Chapter Seventeen - Seraphina
I spend the next day a ghost, locked behind my own door. I drag the covers over my head and press my knees tight to my chest, the world shrank down to the steady thud of my heart.
I see it again and again: the man on his knees, the flicker of fear in his eyes, the sharp, soft sound of violence—the spray of blood, the red spattered on marble and flesh. The memory won’t fade. It runs on a loop every time I blink.
It is not the first time I have seen death, but never like this.
Never so close, never so final, never with a man who had smiled at me only hours before now lying still and silent on the cold floor.
And Miron, his face carved from stone, eyes empty of anything but necessity.
There was no anger, no pleasure. Only that vast, chilling emptiness.
I cannot eat. I cannot sleep. My body shivers, trapped somewhere between nausea and rage. Every time a knock sounds at my door, I ignore it, burrowing deeper into the bed. The maids call my name in gentle voices, offer soup, bread, tea.
I keep my head buried beneath the pillow until their voices fade to a distant blur. All I hear is the echo of metal cracking against… flesh and bone. The echo of Miron’s cruelty.
The hours drag. Sunlight creeps across the floor in slow, shifting lines. My throat aches with hunger, my mouth dry, but I refuse to move. If I leave this room, if I face the world outside, it will mean accepting what I saw. Accepting that there’s no going back.
I want to hate him. I want to wish him dead. I want to pound my fists against the walls until the whole house comes down around me.
Yet underneath the tangle of horror and revulsion, something else festers, a question I cannot kill. Why did he shield me? Why not let me drown in the horror, force me to see every moment of the punishment he deemed necessary? Why, at the very last moment, did he pull me away and say, “Don’t look”?
The thought makes my skin prickle. It unsettles me more than the violence itself, the possibility that he might care what I see—what I think of him. That he’s not just a monster, but a man wrestling with his own darkness.
By evening, the hunger is a sharp ache. I ignore it, curling tighter, willing myself to disappear. When another knock comes, heavier than before, I almost answer. A deep voice—Pavel, not a maid—filters through the wood.
“Sera,” he calls softly, patience and weariness tangled together. “You should eat. The boss is… busy. He won’t bother you, but you must eat.”
I say nothing. My stomach growls, traitorous, but I press my lips tight. Tears sting the corners of my eyes. I don’t want their food, their kindness. I don’t want to accept comfort from people who watched the same horror I did and went on with their day.
Pavel waits, footsteps quiet. “I know what you saw. No one here forgets. He does what he must. You can’t change that, not now. At least let yourself live, da?”
His voice is gentle, the Russian endearment almost softening the blow. I stare at the wall, refusing to let him in. I don’t answer. Eventually, he sighs and moves away.
Alone again, I let myself shake, arms wrapped around my knees.
I want to cry, but the tears catch in my throat, turning to anger.
I hate myself for feeling even a flicker of curiosity about Miron’s motives, about the complicated calculus of violence and mercy that governs this house.
I hate that I am not numb enough to stop wondering what drives him, what he feels… if he feels at all.
I remember his hand on my shoulder, the urgent way he turned me from the blood. “Don’t look,” he said. For one instant, his grip was almost human.
That’s what haunts me, more than the killing—that he is capable of both cruelty and care, and I can’t decide which frightens me more.
The night settles heavy and close. I stare out the window, watching shadows crawl across the yard. The world outside is quiet, but my mind is anything but. I replay every detail, every word, searching for answers I know I may never find.
I don’t sleep. Hunger sharpens the edges of my grief, but I refuse to break. Tomorrow I might eat. Tomorrow I might speak. Tonight, I bury myself in silence and memory, the echo of Miron’s violence and the inexplicable softness that followed. Both linger, neither letting me go.
When I finally close my eyes, the images return—the flash of steel, the spatter of blood, the ghost of his hand steering me away from the darkness he lives with so easily. I don’t know if it’s mercy, or another form of control. I only know that it’s changed something in me, something I cannot name.
I hate him all the more for it.
***
I haven’t left my room. Not to eat, not to answer the soft knock of a maid with a tray, not even to use the bathroom except when desperation forced me to sneak out in the early morning, wrapped in a blanket of shame.
The memory of blood, of Miron’s empty eyes, gnaws at me.
I huddle on the bed, knees hugged to my chest, wishing for nothing but erasure.
The sun sinks, gold fading to gray, and the house grows quiet. I try to lose myself in counting cracks in the ceiling, in the soft rub of fabric between my fingers. Anything not to remember.
Then another knock splits the silence; different, heavier, full of purpose. I know instantly it’s not a maid.
His voice slips under the door, low and calm but threaded with iron. “Sera. Open the door.”
I freeze, pressing the back of my hand to my mouth to stifle the sound of my breath. I pray he’ll go away. My heart races, a rabbit trapped in a snare. I don’t move. I dig my teeth into my lower lip, tasting copper. If I stay quiet, maybe he’ll lose patience and leave me alone.
The next words come, deep and dangerous, scraping away any hope. “Open the door, or I’ll break the damn thing down.”
The silence that follows is short, electric. I keep still, clinging to a last shred of stubbornness. If he wants in, he’ll have to force it. I refuse to give him anything—not obedience, not words, not even fear.
A crash shatters the room. The lock gives way, the door slamming back against the wall so hard it rattles the windows.
Miron stands in the threshold, shoulders filling the space, face as hard as ever. He takes in my hunched posture, the wild look in my eyes, and his jaw clenches. He steps inside, calm as always, and closes the broken door behind him with the gentlest click.
The confrontation is immediate. Fury tears through me, raw and hot. I’m on my feet before I know it, spitting words with more venom than I thought I had left.
“You heartless bastard,” I hiss. “You’re a monster. Is this what you want, Miron? To make me as empty as you are? Is that why you killed him? Is that why you kill anyone who looks at you the wrong way?”
He doesn’t flinch. He takes one slow step, then another. Each one shrinks the distance between us, swallowing the room. I back away, but the wall finds me before he does—a cold, unyielding presence against my spine. I brace myself, fists clenched, voice trembling with rage.
“I hate you,” I whisper. “I wish I’d never met you.”
Miron towers over me, so close now I can see every line etched by years of power and violence. For a moment, he’s silent. Then his hand comes up—not to strike, but to rest, flat against the wall beside my head. He leans in, his breath hot against my ear.
“You want to know a secret?” he murmurs, voice pitched so low I feel it in my bones. “You’re the only thing keeping me human.”
The words land like a blow, knocking the air from my lungs. I blink, confusion scrambling my anger. I don’t know what to say. I stare at him, searching for any hint of mockery, any sign that this is just another game. His eyes—shadowed, fierce—are more open than I’ve ever seen them.
I shake my head, tears stinging. “Don’t lie to me.”
He doesn’t blink. “It’s the only truth I have left.”
He holds my gaze for one long, impossible moment, then lets his hand drop. The tension between us crackles—rage and longing, pain and something softer I don’t want to name.
I expect more. A threat, a command, maybe even a plea for understanding. Instead, he steps back, drawing in a breath that sounds suspiciously like surrender.
“If you hate me, hate me,” he says, voice tired. “Don’t pretend you don’t see what I am. I won’t apologize for surviving.”
He turns and walks out, leaving the shattered door hanging open. The hallway beyond swallows him in shadows.
I stand where he left me, body shaking, throat raw. I press my hands to my chest, trying to slow the frantic beat of my heart. His words circle in my mind—“the only thing keeping me human”—filling me with confusion and dread.
I want to brush them aside, to write them off as another attempt at control, but I can’t. The look in his eyes won’t let me. It clings to me, burning brighter than any violence I’ve seen from him. There was honesty there, and it unsettles me more than all his threats put together.
When I finally collapse back onto the bed, I find that I am trembling.
Not just with fear or rage, but with the memory of that impossible confession.
For the first time since my captivity began, I am not sure what scares me more: the monster I thought he was, or the man I’ve just glimpsed beneath the mask.
Sleep is a long time coming. I lie awake in the deepening dark, staring at the broken door, heart still beating in wild, confused rhythms. I know I should be plotting escape, planning how to keep myself safe. Instead, I replay his words over and over, the secret burrowing deep into my chest.
I don’t know if I believe him.
I don’t know if I want to.
I stay curled on the bed, the silence around me thick and raw. The broken door stands open, letting the hall’s chill creep in, but I make no move to close it. I can’t. I’m afraid that if I move, I’ll shatter into anger, into tears, into something far more dangerous.
His words won’t let me go. You’re the only thing keeping me human.
I mouth them in the darkness, uncertain whether they’re meant as a curse or a gift.
It shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t mean anything.
I remind myself of the blood, the ruthlessness, the empire built on fear.
Yet it does matter. I feel it deep, unsettling, a seed planted in the bruise of my heart.
I hug my knees tighter, pressing my face into the pillow, desperate to drown out the chaos inside my chest. I want to hate him, truly, fully.
Now, hate feels complicated, hollowed out by something softer and far more frightening. Curiosity. Pity. Even, in some twisted way, a flicker of hope.
I squeeze my eyes shut, as if I can will myself into numbness, into forgetting. Yet his confession thrums inside me, echoing with every breath. I wonder if he feels it too. Feels this quiet, impossible thread between us, fraying at the edges but refusing to break.