Chapter 35 Seraphina
Seraphina
Iwasn’t drowning.
I had known that sensation before—sinking down into darkness, where sound couldn’t reach me and stone wrapped around my limbs like iron weights. But this was different.
This was quiet. Still. Like floating in a deep pool, lit from within by a soft golden glow.
I couldn’t move, not truly. I couldn’t speak. But I could feel. I wasn’t alone.
A thin, strong thread tethered me to something—no, someone. Warmth pulsed through it like a heartbeat. Thavros.
He was panicking. Searching. The way his soul clawed for mine made my own heart ache, even trapped as I was in this in-between.
I wasn’t gone. I wasn’t stone.
Not really.
Then, suddenly, there was heat. A bloom of something in my chest—like the stone had cracked open and golden sunlight was bleeding through.
I gasped—but not aloud. Not yet. Somewhere beyond this stillness, I wanted to gasp.
Because with the warmth came a voice. Ancient and divine. It was as if Aphrodite herself were speaking.
Not loud. Not even truly words. But I knew what it said.
Wake.
You are mine, as you are his.
You were made to love—not to be used.
To break the brutal bond forced upon you, destroy the source.
The crystal.
The one in the war room.
I didn’t question how I knew. It wasn’t a puzzle to solve—it was divine truth, sliding into place like the final piece of a mosaic.
And I knew what had to happen.
Thavros had to destroy it.
I reached for him—not physically, not even with magic, but through the bond that still pulsed between us like a living thing. I didn’t know if he’d hear me, but I pushed, filling it with everything I had left.
Smash it, I whispered through our tether. Set us free.
And then the warmth expanded—light unraveling from my ribs, from my fingertips, from the very stone of me.
I was melting.
Not like fire. Like sunlight on frost. Like being gently released.
The warmth didn’t stop.
It spread through me in waves, melting stone from the inside out, unwinding chains I hadn’t even known were still there. This wasn’t floating to the surface. This was becoming. This was returning.
I could feel my fingers again—tingling, stiff, then flexing slightly. My lungs drew in air, slow and shaky. I didn’t open my eyes yet. I didn’t need to. My awareness was stretching ahead of me like sunbeams through clouds.
I could feel the room.
The crystal was shattered.
The magic was freed.
And Thavros…
His energy was still there, wild and steady all at once. He had done what I asked. He had trusted me.
That truth wrapped around my heart like silk and steel.
And then—voices. Muffled at first, then sharpening into focus.
“Take him away,” Khuldruk said, his voice thick with sorrow. “But do not hurt him.”
The pain in his words lanced through me. Grief. Confusion. Duty.
He didn’t understand. Not yet.
My eyes fluttered open, yet I was still unable to move. I was slowly coming into consciousness.
The ceiling above was the vaulted stone of the war room. Warm light filtered from torches—and from something else. Me.
I sat up.
Slowly.
My limbs responded like they remembered how to move, but everything was different. My skin was still marble-white, smooth and gleaming—but the veins that ran beneath the surface shimmered gold. Like light had sunk into my body and refused to leave.
The chaos of the room was gone, and I was left in the war room alone.
And when I stood—barefoot and shaking—I realized I could feel everything. The mountain. The bond. The magic in the very air.
I descended the stairs.
The shattered crystal in the center of the table lay in fractured beauty. A few large shards glowing dimly, but countless tiny crystals littered the stone surface, each one glittering like starlight.
It wasn’t dead.
It had changed.
Just like me.
I drew in a breath. Clean. Sharp. Alive.
I remembered everything now—who I was. What I was. And why I had been sent.
But the only thing that mattered now was him.
Thavros.
And I had a mate to rescue.