Chapter Thirteen - Seraphina
The morning crawls by in fragments of restless half sleep.
I lie on my side, watching the pale light crawl across the far wall.
Every time I close my eyes, his face rises behind my lids.
I remember the heat of his breath, the press of his hand on my skin, his nearness at the desk, how his eyes never looked away.
The memory unsettles me. My body betrays me, prickling at the thought of his thumb tracing my jaw, the dark promise in his voice. I tell myself it meant nothing. It was fear. Shock. Adrenaline.
I roll onto my back, glaring at the ceiling. My heart hammers, insistent as the memory that clings to my skin. I shouldn’t want anything from him.
I shouldn’t think about his touch, shouldn’t remember the way my breath caught or the small, traitorous sound that slipped from my lips. I try to convince myself it was all nerves, all a cruel reaction to danger, but the thought lingers, sticky as smoke.
When I finally drag myself out of bed, the world feels too quiet. The house is a maze of soft carpets and shuttered windows.
The air is thick, holding its breath. I listen for the familiar drone of Miron’s voice, for the shuffling footsteps of his men, but all I catch is the faint hum of a vacuum cleaner down the hall.
The tension in my shoulders only tightens.
Even the threat feels absent, replaced by something heavier: expectation.
I wander downstairs, moving slowly, wary of corners. The hush is broken by a sudden burst of childish voices; high, impatient, full of energy no adult can hope to match.
“Where is he?” a little girl wails, her voice wobbling on the edge of a tantrum.
“I want Uncle Miron!” another pipes up, stomping her foot hard enough to rattle the tiles.
In the living room, I pause in the doorway, watching.
Two little girls—both under seven, I guess—are tangled in a standoff with the house’s staff.
One, dark-haired and fierce, clings to a battered doll in one hand and a crumpled sketch in the other.
Her sister is younger, softer, with curls spilling everywhere and a bottom lip trembling dangerously.
The maids look harried, not quite sure how to handle the situation. One kneels, murmuring in Russian. The girls ignore her, arms folded, determined.
A familiar pang tugs at me. Children have always been my soft spot. I step forward, letting my voice carry a warmth I haven’t felt in days.
“Hey, what’s going on in here?” I ask, keeping my tone bright and conspiratorial.
Both girls whirl toward me. The older one narrows her eyes, appraising. “We want Uncle Miron,” she declares, as if challenging me to disagree.
I nod, kneeling so I’m on their level. “He’s very busy this morning. Can I help instead?”
The younger girl studies me, sniffling. “Who are you?”
I smile. “My name’s Sera. I’m new here too.”
The older one juts her chin out, fierce as a lion cub. “I’m Liana. This is Sofia.” She wraps her arm around her sister. “Do you know how to draw a horse?”
“Not very well,” I admit, “but I can try. Will you show me?”
They hesitate, glancing at each other. I extend my hand, palm up, and after a moment, Liana deposits her battered colored pencil into it. Sofia crawls into my lap, all trust and warmth, her chubby fingers curling around my wrist.
The maids relax, grateful to slip out and tend to their work. I gather the girls close, settling onto the rug in a patch of sunlight. Scraps of paper and half-broken crayons appear from nowhere.
I help Liana flatten out a fresh sheet, holding it steady as she draws a lopsided stick figure—long legs, wild hair, enormous eyes.
“It’s a unicorn,” she announces. Sofia giggles, pressing a scribbled blue circle onto the corner of the page.
Soon I’m surrounded by laughter and color. They chatter at me with the ease only children possess: stories about their school, their mother, the way Uncle Miron always lets them eat too many sweets when no one is watching. I nod, laugh, ask questions, lose myself in the rhythm of their play.
I show Liana how to braid her doll’s hair, let Sofia press stickers all over my hands. The house feels different with them in it: lighter, fuller, less haunted. I catch myself smiling for the first time in days, my muscles relaxing as their energy seeps into me.
Even when I hear Miron’s voice echo somewhere distant, even when I remember the weight of his touch, I let myself savor this moment of ordinary chaos. It feels almost safe, almost real.
By the time the maids return, the living room is a riot of paper scraps and giggling children. Liana holds up her drawing, proud.
“Look, Sera! It’s you and us and the unicorn.”
I grin, letting myself believe, if only for a heartbeat, that the world is simpler than the one Miron has built around me. Here, for a little while, I can be just Sera again—not a captive, not a prize, just a woman playing with two little girls in the sun.
We trail into the hallway, scraps of paper clutched in tiny hands, the twins giggling and skipping at my side.
Liana grabs my palm, swinging our arms between us, while Sofia toddles along, occasionally stopping to tug her sock back up.
For a moment I’m lighter, buoyed by their easy affection, almost forgetting where I am.
At the corridor’s end, a heavy door creaks open. Miron steps through, tall and composed, as ever. The girls’ laughter stops for half a second before both of them shriek in delight: “Uncle Miron!” Sofia darts forward, arms outstretched.
He crouches easily, catching her in his arms and scooping her up.
Liana barrels into his side, tucking her head under his arm.
Miron laughs—genuine and unguarded—and the sound is nothing like the man I know from tense dinners and locked doors.
He ruffles Liana’s hair, presses a kiss to Sofia’s cheek, murmurs something in Russian that makes both girls burst out giggling again.
I stand frozen, caught off guard by the sight. There’s a tenderness in his movements, an easy warmth in the way he smooths Liana’s wild hair and adjusts Sofia’s dress, that I never imagined him capable of.
His whole posture softens; the usual razor-edge is gone, replaced by something gentle and achingly natural.
He listens as Liana shows him her unicorn drawing, praises her with quiet pride, asks Sofia if she’s been behaving. She buries her face in his shoulder, shy but delighted.
It unsettles me far more than any of his threats or cold commands ever could.
I stare, unblinking, unable to reconcile this version of him—the man who watched me in the dark, who tied my wrists, who let me believe I was nothing but leverage—with the man who glows in the presence of these children.
He looks up and, for a fleeting instant, the softness lingers as his eyes meet mine.
Embarrassed, I quickly glance away, color rising to my cheeks. The girls notice nothing. Liana chatters, waving her picture in my direction.
“Sera helped me draw this!” she announces, grinning up at Miron. “She’s really nice.”
“She’s very good at drawing,” Miron agrees, surprising me. His tone is gentle, casual, the private violence of our last encounter banished, as if it never existed.
Sofia turns in his arms, squinting at me. “Are you coming with us, Sera?”
I shake my head, forcing a smile. “Not this time. Maybe later, okay?”
“Promise?” Liana asks, her gaze suddenly sharp and searching.
“I promise,” I say, meaning it more than I intend to.
Satisfied, the twins wave, still attached to Miron like shadows. “Bye, Sera!”
“Bye!”
They echo each other, then disappear down the hall, Miron carrying Sofia on his hip, Liana at his side, her little hand still tangled in his.
The silence that follows feels almost sacred.
I linger a moment, letting my breath slow, the echo of their laughter settling deep in my chest. Miron doesn’t look back as he rounds the corner, but the image of his softened features, the curve of his mouth as he listened to the girls, lingers in my mind, strange and disorienting.
A maid passes, arms full of laundry, and pauses when she sees me standing in the hall. She glances after the twins, then lowers her voice to a confidential murmur. “They are Markian’s daughters—his cousin’s girls. He loves them dearly.”
I process that, something twisting inside me. “They seem… very close to him.”
The maid’s expression gentles. “They adore him. You are good with them. They like you already.”
I nod, unsure what to say. The information is both a comfort and a complication, crowding out the simple story I’ve built of Miron as an unfeeling monster.
It doesn’t fit with what I’ve seen: how quickly the girls trusted him, how instinctively he cared for them.
There’s history here, roots deeper than money or violence, something almost painfully human.
“Thank you,” I murmur to the maid. She nods, moving off down the hall, leaving me alone in the hush.
I lean back against the wall, trying to collect myself. The image of Miron’s tenderness with the girls won’t leave me.
It stirs up emotions I don’t want to name—envy, confusion, an aching sadness for a man who can hold a child with such gentleness but holds the rest of the world at arm’s length. I wonder what it would be like to be loved by someone with hands that steady, a heart that guarded.
For the rest of the afternoon, their laughter echoes in my memory, blurring the line between enemy and protector.
The world is more complicated than I ever wanted it to be.
I watch a patch of sunlight crawl across the floor, warm on my bare feet, and wonder if I’ll ever understand the man whose shadow rules this house and, somehow, has begun to shadow my heart as well.
I linger in the hall, my mind circling the image of Miron—his laughter, the gentleness in his hands, the way the girls pressed close without a trace of fear. For a long moment, I simply stand, the noise of the house washing past me, uncertain whether I should feel envy or relief.
He is a stranger again, impossible to pin down—one moment a captor; the next, a father, or at least something close.
When I finally move, it’s with a heaviness I can’t quite name.
I slip back toward the living room, collecting the last stray crayons and scraps of paper.
The twins’ drawings are bright with wild lines; unicorns, suns, a little figure that could be me or Liana or anyone with tangled hair and a hopeful smile.
I tuck the papers into a neat stack, unsure why I want to keep them.
Somewhere nearby, Miron’s voice rises and falls, deep and warm as he answers the twins’ endless questions. It’s softer now, unhurried, with a patience I never would have believed him capable of. He listens to them, really listens, and it makes my chest ache in a way I’m not prepared for.
He appears a few minutes later, alone now, closing the door to the girls’ playroom behind him.
When he sees me, his expression shifts. It hardens, then flickers with something unreadable.
For a heartbeat, I think he might speak, offer some explanation, or even a warning.
Instead, he nods, just once, the briefest acknowledgment, before moving past me down the hall.
I let him go, unsure what I would say even if I had the courage. I’m left standing in the soft hush of afternoon, caught between gratitude and resentment, my sense of him more tangled than ever.
It’s easier to remember his threats, his rules, the fear he taught me.
Yet now, that image is blurred, colored by the memory of two little girls and the way Miron softened for them.
If only for a moment, I carry that contradiction with me as I climb the stairs, the house echoing with distant laughter, and for the first time since my captivity began, I wonder if I’ve truly seen all there is to the man who holds my fate in his hands.