Chapter 6
Chapter six
Seraphina
Control – Halsey
The church swells with people, and the atmosphere wraps around me like a shroud, heavy and unyielding.
I keep my head low as father moves up the steps to the pulpit, his black robes sweeping across the floor like swathes of shadow. Sun filters through the stained glass, fractured beams of red and blue spilling across his face until he looks half angel, half deformed. Maybe it’s his true self.
The congregation waits, obedient and eager, hands folded neatly in their laps, Bibles balanced on their knees. Children shift restlessly, their mothers tugging them back into stillness. The air hums with reverence, fear, the sharp-edged silence of people too afraid to breathe too loud.
I don’t dare look up.
I know the rules.
Keep still. Keep silent. Keep obedient.
Father begins the sermon in his usual commanding tone, his voice filling the rafters, though I feel no comfort in the wordage.
“Rebellion,” he says, pausing long enough for every eye to fix on him, “is the rot that eats at the heart of righteousness. It begins small, like a weed. Left unchecked, it strangles everything holy. But obedience—obedience is the cure. It is the sword and the shield, may the wayward lamb’s return to the flock. ”
The congregation hums their approval. Pages of Bibles rustle like wings.
I mouth the lines I’ve been forced to recite since childhood.
That’s all they are to me now—lines, rehearsed like a play I never agreed to perform.
I know them backwards and forwards, every pause, every inflection, yet the meaning I give them has nothing to do with my father’s sermons.
He thinks they bind me. But when I whisper them now, it’s with scorn curling in my chest—a quiet rebellion no one can take from me.
The words taste like ash on my tongue, but sometimes, in the hollow between syllables, their true meaning sparks—small, defiant joy.
Then, his tone shifts. Brightens.
“Today,” he announces, voice booming, “is a day of blessing. Today I present my daughter, Seraphina Carmichael, promised in holy union to Gideon Cross. Their wedding will be this Friday.”
The church erupts. Applause like thunder rolling through the pews. A few women press hands to their chests, smiling as though love itself has bloomed before them. The men nod, satisfied, some even chuckle as if congratulating father on a successful business deal.
My heart slams so hard I’m sure they can hear it.
Not one pair of eyes turns to me. Not one smile is for me.
I am invisible. I am the offering on the altar.
Father raises his hands, commanding silence once more. His eyes never seek mine.
“Blessed is the man who tames the wild woman into obedience,” he intones.
The words fall heavy, harder than any hand ever could.
Blessed. Tamed. Obedient.
The congregation murmurs their agreement, voices rising into a hymn. The sound swells, holy and triumphant, rattling through the rafters until it feels like the church itself is alive and rejoicing.
Mine stays silent.
After the service, I’m led not out into the sunshine, not into the safety of the familiar pews, but down a narrow corridor into the vestry.
The air here is stale, damp, heavy with mildew. Stone walls sweat with moisture. A single candle burns on the table, its flame trembling in the draft. The door shuts with a dull click.
He is waiting.
Gideon Cross.
Older than father, hair black and slicked back, unnervingly perfect, like every strand had been trained to obey.
His face is smooth, too smooth—marble polished until no imperfection, no warmth, dares remain.
His dark suit clings to him like a shadow stitched to flesh, tailored sharp, posture straight as a blade.
Hands clasped neatly in front of him, yet the control doesn’t make him safe—it makes him a predator.
His eyes. Black, endless, void-like. Looking into them is like staring into a darkness that swallows everything familiar, everything human.
No flicker of empathy, no softness—just the cold calculation of someone who measures people like objects.
His smile stretches across his face, perfect, constant, carved there like a mask.
It doesn’t reach the abyss behind his gaze.
It’s a promise of control. A warning in disguise.
I don’t speak.
“You’re thinner than the last time I had you alone in your room, fiancée. Sickly. Unhealthy.” Gideon’s voice is calm, almost gentle—the kind of warmth a snake might use while whispering lullabies before it strikes. His lips curve, but his eyes never soften.
“That will make it easier. A wild horse breaks faster when it’s frail and starved.”
My stomach twists as he motions me to take the chair across from him.
He leans forward, elbows resting on his knees, that carved smile stretching wider, too smooth, too certain. “I look forward to breaking your body,” he says softly, “right before I brutally rip away the innocence you cling to.”
The room tilts. His words slide through me like ice water, sinking deep, freezing everything they touch.
“You’ll scream, Seraphina.” His voice lowers further, almost tender in its cruelty. “But not loud enough to reach God. Not loud enough for anyone to hear while I remake you.”
He studies my face, my silence, and tilts his head. “Do you know why I wanted you?”
I say nothing.
He chuckles, shaking his head. “Your father believes it’s because of your obedience.
Your piety. He’s wrong.” His voice drops even lower.
“It’s because of your defiance. I can see it even now, flickering in your eyes.
You don’t want this. That’s what excites me.
To take something that resists and grind it into dust.”
My hands ball into fists at my sides.
He reaches out, fingers brushing the fabric covering my hair. My body locks, every muscle screaming.
My breath seizes. I jerk back so hard the chair legs scrape against the floor, heart slamming against my ribs. He only chuckles, rich and amused, as if my terror is the entertainment he paid for.
“Now, now,” he soothes, mock-gentle. “Don’t fret. I won’t touch more. Not until our marriage.” His smile widens, his teeth flashing like a predator about to feed. “Our union will be complete.” He rolls the word on his tongue, savoring it, before leaning in.
“Anticipation… oh, it is the sweetest torment. You’ll spend every night knowing what’s coming. Until you’re on your knees begging for it.”
A laugh escapes him—sharp, unholy. It coils around me like smoke, raising the hair along my neck and arms. My skin crawls.
“You were never meant for an ordinary life, Seraphina,” he says, voice calm as a sermon. “You were carved for purpose. A vessel. The mother of a legacy greater than you can comprehend.”
My pulse hammers. His words press against my skin like cold hands.
“I will unmake what you think you are,” he continues, eyes black and depthless. “Strip away the girl. Shape the Chosen.” His smile never wavers.
My nails dig crescents into my palms, but I can’t move, can’t speak. The candle between us flickers, shadows warping his face into something monstrous.
His hand falls back into his lap, relaxed, as if he’s merely finished commenting on the weather. The smile doesn’t falter. “You’ll learn,” he murmurs. “All wives do.”
The door creaks open. A guard stands there, silent, waiting.
I push up too fast, stumbling. My dress skirt snags against the chair, and I nearly fall before forcing myself forward. The candle burns behind me, flame leaping, reaching as though it wants to catch me, snare me, drag me back into the dark.
I don’t breathe again until the heavy door shuts between us.
My room is a dark pocket when I stumble back into it.
Small and bleak, it feels like an afterthought—bare walls, a thin blanket folded on a narrow bed.
The air tastes of old baked dust from the radiator and a mildew so faint it’s already seeping into the floorboards, like the chapel itself is forgetting how to breathe.
I slam the door so hard the wood shudders.
My back presses into it, spine against cold grain.
My chest tightens until it feels like my ribs are folding in on themselves.
Breaths come jagged, shallow, too fast, too sharp, scraping my throat raw.
My hands shake like they’re trying to escape my body.
My legs threaten to give way, trembling beneath me, useless, betraying me.
He didn’t touch me—at least, not the way blades break skin—but the man was a cloud of filth.
He hangs in my memory like smoke, stinging my face, staining my clothes, making the world smell wrong.
I lurch to the drawer, limbs moving on their own because I need something—anything—that isn’t the room, the voice, the threat. I need the graphite, the paper. Drawing is the only place that feels like mine, where my hands make something honest out of the noise.
But the drawer is empty.
“No.” The word rips out of me, thin and jagged.
My fingers claw through the scattered dresses and modest scarves, overturning the small, plain things I have left.
My sketches—my hiding places, the secret corners of me where I breathe—are gone.
The blankness where they should be is a new kind of violence.
A door creek. The hinges complain like a witness.
He fills the doorway.
“How’s the prodigal artist?” Father’s voice is calm, almost fond. The words wash over me but land like stones. “What’s the matter, daughter? Lost your blasphemous acts of defiance?”
“Father, please.” My voice is smaller than I feel. “It’s just art.”
He steps all the way in, the lamplight catching his collarbone like a cross.
His smile is slow and certain, practiced.
“Art.” He repeats it as if testing the taste, as if the word itself needs to be broken.
There’s a tremor at the edge of his voice that I used to believe was softness. Now it tastes like finality.
The cold in my chest doubles, a slow-rolling ice. His meaning arrives like a verdict. “You won’t need art where you’re going,” he says, smug, satisfied. “All you need is faith—faith in me, and in the Lord.”
The sentence hangs there, a rope with a noose at the end. Faith becomes a thing he hands down like a law, like a binding. Not a comfort. Not a choice. A prison.
I open my mouth. Nothing good lives in the sound that comes out—only a small, useless protest. My fingers, restless and useless, scrape at the hem of the scarf I still have. Ink and paper might be gone, but the memory of each line is still under my skin. It’s mine, even if they try to steal it.
My throat burns.
He steps closer, lowering his voice. “I’ve seen the man in your drawings. The one who skulked outside at night, sitting in your pew, searching for you.” He smirks. “He won’t be coming again. I’ve made sure of it.”
I freeze. His words strike like lightning.
Trey. He came back. He was looking for me.
No one has ever cared before.
He watches me a beat longer, satisfied with whatever mark his words left. Then, he turns and leaves. The door closes slow, like a judge sealing a file.
The silence that follows is loud enough to hurt.
I press my palms flat to the drawer’s empty wood, feeling the grain as if it will whisper back what was taken.
The room smells of him—the faint tang of his cologne, candle wax, and something sour that makes my stomach twist. I sit on the edge of the bed and shake until the tremor is only a small hum.
They have taken my paper. They have not taken the lines I learned by heart at three in the morning, fingers stained and trembling.
They have not taken the way I see the world—the flare of color in the gutter, the shadow of a hand on a hymnbook, the way light slices through a curtain and names everything in gold.
I curl my knees up, clutch the empty space where my sketches should be, and repeat the prayers I once mouthed with real conviction, twisting the words inside until they mean something different—until they are my armor and not his chain.
My chest feels like it might burst from the weight of a truth I don’t know how to carry… someone came back for me. Someone saw me. Someone cared enough to look.
Summer is long gone—yet he came back.
How long ago was it? Was he here yesterday? Last week? Under the same roof? My vision blurs, tears sliding down my face as the chains close tighter around my wrists.
Night falls.
My candle burns low, shadows crawling across the walls like hands reaching for me.
The wedding dress hangs in the corner, taunting me. White. Stiff. Pure cotton with a high collar that bites at the throat, sleeves strangling down to the wrists, the skirt heavy enough to drown in.
It looks old, worn, steeped in despair. Sharing a room with it feels like sharing space with an executioner’s block.
It isn’t salvation. It isn’t escape from my father. It’s something far more twisted.
The longer I stare, the more it seems alive. Waiting. Beckoning. Every thread a chain. Every stitch a nail in the coffin.
I can almost hear the fabric whispering promises of suffocation. Of erasure. Of silence.
My stomach twists, bile rising. My hands dig into the mattress until my nails ache.
Finally, I reach beneath my pillow. My last secret. My last fragment of hope. A scrap of paper, folded so many times the edges have softened, hidden in the lining for weeks.
The address Trey gave me. His handwriting.
I hold it to my chest like scripture, like oxygen.
I was born in a prison, but Friday, they’ll bury me in it.
Not if I run first.
I tuck the paper and my ID into my cardigan pocket. The only pieces of myself left.
The dress looms. The candle dies.
I curl on the bed, eyes open to the dark, and whisper into the silence.
“I’m coming, Trey.”
Not because I believe he’ll save me. Not because I believe in fairy tales.
But because he gave me one thing no one else ever did.
A door.
A choice.
And tomorrow night, I’ll walk through it.