Chapter Thirty-Nine #2
Her voice is low, unflinching. “Survival is not just staying alive, little witch,” Lara says. “It is living long enough to earn your power… and deciding what to do with it.”
Lara’s gaze pins Seren in place, sharp enough to cut.
“Survival is desperation,” she says. “It’s instinct. It’s fear. Anyone can do it. Even prey can survive when cornered.”
A pause.
“But to look at the world as it is… and decide to change it with your own bleeding hands?”
Her voice lowers.
“That takes guts.”
Her eyes do not move. Only bore deeper into Seren’s.
“The Widow knows exactly what she’s asking of you with this Harrow.”
Seren doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. She’s already moving. Because she knows the world has always relied on girls remaining too frightened to become dangerous.
She swallows hesitation, shoving it down so low it disappears into the abyss where the rest of her pain lives.
Her braid whips behind her, lashing and snapping on the night’s breeze like a serpent ready to strike. Her dagger is still palmed, the hilt warm and molded into the shape of her.
She strides toward the line of wagons awaiting inspection before entry inside The Barrier, the district chaotic and organized simultaneously.
People haggle for goods at The Black Stream Markets, guards shout orders, patrols recite checks and clearances along the perimeter, and the sounds that escape the taverns and whorehouses make her gut reel in disgust.
She does not care to hide. She will not lock herself away, or stick to the cloak of shadow any longer. She does not plan to be here for long, but she does plan for her visit to be effective.
She strides forward, chin lifted, jaw set.
“Oi!” a man’s voice calls from behind.
Seren’s stomach flips, belying her conviction.
Fuck.
She ignores it, quickening her pace, every nerve sitting on edge, her pulse hammering in her ears.
Faster. Just get there.
Lara steps up beside her gracefully, her lithe frame moving through Virellin with complete ease, her ragged skirts trailing behind her, boots laced all the way to her knees.
“You are not pushed for cruelty’s sake, little witch. You are pushed because the world will always push harder,” she says.
The words don’t quite make sense, but Seren does not slow.
“Stop right there!” the guard bellows, steel rasping as it’s unsheathed.
Seren does not turn—she charges toward the line of wagons. She just needs to get to the wagons.
“Is this the world’s cruelty, Lara? Is that what you’re saying?” she snaps.
Lara ignores her.
“No one prepared me for the cruelty of this world. And I won’t make that same mistake with you.” Lara says the words without meeting Seren’s gaze.
What does that mean—
She doesn’t get to ask—Lara answers for her anyway.
Lara’s hands grip Seren’s shoulders, firm, unrelenting. She spins her, pushing her into the path of the pursuing guard, his blade already raised. And Lara’s boot collides with Seren’s back, launching her forward.
Seren stumbles, falling toward him.
Their eyes lock.
For a heartbeat, nothing happens.
Then his mouth twists into a snarl.
His eyes are bloodshot. His corded forearms are too muscular, too large.
A Bloodbond.
He shouts something Seren doesn’t hear, too focused on the sheer size of him.
Then, he charges.
Training escapes her. Every lesson evaporates like it never was. Fear fills her legs, weighing them down like she’s wearing lead boots. Her hands tremble, but she holds the dagger out, pointing it at the man like it’s enough.
The guard laughs like it’s a joke. Like she’s a joke.
His steps close in on her.
One heartbeat.
Two.
She risks a glance over her shoulder.
Lara. Daphinia. Caev.
They stand unfazed behind her. Weapons sheathed. Hands clasped behind their backs.
In the space of a single heartbeat, Seren’s mind moves from feeling alone, to abandoned, to remembrance, to power.
They do not hold back because they will not help. They remain because they do not need to. They are not watching her fail. They are waiting for her to remember what she already is.
The fear recedes… like ocean water drawing back from the shore.
And something else takes root: guts.
And power.
And now she must decide what to do with it.
No one is coming to save the girls in those wagons. The world works precisely because girls like Seren were taught to stay frightened. Until now.
The guard lunges, hand outstretched like he’s moving to grab her.
Seren draws magic straight from him, shaping it in her palm.
He reaches for her, but he stops short, hands shooting to his throat, clawing and gripping at the golden thread wrapped around him like a noose.
The noose coils around his neck, pulling tighter with every heartbeat.
His eyes fly open in shock, never leaving Seren’s face. He’s choking, the golden noose cutting off his air just like it did to Rhyven before she snapped his neck. He struggles, dropping to his knees like he’ll find salvation there.
He won’t.
She knows he’d plead for mercy if he had the chance. But she won’t give it to him. Because the only way to eradicate cruelty is to eliminate the source.
Seren squeezes tighter, and a blood vessel bursts in his eye.
His body crashes to the ground in a heavy thud.
Seren leans over him, her eyes narrowing to disgusted slits. Her voice drops into a feral snarl.
“You built a world that fed on girls like me,” she snarls. “You don’t get mercy from me now,” she growls as she twists her wrist and closes her fist in a wet crack of finality.
The struggle stops the instant his neck breaks.
But Seren doesn’t wait. Doesn’t give herself a moment to process.
She spins, stalking forward. Because the guard called for support, and she knows she has less than sixty heartbeats to get to those godsdamned wagons before the Royal Guard descend on her.
Lara moves out of her way, a wicked grin of pure satisfaction kicking up the corners of her mouth.
The line of wagons races toward her, and her eyes start scanning. The place is crawling with guards inspecting each one. All of them look too similar. Tarps, crates, cages, boxes.
Until—
The wagon reveals itself not by sight alone, but by instinct.
Seren feels it before she fully sees it—a wrongness in the air, a stillness too deliberate, too contained for the chaos of Virellin’s trade lines. The others blur into the background as her focus narrows, locking onto the single covered wagon positioned just beyond the inspection line.
“There,” she says, already moving.
The witches do not question her. They move with her. Because they trust her or because they’re testing her, she has no idea. Probably both.
Daphinia and Caev peel away from her flanks with seamless precision, their bodies angling toward the guards stationed at each corner of the wagon.
Lara remains close, not leading, not following—present in a way that feels intentional, like she is allowing Seren to step forward into the life she must claim for herself.
The first guard barely has time to react.
Daphinia lifts her hand, fingers curling as though she is plucking a thread from the air itself, and the man’s body seizes.
There is no spectacle to it—no flash of light or roar of magic—only a sudden, brutal stillness before his spine folds inward with a sickening, silent collapse.
He hits the ground as though his bones have forgotten how to hold him.
And that’s when Seren sees it—a thin thread of gold spearing through his ear like Daphinia shaped the threads into her very own weapon.
On the opposite side, Caev moves like she is untethered from the weight of the world, all lethal precision and graceful agility.
Her blade flashes once, clean and efficient, opting for physicality over magic, and the guard’s throat opens before he can even finish drawing breath. She does not pause to watch him fall.
Lara closes the distance with the third.
There is no magic in it—only skill honed to something lethal and exacting.
Her blade slides beneath the man’s ribs, angled upward with practiced intent, and her hand clamps over his mouth as his body jerks against her.
She holds him there, steady, contained, until the fight drains from him, then lowers him to the ground with a care that feels almost reverent.
No one notices. Brawls and violence so deeply woven into the fabric of Virellin that bodies falling and blades flashing is considered normal—doesn’t even interrupt trade.
By the time Seren reaches the back of the wagon, the perimeter is already collapsing behind her.
And he is waiting.
Broad. Scarred. Bald, his scalp catching the torchlight in a dull sheen. Heavy rings glint along his fingers, chains resting against a chest built for brute force rather than finesse. His grin is slow and knowing, the kind that has seen too many girls dragged into the dark and turned the other way.
Seren grips her blade. She wants to feel the warmth of his blood on her hands when she carves the life out of him. Wants to feel it up close. Not with the distance that magic allows.
The man looks at her, eyes raking over her frame, snagging on her chest like he’s calculating the profit of her tits.
“Bit small for this trade, aren’t you?” he drawls.
Seren stops.
And the world shifts.
The wagon is no longer a test. The wagon is a memory. The air thickens, the noise of the markets and lines twist into a distant, warped distortion.
Hands.
Too many hands.
“Hold her still.”
Her father’s voice cuts through the memory like a blade, as clear and cold as the night it happened.
“It’ll feed your brothers.”
Her breath catches.
The man in front of her blurs, his face slipping, shifting.
Not him.
Her father.
The wagon.
The smell of fear and sweat, drenched in fragrant perfume—an illusion.
Her grip falters, the blade glinting under torchlight. Only for a moment. But it is enough. It drags his eyes to her weapon.
He lunges.