EPILOGUE #3
Serafina Visconti hated titles.
Former Crown Princess of the sector.
Witch. Harvester. Monster.
Murderer.
Okay, not exactly titles, but they were all anyone could talk about these days.
She hadn’t wanted to come tonight at all, had wanted to shut herself in her closet with the door tightly closed and all the lights off.
The dark crevice between her hamper and her shoe rack was the only space where she couldn’t quite hear the chants calling for her death from outside the palace grounds.
They made her stomach hurt from the moment she woke, made her fall asleep every night with tears soaking her pillow.
But it was her brother’s day, and she loved Dani as well. And so as always, she pushed her feelings down, put on a lovely dress, long opera gloves, and told herself she was simply not allowed to throw up at dinner. Or the ball.
Except now there were hundreds of guests crowded into the ballroom. No one said anything to her face. But from the way eyes tracked her and heads ducked together as she passed, Sera knew what everyone had to be whispering.
She stayed through dinner, keeping a smile plastered on through the toasts.
Her face was starting to hurt from all the fake smiling by the time Alex finally twirled Dani around the dance floor.
Only when she thought she would be physically ill if she remained a moment longer did she slip out a side door onto one of the dark terraces.
After the stifling heat of the ballroom, the cold night air was a blessed relief against her skin.
She tucked herself into the shadow of a marble column, staring up at the brilliant winter sky scattered with stars overhead and the spires of the castle silhouetted before them.
Just for a second, she was reminded that she didn’t hate everything about this place.
Then she heard the chanting.
After so many weeks, Sera wasn’t entirely sure what they were screaming anymore.
Witch.
Whore.
Monster.
Demands that her entrails be strewn across the city and left out for the birds.
It was hardly the stuff of poetry.
Even as the rational part of her mind tried not to listen, told her the cowards would eventually move on and channel their hatred towards some new target, it was the sheer number of them who gathered day after day that frightened her.
How could so many people she’d never met want her dead that badly?
A tear traced down her cheek. Shaken, she swiped it away. She knew she should just go back inside. She had no idea what had even drawn her out to the terrace—
That was when Sera realized she wasn’t alone.
A man stood at the edge of the balcony, staring down at the protestors. His blond hair seemed almost to shimmer in the moonlight. Unexpectedly, Sera felt her stomach twist, the sight of the fae king setting her on edge for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with the angry crowds below.
Checking to make sure her gloves were securely in place, she walked to the edge of the balcony.
Finneas didn’t turn at her approach, silently taking in the lights of the sector stretching out before them.
“Come to shove me into any more expensive displays of glassware, Serafina?”
She refused to smile. “Why, did you commission something hideously expensive and inappropriate for the occasion?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “That bowl belonged to my great grandparents. It was meant to bring us years of good fortune in our mating.”
“I didn’t know that.” She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly uncomfortable.
Frowning, Finneas started to remove his coat.
“I’m fine.” She took a small step back.
“You’re freezing.”
She started to deny it, but her teeth had begun to chatter, and the lie would have been obvious.
And yet, as Finneas shrugged the jacket from his shoulders and held it out for her to slip on, even as she felt the inviting heat coming from the fabric where it had just touched him, she couldn’t unknot the dark, poisonous thing that for weeks (longer, if she were being honest), had been threatening to strangle her.
“Sera,” he said softly. “It’s okay. You aren’t going to hurt me.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “If I accidentally touch you, I could—”
Before she could finish the sentence, he’d stepped into her space, sliding a hand to cup her cheek. Sera gasped at the contact, trembling so hard she thought she might faint. Finneas gently traced her tears away with the pad of his thumb until her eyes lifted to his.
“No,” he said softly. “You can’t. And I think we both know why.”
She sniffled, unable to do anything but silently cry as he traced her tears away. How long had it been since she’d let anyone touch her without her gloves?
“You don’t scare me, Sera.”
She drew a shaky breath. “Maybe I should.”
“Please take my coat. I can’t stand to see you out here freezing.”
Heart pounding so hard her chest was starting to hurt, she allowed him to slip her good arm into it.
He was unexpectedly gentle as he draped it over her shoulder.
The coat was too large for her, of course, but it had a woodsy scent of pine and something else she couldn’t quite name.
She caught herself inhaling the scent, his scent, from the fabric, and quickly straightened, cheeks heating.
He turned back to the railing, and after a minute, she did, too, this time not standing quite so far away.
“How’s your shoulder?”
“It’s… better.”
She refused to tell him that at least once a day, she forgot she couldn’t properly lift her arm, and the pain brought her to tears. They’d told her she could stop using the sling, that the scans showed the break and tearing were healed.
There was nothing, from a medical perspective, that explained her lingering pain.
Maybe it was the remembered trauma of the bone snapping.
Maybe it was the worry that she could no longer tell real pain from that which lived in her head, but part of her feared she might never be able to use her arm as she once could.
And that same part of her worried, deep down, that maybe she deserved it.
“You aren’t afraid, standing so close to the edge where they can see you?” she asked after a moment.
“Don’t trust my wards?” There was a wry note in his voice. “You wound me, Serafina.”
“You know what I mean.”
He nodded down at the crowd. “You’re perfectly safe here in the castle. Though, I can’t imagine you’ve been doing well, all the same.”
“I assume you saw the video?” She toyed with the cuff of his jacket. “They think I’m a monster.”
“Perhaps to them, you are.” Finneas smiled, showing very sharp teeth. “The fae, however, are very old and very powerful. There are far more dangerous magic users among our ranks than a woman who risked her own safety storming a castle to save her brother and the lives of thirty-seven hostages.”
And for the first time in weeks, that terrible, unspeakable thing in her stomach began to unknot.
“You could have chosen to do anything, and you became a healer,” he continued softly. “You’ve worn gloves every day since your power manifested, for fear you might accidentally touch someone. That doesn’t sound particularly monstrous to me.”
Sera looked away, terrified if she allowed the walls she’d kept in place for weeks to crack, she might cry. “Yes, well, you didn’t watch your father die.”
You didn’t kill him.
She couldn’t allow herself to examine that moment too closely.
Alex believed she’d been fighting so hard to shield that her control had slipped.
She’d overheard Evan telling everyone at breakfast that even if she had snapped due to the intense pain of having her shoulder dislocated and her arm broken, Judas Visconti had killed how many thousands of people, and she’d done the sector a fucking favor, and everyone should just shut up about it. Gods, she loved Evan.
But the terrible truth was that in the rare moments she could bear to look at her own reflection in the mirror, she wondered if her father had once been at a similar crossroads, back when his power had first emerged.
Had there ever been a point where he could have made a different choice, chosen a different path?
Was there any chance she could still be saved, or had her fate been cast years ago, the moment she nearly killed the patient in her hospital rotation?
“I can’t even imagine what that must have been like,” Finneas said gently. “Or what you’re going through now.”
The wind stirred snowflakes that had gathered on the balcony railing, sending them swirling off into the night.
“You’re missing the party.”
He studied her carefully. “I got your message earlier. You said you wanted to talk.” He tilted his head towards the glass walls of the ballroom where music was floating out onto the terrace, and extended a hand. “Shall we?”
And even though it had been nearly a month since she had allowed another person to touch her, she slid her gloved fingers into his. He led her to the center of the terrace. She tried to ignore the tingle of awareness tickling up her spine when he slid a hand to her waist.
“I didn’t think you knew our dances.”
He smiled at this. “You do know I’m two hundred years old, right? That’s time to learn rather a lot of things.”
She bit her bottom lip. There was no avoiding what she’d asked him here to discuss. Best to just come out with it.
“I need to go away for a while. Someplace Lara Cavalieri and the press her family controls can’t follow. If I’m here, it will be a distraction to everything my brother hopes to accomplish.”
“And you think you’ll be safe with me.” When she said nothing, Finneas sighed. “You’ve never lived among the fae. You might find it very isolating.”
“More isolating than being trapped in my room in a castle, afraid to touch anyone for fear I’ll kill them? More isolating than being unable to sleep at night, waiting for someone to send assassins after me?”
“No, but it would be a significant change all the same.” He reached up, tracing a tendril of hair back behind her cheek.
“Don’t.” Her breathing quickened. “I could hurt you.”