Chapter 34 Stand and Watch it Burn
STAND AND WATCH IT BURN
Later we lay in that bed, limbs tangled, nestled together in the cocoon of white linen created by the four-poster.
I could have lain there for hours, breathing in the scent of Ciaran.
His arms wrapped around me, our legs entwined—safe and warm and cared for.
We were quiet for a while, what we had done beyond words.
It hadn’t been this way before—with Seff.
He had taken his own pleasure from me and drifted off to sleep.
I could have been anyone, or no one. I supposed it had been that way in our whole relationship too.
He would have made me into what he wanted me to be—who I was, what I wanted, what I needed, mattered little to someone like that.
But Ciaran had taken his time, today and every day before, to learn what I wanted.
He paid attention to what I needed. And when he looked at me, it was with reverence; the way he treated my body and soul was as if I were something to worship.
It made me want to worship him the same way.
Ciaran saw all of me and not only accepted it but adored it.
“What are you thinking in that chaotic head of yours?” Ciaran’s voice rumbled beneath my cheek, which rested on his chest. He couldn’t even see my face, yet somehow he could still read me like a book.
I wasn’t sure what to say. In a rare move, I didn’t change the subject. Instead, I chose honesty.
“I think that I have never felt like this before. That I never want to leave this bed. And I’m wondering what this is. What we are. If there is a we…” Truth whooshed out of me in a breathless stream of confessions that I never would have made if I was looking into Ciaran’s eyes.
“Love.” Ciaran planted a kiss on the top of my head, inhaling as he did—like he was trying to memorize the scent of me.
“I will be whatever you want me to be. If you never want to see me again, if you want to chain me to this bed and use me as your pleasure slave, if you want to go back to being friends, if you want something more… I’m yours.
I’ve been yours since I heard you sing on that rooftop—you bewitched me that night, Seraphina.
” His fingers traced long lines down my back, little jolts of pleasure skittering in their wake.
I pressed several kisses to his chest. “I think I want something… more…” A whispered confession. “I think… I think I was yours too. That night on the rooftop…”
I tilted my chin up and found Ciaran’s lips. The kiss was slow—languid. Like we had all the time in the world. He ran his tongue over my bottom lip and it was not with the furious and wanton need from before. It was like something he planned to do a thousand times. More.
The kiss deepened—still slow, like we were savouring this moment—but with more intent. This time, there was no rush. We could take all day if we wanted. I ran my hands over Ciaran’s chest, fingers taking their time, feeling every hard-earned muscle, tracing every scar.
His hands tightened on my back for a moment. He went back to tracing lazy patterns, delving lower with each pass. I wrapped a leg around his waist and ground into him.
“Goddess, the way you move, Seraphina.” He broke the kiss, releasing my swollen mouth. “You will be the death of me.”
“Hm… you like the way I move?” I writhed my hips against him to emphasize what kind of movement I had in mind. I captured his mouth once more, our kisses tipping more frenetic.
“Fuck, yes,” Ciaran mumbled, breathless, against my mouth.
“Watching you dance was like a religious experience.” He groaned, his hands cupping my ass.
“That red costume… your red mouth… mm.” His tongue devoured said mouth.
“You had me undone even then…” Ciaran slid a hand around my hip, finding the heat pooling between my legs.
He began to stroke just as lazily as he’d kissed me.
My mind was about to empty as I turned onto my back and let my legs fall open to give him unfettered access.
He was dragging a finger through the centre of me, circling once and starting another unhurried stroke.
Every touch measured, deliberate, building pleasure in me at a leisurely pace.
His erection pushed against my leg and it was clear that he was enjoying this as much as I was. I could stay here, doing this, forever.
But then something Ciaran had murmured against my mouth snagged my memory. Watching me dance? Ciaran had only ever seen me sing. I pulled away from him, pushing up onto my elbows.
“Would you like to watch while I make you move? While I make you sing again?” He smirked at me, looking down at where his fingers worked me.
I so desperately wanted to let it go. To accept the pleasure that he would wring from me once more.
I wanted to ignore this nagging feeling, that I didn’t understand what he had said.
Because I was sure that there was only one time I had danced in a red costume, with blood red lips to match.
“Ciaran.” I gasped as he pushed down on my clit, sending jolts of pleasure through me. I was closer than I had realized. But I moved his arm away from me anyway. “What did you mean? When you watched me dance?”
I pulled the sheets up around myself, realization dawning. If what he said meant… no… it couldn’t.
“I…”
I watched his face blanche. Watched in real time as he caught what he had admitted in this vulnerable moment, with his defences down. Watched him as the wheels in his head turned, trying to figure a way out of this. “Seraphina.”
“Because… the only time I danced in red was the rehearsal for the gala. The same rehearsal when that beam fell on Carlotta. And if you were there… did you?”
Ciaran looked like he might be sick. I thought I would be too. I pushed away from him, fumbling to remain covered—this person, whoever he was, was not the person I thought I’d just shared my body with.
“Did you do it?” I fumbled for my clothes. They were strewn haphazardly around the bright room, that brightness so incongruous with the darkness that swirled in my mind now. I pulled them on without thinking. “Was it you? Did you drop that beam on Carlotta?”
I needed him to say it. That rehearsal had changed everything.
If Carlotta hadn’t been injured, I never would have sang.
I never would have been on Scion’s radar.
I wouldn’t have been accused of witchcraft—of murder.
That one singular moment had set off a domino effect that had effectively ended life as I knew it.
And Ciaran had been responsible. I had gone through the past several months thinking it was an accident.
Thinking that Ciaran was helping me put the pieces of my life back together.
But he had been the one to shatter it in the first place.
“Seraphina… I didn’t… it wasn’t like that.
” He was scrambling as well, trying to find his clothes.
He made no attempt to cover himself up as he did.
“After that night on the rooftop… I knew you were more than just a chorus dancer. I wanted to see you again. To watch you. But when I saw you from the rafters of the stage, I didn’t even think about the consequences.
You had the ability to do the aria. To do it better than her.
I just gave the situation a little nudge.
I didn’t know she was your friend. And she wasn’t seriously hurt anyway.
” I remembered that day as he spoke. The creeping sensation that had followed me the entire rehearsal.
That someone was watching me. It had been him.
Watching like a predator, waiting to pounce.
Something else wiggled its way forward in my subconscious—a memory that I had filed away for later. Something I hadn’t yet put together. Until now.
“The rose.” It came crashing back to my conscious mind.
The rose that had been left in my dressing room, Carlotta’s dressing room, the night of the gala.
The ribbon had those curious markings that I didn’t understand at the time.
I now recognized them to be magical runes, made to channel raw magic through them.
He’d ensured that I received that too. “You set me up? You made sure I had that ribbon to channel my magic when I sang. You set this whole thing up?”
Ciaran was as pale as a ghost. “No. I didn’t know you would take it on stage with you.
” He didn’t bother to deny it. “I just wanted to… wish you luck. The ribbon, it’s just a spell for good luck.
Your magic… I’m not sure if it leapt out of you because of the runes or because you are just so powerful.
Regardless, it was… a mistake. It’s why I worked so hard to save you afterward.
The guilt I would have felt if they had caught you because of me…
” His eyes were so sincere that I almost caved.
I almost dropped to my knees and forgave him. But I just couldn’t.
“You should have told me,” I hissed. I had gotten the buttons on my shirt done up. Ciaran was nearly dressed. “You should have told me before you… before we…”
And then true horror sank in. Because if the beam and the magic I had exhibited on stage at the gala had both been Ciaran’s doing, then there was only one logical conclusion to make.
He had been manipulating me the whole time.
And the final piece of the puzzle? The final manipulation that got me trapped down here with him?
“No.” Tears stung my eyes, from anger and betrayal, from this man that I had come to care for so deeply. This man I had come to love. And as that word, the one that had been flashing in my mind for weeks, finally clanged through me, I wailed. “No, no, no, no.”
“Seraphina?” He was wide-eyed, acting confused. Had Seff been right all along? Was Ciaran really the villain of this story?
“The chandelier?” I spat. “That was you too, wasn’t it?”
“No.” He stepped toward me, his arms extended as if he could hold together the pieces of me that were falling apart. The pieces of me that he had fractured apart. “No. That was not me, Seraphina, please believe me. I told you the truth about the other things. I would not lie to you about this.”
And it was true. He’d admitted to the other things. But he had been lying for so long. The entire time I had known him. So I couldn’t believe it. Not when all evidence pointed to the contrary.
“Why should I believe you?” The room shook as my magic poured out of the hole he’d made in my heart. The ground quaked from the power of my rage, the raw elemental magic within me searching for a way out. “You have done nothing but lie to me since I arrived here.”
“I have never once lied to you. You never asked about the beam. You never asked about the gala. I would not have lied if you asked—”
“That’s fucking semantics, Ciaran, and you know it.
You were only too willing to let me believe that those were both accidental.
Only too willing to let me give you everything.
My body. My heart. My soul.” My hands tore at the shirt at my chest in emphasis.
“And all you have done is lie.” The ground rumbled.
It felt like an earthquake as my power flowed out of me.
My hair whipped around overhead. Tears streamed down my face and snot poured from my nose. Ciaran didn’t dare step closer.
“I swear to you. I had nothing to do with the chandelier. I was here, Beneath, that night. You know I was. You found me yourself.” He held up his hands in surrender.
“And can anyone confirm that?” I shook violently.
He stood stock still. It was a no, then. No one could confirm his whereabouts that night, before I arrived, and he knew it.
“I don’t believe you,” I bellowed. It sounded unholy, my voice deeper, primal. Ciaran looked truly afraid. I glanced down at my hands and found them completely covered in inky black veins, spiderwebbing up my arms. Holy fuck.
Minutes ago, Ciaran had been moving inside me, kissing me, showing me pleasure I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams. I had fallen in love with him.
With who I thought he was, at least. And now?
My heart was breaking. I swear I could hear it crack.
Or perhaps that was the stone in the walls around us.
I looked to the bed we had just vacated, still rumpled from our joining there, and let out a sob.
Ciaran started toward me, like he was going to try to convince me to stay.
“Do not come near me.” I swiped a hand through the air and he was tossed backward, effortlessly, into the wall, his head cracking against the rock as he slid down.
I was finally accessing that magic that simmered inside me.
It felt heady. Dizzying. The sheer power of it crackled in the air around me.
“Don’t even think about it. You’re a liar.
I don’t want to see you ever again.” Part of me was screaming at that declaration.
No. We have to see him again. And it might have been an overreaction.
If my magic wasn’t roiling in me, clouding my rational brain, maybe we could have talked through this.
Maybe, if he had brought it up weeks ago, explained that he had caused the accident with the beam.
Explained why he had done what he’d done…
But no. He knew how I was tormented by what had happened the night of the chandelier crash.
He knew that it kept me up at night. How I had worried that I had somehow caused it.
How I had lost everything in the wake of it.
If he had caused that? Well, he was dead to me. It wasn’t an overreaction at all.
“Seraphina,” he said, his black eyes flashing with hurt. I had cracked his heart, too. I didn’t care. Good. I was glad. That he should feel a fraction of the pain and anguish that I felt now. “Please. Just hear me out.”
I turned away, not looking back, even as he pleaded.
I wasn’t thinking as I stormed through the tunnels of the catacombs toward the Medusa Steps.
I was a husk. He had been lying to me the whole time.
I trusted him. I trusted him with everything.
I had fallen in love with him during these months together.
And he had taken that love, that trust, and broken it into a million pieces, so jagged, so sharp, that they would never be able to come back together again.
My magic was boiling over. I didn’t even want to know what I looked like—if the rest of me was full of those inky back veins like my hands and arms were. I had to release some of this magic or it would eat me alive.
So I stormed toward the steps, toward the surface. I was so far beyond how fucked I’d been the night after the chandelier. I truly had nowhere to go. So, I went to the only place I could think of where someone might listen to me. Where I could scream at the sky.