21. Seren
SEREN
I lie in a bubble of quiet, but the world outside fills with the filtered sound of the city—a low, indistinct roar bleeding through the walls.
A percussion of persuasion rises from the merchants below, selling the freshest produce from the nearest ports of Palimora or Erosyn. Only the best for the best.
The light feels different today. It’s no longer a tainted gold, but grey, thin and cold—like breath on glass. Or perhaps it’s only I who feels different.
The room is still, the air dense and curved like a breath held for too long. I reach for the nightstand and flick on the lamp, squinting as the brightness warms the space.
Pulling back the sheet, I wince as I lift my nightdress, bracing for the marks I expect to see where Riven touched me.
Little pinpricks of heat ghost the layers beneath my skin, but no bruises taint the area.
No, they were saved for my knees. It’s as if it never happened at all, though the pain is a sharp reminder that it did.
I press a palm to my sternum. The cold manacles repel the warmth emanating from my skin, pushing back like the opposing forces.
My head falls back onto the pillow, my eyes tracing the black lines I inscribed on the walls.
In this early light, the drawings look different: the woman’s eyes a shade darker, the crescent heavier in its arc.
I can’t tell if it’s the morning playing tricks on me—or if something in the charcoal woke while I slept.
Thoughts of Sylas flicker into memory, and the crescent—painted by no hand—against the damp wall. The shape hasn’t changed, only deepened in its blackness, but the symbol beside it has grown clearer. It resembles an eye, but no iris or pupil stares back. Did I do that?
I curl into the silken sheets, memories of Sylas floating through my mind like an easy breeze. If I close my eyes, I can still hear the rattle of his breath. A sound that once horrified me; now, it only brings a pang of bittersweet longing—the ghost of a song I wish I could play on repeat.
The endless crater within expands, swallowing my happiness as I let the tears come, drowning my thoughts in a flood of black.
* * *
A soft knock yanks me back to reality—back to the colourful confines of my prison. Locks click as Kael steps across the threshold, closing the door carefully, as if the room might break.
“New garments,” he says, tossing a folded tunic onto the bed. “They want you ready.”
I push myself upright, pulling the duvet to my chest as if he could see the heat ghosting under my skin. The world sways; I catch my head in my hands, waiting for the motion to top. It doesn’t. I wipe the remnants of sleep and memory from my face and look at the grey fabric at the foot of the bed.
His silver gaze lingers longer than yesterday. The set of his jaw is the same, but the weariness behind his glasses is new.
“Did you rest?”
A grunt is my only answer. I reach for the fabric; it’s thicker than yesterday’s robe—coarse enough to bite.
“Have you eaten?” he asks, nodding toward a tray on the table I hadn’t noticed.
“No,” I grumble.
“I suggest you eat. You’ll need your strength.”
“I’m sure I’ll need more than food for what’s coming.”
Pulling back the covers, I move to leave the bed. Kael clears his throat, facing the door to offer me privacy as I snatch the clothes and head for the washroom.
My haunted reflection stares back through the rainbow-rimmed mirror. I look worse than yesterday; eyes sinking further into their sockets, skin tight against my cheekbones, hair a nest of brittle black strands. I inhale the honeysuckle air—a comfort still tainted by deceit.
I douse my face in water, forcing myself to wake for whatever today brings. I still feel like a walking bruise, my body barely mine to move.
“Are you done?” Kael bangs on the door, a sharp, impatient sigh bleeding through the wood.
I smile at the frustration I’m causing him. “Almost,” I lie. I take the pendant off again, having sought its comfort through the night; its absence feels like a missing limb.
“Hurry up.”
I let the silence unnerve him.
“Seren…?”
I offer no reply. I change into the coarse garments, my movements slow and uncooperative.
I grab the handle and force the door open, only to stumble back at his sudden closeness. He leans against the frame, crowding the space as a gravelly growl builds in his chest.
“Don’t. Ignore. Me,” he says through a tight jaw, a vein pulsing wildly.
Splinters of sapphire and emerald cut through the cold grey of his gaze. I find myself staring again, waiting for the colours to swirl in that silver current. Heat flashes my cheeks, but I stand my ground, defiance lacing my posture.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it was a rhetorical question.” The corner of my mouth lifts, words dripping in sarcasm.
I try to shoulder past, but he’s a wall of stone. In a single motion, his hand snaps out and catches my wrist; he hauls my arm up until my face is level with his. The world narrows to the heat of his breath.
“You will do as I say.”
I claw at his hand, and his skin tears. His eyes flare grey and blue—light under ice—then he closes them. When they open, the light is gone. He releases me with a sharp motion that feels like a command.
I swallow, trying to form words that only scrape my throat. I force my hands to my sides and flex my wrist, a small motion I hope he doesn’t see.
He leans an inch closer. “Continue,” he says quietly, “and you’ll learn how much control I actually have.”
He steps back, the distance between us becoming a lesson.
I clear my throat. “Noted.”
His eyes glide over my mouth, lingering until his throat moves with a tight swallow—the only sound in the charged air. Then his gaze travels back to mine.
“You are a prisoner of Auria. You have no right to ignore a soldier of the court. You do not get to demand questions, or seek answers.” His temple pulses with radiating anger.
“If the Luminaries choose to let you rot here, they will. And when they are done, you will be ash like the rest of your kind.”
“My kind have faced the Cleansing for a hundred years,” I spit. “We know suffering. We’ve endured it, and we continue to do so. What do you know of it?”
He leans closer, teeth bared, creases forming on his brow. “More than you know.”
My chest rises and falls in short, shallow gasps.
“Phase two will commence. You’d best be ready, because I’m not waiting any longer.”
“And phase two is what exactly?”
His fingers flex at his side; his eyes remain pinned on me like an anchor. My hand finds its way up to my wrist, rubbing the area beneath the manacle where his grip still burns.
Finally, with a swift shake of his head and a readjustment of his arms behind his back, he says: “I guess only time will tell.”
“Great.” My voice is as flat as Yara’s cutting board.
He doesn’t rise to the barb. Instead, his gaze slides to the wrist I’m still nursing. He gives a slight turn of his head, a squint of his eye, before his stare trails down the rest of my body.
“The guards will be here soon. But, don’t worry, there won’t be a repeat of yesterday’s subjection—at least, not that I’m aware of.”
His face is but a mask, but the light in his eyes sparkles with a malicious edge.
* * *
A thunderous bang at the door has me wincing. Kael moves toward the sound, pressing a palm to the runes. They glow softly, refracting against the glass in his spectacles.
Two guards, draped in horrifyingly beautiful silver and gold plate, cross the threshold. The weight of chains becomes a rock sinking to the bottom of an ocean I’ve never seen.
Since I’ve been here, no guards have transported me. Why now?
Their eyes never leave me. They stare as if I’m a weapon hung on a wall, ready for strike at any moment.
The corridor is colder this morning; the warmth I felt yesterday is a memory. Metal footsteps clink, echoing against the marble. We leave the grand halls for narrow ones, where stone turns to limestone, then raw rock. The deeper we go, the more the light becomes a rumour.
My heart beats wildly, flashes of Riven and the rod seared into my mind as if the metal were still beneath my skin. Breathing in the chalky dust, I try to will the knot in my chest to untangle.
“Stop doing that,” Kael says, swivelling his head to meet me.
“Doing what?” I bite back.
He tips his chin toward the floor, where my shadows have pooled around my boots—slick as oil, writhing in place. The runes on the walls glow softly in the dark; the shadows recoil, creeping back to my edges, as patient as breath.
“I’m not doing anything,” I say, watching a black tendril coil around my leg.
He shakes his head as if clearing a momentary lapse of judgement.
We stop at a door taller than the last. Its runes hum as we approach, low and unfriendly. I can be unfriendly too. Kael raises his palm, unlocking the mechanisms with a probe of light. Cold air pours out, threaded with incense and the bite of metal.
This chamber is larger than yesterday’s; circular again, but the vaulted ceilings rise like ribs of stone aching toward a central bloom of instruments. A chandelier of lenses and glass discs, etched with light-script, hangs suspended like a frozen constellation.
We are so far underground; how can these rooms be so vast? I’m both in awe and disgusted by the prosperity built upon the demise of my people.
Behind a lattice of translucent panels stand the three Luminary scholars. Their faces are obscured by masks that match their drab, brown robes.
My breath hitches as Riven comes into view. His eyes don’t just narrow; they harden into a cold, glittering stare as his lips press together in a thin, humourless line.
Kael’s hand tightens on the chain, pulling me forward while the guards take their stance. “Stand in the centre,” Riven demands.
I look to the small dais waiting for me. Kael leads me beneath the chandelier, its spiderweb of light glinting over my face as lines of script wind across the floor, faint as veins.
The scholars murmur, heads bowed as they scribble frantically on their parchments. Kael steps to the outer circle of the dais. The chains clink against the stone as he clips the lead into a metal loop at my feet, anchoring me to the floor.
“Are you ready?” he mutters.
“For wha—”
“Begin!” Riven’s voice booms from behind the panel.
I fix my eyes on the muscles in Kael’s throat; they jump and contract, struggling against the words lodged there. “You will attempt to call your shadows,” he says.
“What? I don’t know how?” I plead.
They don’t want obedience—they want proof.
The air feels thin; every breath is a shallow gasp. Cold sweat breaks on my palms, and I clench my fingers, trying to wipe it away. The voice in my head screams, but the manacles sear my skin, demanding submission.
I close my eyes and reach for the place between sleeping and waking—that seam in the world I keep falling through. Lavender. The pale-haired lady. Table. Rod. Visions flash and vanish, flickering like a failing lamp.
Heat rises in my chest where the crescent usually rests, and the runes on the floor stir like something waking under golden ice.
The manacles brighten. Light burns through my eyelids, making the red lines of the drawings in my mind glow fiercer.
My shadows twirl around me, reaching a tendril toward my face, only to be slammed against an invisible wall.
A high-pitched shriek knifes through my ears, followed by the sensation of hot, wet oozing liquid leaking from them.
Pain flares up my arms and legs, converging at the centre of my chest. Above, the chandelier purrs to life. Its lenses catch the glare, sending a prism of agonising colour through my closed lids.
My eyes squeeze tighter, my jaw clenching until my teeth grate. Slowly, the pain begins to recede, replaced by a cold numbness that offers an empty reprieve from the fire.
I force my eyes to open, blinking against the clinical brightness of the room.
“Again!” Riven shouts to the scholars.
I curl my fingers, waiting for the impact. My gaze remains on Riven as the world I slip between rushes to the forefront. The memory of his fingers trailing over my skin makes my spine curl and my breath hitch; my fingernails dig into my palms until blood pools.
Heat builds within until a scream erupts from my throat, echoing in the hollows of my mind.
I am no longer myself, but a vessel for the fire.
I let the room fall away, focusing only on the pulse beneath my sternum—my last anchor to life.
I think of the first altar and the map burning behind my eyes.
The pale-woman’s voice—silk over a blade: That’s it my girl.
Set the fire ablaze and burn them all down.
The shadows answer like a first breath after drowning.
A heavy rope of muscle drags across my hip—mine, yet not. My shadows.
The chill starts at my fingertips, an icy ink blooming in water, fighting the fire within. Two opposing forces claw for dominance. Another scream pierces my ears; it comes from my throat but I can no longer tell if it’s mine.
“Hold,” Riven orders over the deafening pound in my skull.
“Enough,” someone else shouts.
High above, the chandelier gives a thin, crystalline whine. A hairline crack catches the light like a silver thread. The hum wobbles; panels clatter to the ground.
“Contain!” a voice cries.
My eyes snap open, the inferno now an icy chill. I stare through two solid blocks of frost: scholars scramble over the floor, guards close in, and Riven’s face is a swollen, blood-red mask of fury.
The shadows flare in a circle, slamming into the floor like a physical heartbeat. The runes beneath my feet flash and invert—then something snaps at my wrists. Sharp. Bright. A pain like ice.
I look down. The manacles are split—a fracture in the metal. A clean seam, as if something inside them decided to become two. The chain lies slack at my feet like a shed skin.
I didn’t break them. Something inside me did.
For a breath, no one moves. Even the humming of the room forgets itself.
Kael breathes my name like a warning. “Seren.”
I look at the broken silver as the corner of my mouth lifts.
Then the room remembers to panic. The scholars shout; guards rush forward with hands outstretched as silver lines weave into a gilded net. Above, the chandelier spits sparks down like false stars.
Shadows rush up my legs and across my ribs—not violent, but urgent. Protective. They pool over my heart, dark as ink spilled on a page. In the chaos, a voice threads through my mind, warm and inevitable.
You are not theirs to weigh, child of the night.
The floor tilts. Light rushes inward as the net falls, trapping me in woven moonlight—cold, smooth and utterly unbreakable.
The room narrows to a keyhole and clicks shut.