Chapter 44
Chapter forty-four
Seraphina
“Ididn’t mean to show her.” Vasso was holding Ophelia’s elbow, keeping her upright. In the flickering candlelight, the oracle looked like she’d aged fifty years.
“You knew about this?” Sera pointed to Vasso’s dead face hovering above the water. “Both of you knew this could happen?”
Her magic dissipated with the shattering of her heart. They were linked, she and Vasso. More than she realized. More than the magic they shared.
“There is still free will,” Ophelia said. “You can choose not to indulge.”
Sera glanced at the demon lord, who was making a point not to look at her. “Vasso?”
He was silent.
“You—you’re dead, and those are my hands.” Sera raised her palm to show him the scar. “And my father? You knew him too?”
Vasso’s head snapped up. “I had no idea he was your father.”
“But you knew him!”
One nod was all he gave her.
“And am I to believe that the reason you knew him was because he’s a demon? A friend of yours?”
With Ophelia steadied on her feet, Vasso let go of her. He redirected his attention toward Sera, his lips pressed together in a firm line. “Is he a demon? Yes. I knew him through the circles, nothing more. He’s been missing for a century.”
“Well, he was obviously near the Citadel having relations with my mother, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.
” She needed to get out of there before the walls caved in.
Spots already invaded the edges of her vision, and she just wanted to take a deep breath that didn’t involve mold and rot and death.
Quick steps into the dark tunnel, then onward to the entrance. That was all she could do.
“Seraphina, come back,” Vasso said.
She didn’t stop. She didn’t care that it was pitch black and she couldn’t see an inch in front of her face.
It was straight to the surface, and she needed to get out.
The rotten air choked her. Her darkness whirled in a fury of all the lies she’d had to unravel, but it was the image of Vasso dead in her hands that made her stomach roll.
Those projections… He’d been so happy. There was love there. Deep and unwavering. Something she’d wished for her entire life.
Sera put out a hand to follow the wall, barely feeling the slime and moss under her fingertips.
How was her father a demon? Which made her half demon. Which made her mother… What, an enemy of the state? The coven had been in open war with demons when she was born. Did the Council know?
Does it matter now?
“Ugh, I don’t need to listen to you too,” she said back to that phantom voice.
Vasso… he…
He is an option.
Sera huffed. “By the way he looked at me, I’d say he’s the only option.” Her heart pounded. “No one has ever looked at me like that. Not Alistair… no one.”
Moonslight shining into the shaft lit the rest of the way forward. On leaden legs, she ran. Up the ladder and out around the ruins to a small cluster of rock she imagined used to be a well.
“This is such a mess.”
Life is rarely easy.
“I’m talking to a fucking voice in my head.” Sera ran her hand down her face.
Her magic scoffed. I don’t much like being in here either.
“Why are you here, then?”
The voice was silent.
“Not even you know.”
Taking inventory of the things she’d learned, she focused first on her sister. Nora was alive. At this very moment, her little sister sat on a bed that seemed covered in fine textiles underground.
Her father was a demon.
Her mother— She didn’t want to think about Lavinia right now.
Vasso.
A tug pulled at her chest at the thought of him. Dangerous territory. The involuntary shivers her body made when they touched. The way her magic calmed, the way her core heated.
They were tied together somehow. To have that many future moments couldn’t be a coincidence.
A crunch of gravel had her looking up.
Vasso strode toward her. His face was unreadable. When they locked eyes, he paused, then let out a breath. “I thought you were a vuk for a second.”
“Nope, just a demon witch sitting in the grass.” She didn’t mean to sound defeated. “Were you ever going to tell me about us?”
Vasso ran his hand through his hair. “If it came up…”
Sera scoffed.
“I want to show you something.”
“I don’t want to play games with you, Vasso.”
The demon lord lowered to his haunches. “You told me once that there was only one way I could earn your forgiveness. Will you let me try?” He held out his hand.
A doorway.
He was going to show her where a doorway was. Sera glared at his outstretched hand. “No bargains,” she said.
“Just trying to help you out of the grass.”
“All right.” His hand was warm, firm in hers. As soon as she was up, she let it go, ignoring the electric sensations bringing her to life. Why did she have to see those images? Why couldn’t she have stayed dumb and stupid about that future? “I guess I enthralled Ophelia, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“I’m such a fucking mess.” Sera held herself as they walked. The grass swatted at her shins as they trudged farther into the field.
“You’re not any more of a mess than the rest of us,” he said.
Insects sang in the night, the chirping a peaceful lullaby to the slumbering birds.
“How long have you known? About that future of us?”
Vasso fisted his hand, then released. “I met Ophelia sixty years ago. She was stubborn. Going on and on about prophecies and the future. I didn’t believe her, thought she was some insane witch who’d been shunned by the Citadel due to her instability.
” He glanced at her sidelong. “Until she showed me a few future threads… and I saw you.”
“What was I doing?”
He smirked. “I’ll tell you when I see it.”
He stopped, pointed his chin to the sky, and sniffed. She could smell it too. Ash on the breeze.
“We’re close,” he said.
They’d reached the edge of the forest. Vasso stepped into the dark shadows under the tree branches, and she followed.
“Vuk. I’ve seen that before. In a sketchbook that was brought to the Citadel. It looks like a wolf.”
“Vicious creatures. I was once obsessed with them. I’ve never seen one in real life, and no one I know has either.
I hovered over their forms in books while perusing Gehenna’s libraries.
When you were sitting there in the shadows, your eyes were glowing such bright green I thought you might have been one. ” He slowed his pace. “We’re here.”
There was a clearing in the trees. A massive boulder stood in the center of a circle of trees, awash in a pale glow. “This is a doorway?” she asked.
Vasso held out his palm. “Ovarati vas rata, Gehenna.”
A low hum came from the rock, and with it, the dark outline of a door pushed forward. The moonslight didn’t touch the magic along the surface. Skulls, eels, demonic faces, and wings adorned the frame. The ominous hum stopped with a crack. Then a woosh of air pulled her forward, and it was open.
Sera peered in. Stairs led deep into the ground. “How did you know it was here?”
“The chamber we were in is below our feet. I could hear something through the wall. Feel it. Now, are you going to tell me why?”
She wanted to let the words run from her lips. Tell him that the Council of Elders needed to know where they were, how to access them. That it was their terms for sending a band of Legion warriors to save her sister. “My reasons are my own.”
He scoffed. “Throwing my words back at me?”
She smirked at him.
“Zatvori,” Vasso said, and that humming rang through the stone. A second later, the hole closed, and the doorway was again camouflaged as rock. “Will you forgive me now?”
“For which part? You forcing me to kill that fox, or lying to me about our loving futures?”
He stiffened. “The fox. If you do not wish for that future to come to pass, it will not. I won’t apologize for instances that haven’t happened yet.” There was bite to those words. Vasso turned from her, and she grabbed his hand.
“I forgive you, for the fox I mean,” she said.
He stared at their joined hands. “It was a surprise to me too.”
“What was?”
His eyes locked with hers. They looked like moons themselves when they weren’t blazing red. “How happy I was in those images… the way I was looking at you,” he whispered.
Each throb of her heartbeat banged like a drum in the still moment. The confusion and apprehension she felt were also painted on his face.
It couldn’t work. She needed to go to the Citadel to save Nora. She needed to be there for Dominick and the witches and warlocks of Jedan. She wondered how Galene was faring and what new treasures she’d found. None of that would happen if she lived out this fairy tale. Sera let go of his hand.
“Well, it seems we both received some unpleasant truths, then.” She walked past him back toward the ruins and Ponic.