Chapter 20
Twenty
Three hours.
Three hours since Croesus walked out of the library. Three hours since I admitted out loud what I'd been trying to deny for weeks. Three hours since Seraph tucked my hair behind my ear and looked at me like I'd given him something precious.
And in all that time, I haven't felt a single thing from him.
I stare at grandmother's journal, the words blurring on the page. I've read the same paragraph six times without absorbing any of it. My mind keeps drifting back to that moment, his fingers on my jaw, the softness in his voice, the almost-smile that transformed his face.
Thank you. For being honest.
I reach for the bond between us, the silver thread that connects me to Seraph. It's there, solid and real, pulsing with the power that marks him as one of the seven. But when I try to feel along it, try to sense what he's feeling, I hit... nothing.
Not emptiness. Not distance.
A wall.
Cold, smooth, impenetrable. Like running my hands along marble and finding no door, no window, no crack to slip through.
I push harder. Surely there's something, some flicker of emotion, some hint of what's happening behind that perfect facade. He just heard me confess that I want him. He has to be feeling something.
Nothing.
The wall doesn't budge. Doesn't even acknowledge my presence.
And suddenly I understand exactly what I did to Croesus.
The realization hits me like a bucket of cold water.
This silence. This void where connection should be.
This desperate reaching and finding only cold stone.
I did this to him for three days after Kael’s fight.
Let him scream into the darkness while I enjoyed my blessed relief, my peaceful quiet, my freedom from the intensity of feeling.
I thought I was protecting myself.
I was torturing him.
And now Seraph is doing the same thing to me, and it hurts. It hurts in a way I wasn't prepared for. Because I just made myself vulnerable. I just admitted something terrifying and true. And he's responded by... hiding.
Shutting me out.
Being perfect and untouchable and completely, infuriatingly closed off.
I shove back from the reading table so hard the chair scrapes against the marble floor. Grandmother's journal falls closed, but I don't bother to mark my place. I can't focus anyway. Can't think about anything except the wall where Seraph's emotions should be.
He doesn't get to do this.
He doesn't get to push and push and push until I crack open, until I admit things I wasn't ready to say, and then retreat behind his walls like none of it mattered.
I'm moving before I've consciously decided to, my feet carrying me through the halls of the House of Ruin.
Past the gallery of failures with its aging portraits.
Past the small room where twenty dead Vespers stare from their frames, where Meredith from 1823 watches with my face.
Past the pristine white marble and the silver light and all the cold, perfect beauty that Seraph surrounds himself with.
His chambers are at the heart of the house.
I've been staying there since I arrived, no private room for me, just a corner of his space that he's graciously allowed me to occupy.
But he's rarely there when I am. Always finding somewhere else to be, some excuse to maintain distance even while keeping me close.
Not tonight.
I push through the doors without knocking. It’s my room too, after all.
The room is darker than usual, the silver light dimmed to something almost soft. Candles burn on the dresser and the nightstands, their flames reflected in the massive mirrors that line the walls. And there, standing at the window with his back to me, is Seraph.
He doesn't turn around.
"I was wondering when you'd come," he says. His voice is calm. Completely controlled, like everything else about him.
"You shut me out."
"Yes."
No explanation. No apology. Just that single word, plopped like a stone into still water.
"Why?"
Now he does turn, and in the candlelight, he looks almost human. The sharp angles of his face softened by shadow. The silver of his eyes catching the flickering flames.
"Because some things are private."
"Private." I laugh, but there's no humor in it. "You've spent weeks telling me to stop hiding. To be honest about what I feel. To stop protecting Croesus from the truth. And the moment I actually do that, you—"
"This is different."
"How? How is it different?"
He doesn't answer. Just stands there, perfect and still and completely unreadable, and I want to scream.
"I felt what I did to Croesus," I say, and my voice cracks on his name. "Just now. Reaching for you and finding nothing. That cold, empty silence where a connection should be. I did that to him for days, and I didn't understand how much it hurt until you did it to me."
Something flickers across his face. There and gone too fast to name.
"Good," he says quietly. "You needed to understand."
"Is that what this is? A lesson?" I step closer, anger rising in my chest. "You're teaching me what it feels like to be shut out? How very instructive of you."
"That's not—"
"Then what? What could possibly be so important that you need to hide it from me right now, after everything I just—"
"Because I don't know what I'm feeling!"
The words explode out of him, sharp and spiked and serrated. So utterly unlike the controlled angel I've come to know. His eyes blaze in the candlelight, and for just a moment, I see the cracks in his perfect facade.
Then it's gone. Smoothed over. Restrained again.
"I don't know what I'm feeling," he repeats, quieter now. "And I refuse to let you see that confusion. That... uncertainty."
"Why?"
"Because I'm supposed to be better than this.
" He turns away, presenting me with his back again.
With the perfect fall of silver hair and the elegant line of his shoulders and the sheer, immaculate control of his posture.
"I'm supposed to be above messy emotions.
Above wanting things I shouldn't want. Above—"
"Above being real?"
His shoulders tense.
"You don't understand," he says.
"Then help me understand!" I close the distance between us, grabbing his arm and forcing him to face me. "You push and push until I break open, and then you hide behind your walls and your perfection and your—"
"Because I don't know if it's real!"
The words cut through the room like a blade. I freeze, hand still gripping his arm.
"What?"
He pulls away from me, pacing toward the window, running a hand through his platinum hair in that unconscious gesture that means he's losing control.
"You. This. Whatever I feel when I look at you.
" He laughs, but it's hollow. Bitter. "Do you know how many times I've stood in that gallery, looking at the sketch I drew two hundred years ago? At a woman who could be your twin?"
My stomach drops.
Meredith Vesper. 1823.
"I wondered," I say quietly. "When I saw the portrait. When I saw your signature."
"Of course you did. You're not stupid." He turns back to face me, and for once, his expression isn't carefully arranged. It's raw. Conflicted. "I cared for her. I failed to save her. And now you walk in wearing her face, and I can't tell if what I feel is real or if I'm just—"
"Haunted by a ghost?"
"Trying to fix a two-hundred-year-old mistake." His voice cracks. "Trying to save the woman I couldn't save before. Projecting feelings onto you that belong to someone who's been dead for centuries."
The words hurt more than I expected. I've wondered this myself, late at night when I couldn't sleep. Whether Seraph looks at me and sees me, or whether he sees her. Whether I'm Raven, or just the latest Meredith to wander into his house.
"Is that what you think this is?" I ask. "That I'm just... a replacement?"
"I don't know." He says it like it's being torn out of him.
"That's what I'm trying to tell you. I look at you and I feel things I haven't felt in centuries.
And I can't tell if it's because of who you are or because of who you look like.
And until I know the answer to that question, I don't—" He stops, jaw clenching. "I don't deserve to let you in."
The angel of pride, admitting he doesn't know his own heart. Admitting he might be using me as a stand-in for a dead woman. It should make me angry. It should make me walk out and never look back.
But I think about what he told me at dinner, weeks ago. About the price of pride. About what the fall took from each of them.
I was the most beautiful of us. Before. My wings were perfect. And now they're not. They can never be perfect again.
I think about the glimpse I caught in the training room, when I kissed him and his glamour slipped. Broken wings. Scarred. Twisted. Gone before I could really see them, hidden away behind walls of shame.
I think about the way he's been with me ever since. Pushing me away. Pulling me close. Never letting me see too much of either extreme.
"Then let me help you figure it out," I say.
He goes still. "What?"
"You're standing there torturing yourself trying to analyze feelings you've been running from for weeks." I take a step toward him. "That's not how this works. You don't figure out what you feel by hiding from it. You figure it out by letting yourself feel it."
"That's easy for you to say."
"No, it's not. I just admitted to two ancient, powerful beings that I want both of them. You think that was easy?" Another step. "You think I'm not terrified that I'm broken somehow? That there's something wrong with me for not being able to choose?"
"Raven—"
"You want to know if what you feel is real?
Then stop analyzing it. Stop hiding behind your walls and your uncertainty.
" I'm close enough to touch him now. Close enough to see the rapid pulse in his throat, the slight tremor in his hands.
"Let me in. And we'll figure out together whether I'm Raven or just another Meredith. "