a feeling you're going to keep talking." Turning back to the window, I rested my head on it, my joints still aching from the injections, knowing that they were going to keep giving them to me until I was killed. "They're talking like we're famous. I might be in the underworld, but my Doctor isn't famous."

"You meet a lot of people. Some of them remember. You're both sort of like a, I don't know, a dark legend."

I flinched at my old surname. "Dark? Have you met us? I'm the dark one, and I'm not the one they're trying to kill."

"Yeah. But I was just a little girl." 

I turned to look at her, recognising her from the Gamma Forest, the River People. "I met him when I was 8, Little Lorna." 

She gave me a big smile at that, because I knew her after all these years. "You've been with him a long time, then."

"Yeah. 700 years."

"You must be very special."

"Hey. You can wait a long time for the us, I may not be, but he's worth it, okay? The thing is, he's coming. No question about it. Just you make sure you're on the right side when he gets here and lets me loose. Not for my sake, for yours." I reached out and took the small prayer leaf from her hands, running my fingers over the soft silk writing. "Thank you."

"On this day, in this place, the Doctor will fall, with his wife as his bait." I was so much more than bait, I was the one who was going to slice you into pieces the second I get free and this medicine wore off. They all cheered again. "The man who talks, the woman who reasons, the couple that lies, will meet the perfect answer." Another cheer. "Some of you have wondered why have we have allied ourselves with the Headless Monks." I had, I was High Priestess of Time, they were supposed to answer to me. "Perhaps you should have wondered why we call them Headless. It's time you knew what these guys have sacrificed for faith. As you all know, it is a Level One Heresy, punishable by death, to lower the hood of a Headless Monk. But by the divine grant of the Papal Mainframe herself," Tasha, what were you playing at? "on this one and only occasion, I can show you the truth. Because these guys never can be persuaded."