CHAPTER SEVEN
SERAFINA
THE PAST
A scream tore through the apartment, and it hit me like a physical blow—a blade of sound that sliced through the walls and the thin membrane of my sleep.
I was on my feet before I understood I was awake, before my mind had fully registered the noise.
My heart slammed against my ribs with such force I could feel it in my throat, like a frantic animal trapped behind bone.
The scream came again, sharper this time, and I was moving before I could stop myself.
My shin caught the edge of the nightstand, and pain bloomed sharp and bright, but I was already stumbling forward, catching myself against the doorframe with both hands.
The pain was flitting and forgotten when another scream, this one more terrifying than the last two, echoed through the apartment.
Elyssa.
Her room was across the hall, the door closed, but I knew it wasn’t locked. It never was.
I pushed through it, and in the darkness of her room, the first thing I heard was a sound, not a scream anymore, but something worse. Something raw and guttural, a broken moan that seemed to climb up from somewhere deep inside her and break apart on the way out.
The streetlight outside her window cast long, angular shadows across her room through the slit in the curtains. I found Elyssa in the center of the queen bed, her body arched and rigid, bedsheets twisted around her, and her head thrashing against the pillow.
Sweat plastered her blonde hair to her temples and her neck; her skin gleamed in the faint light, slick and feverish. Her hands fisted the bedsheets, her knuckles white with the tension.
“No,” she sobbed, her anguished cries drowning out the actual word. It was more like a guttural sound shaped by terror. “No, no, please—”
God, she looked so pained.
I crossed the room in three steps. My hand found her shoulder through the damp cotton of her nightshirt, and I pressed down gently, the way I’d done several times before. Gentle but firm. Present.
“Elyssa.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. Every inch of my body still vibrated with her screams. “Elyssa, wake up. You’re dreaming.”
She jerked beneath my touch, a full-body flinch, and her eyes flew open.
For a moment she didn’t see me. I could tell by the way her gaze moved—wild, unfocused, still caught somewhere between sleep and whatever had been chasing her through the dark.
Her chest heaved. Her lips parted, and I braced myself for another scream, but what came out instead was a sound so broken it made my own throat ache in sympathy—a low, wretched sob that seemed to crack her open from the inside.
I sat on the edge of the bed and gathered her against me without thinking. My arms went around her shoulders, and she collapsed into me, pressing her face into the hollow of my neck, her hands fisting the front of my shirt.
“I’m here,” I said. The words felt inadequate, but I said them anyway. “I’m right here. It was just a dream. You’re safe now.”
She cried. Loud and violent.
Elyssa didn’t cry in the controlled composure I’d been taught was the only acceptable way for a woman to express grief.
She cried the way a person cries when they’ve run out of strength to hold it together—messy and gasping and raw, her breath hitching against my collarbone, her tears soaking through the thin cotton of my shirt.
She cried, and I held her as she fell apart in my arms. I didn’t know what else to do.
I pressed my cheek to the crown of her head, her hair damp against my skin, but I didn’t care. The minutes stretched. Her sobs turned into shuddering breaths, and then finally, she released a long, exhausted exhale.
She didn’t pull away. Neither did I.
Elyssa’s breathing evened out. Her grip on my shirt loosened, but she didn’t let go entirely. Silence settled between us, and the idea that I could bring her some kind of peace through her darkness was strangely… comforting. She felt safe with me.
I had grown used to being needed by people only when they could use me as a pawn, but Elyssa wasn’t using me the way my family did.
She was vulnerable, and I was her safe haven.
“Elyssa.” My voice was soft, barely above a whisper. I inhaled, the scent of her vanilla shampoo filling my nose. “Will you ever tell me about them? The nightmares?”
We had been living together for a little over a year now, and our second year of university began just two weeks ago.
Over time, our lives had braided together in a way I never imagined.
Elyssa and I had grown close enough I could recognize the different weights of her silence.
We had shared more real laughs, the kind that left my ribs aching and tears streaming down my face than I ever had with anyone else.
I’d collected those laughs like something precious, bottling them into an invisible jar, so I could take them with me when the time came and we would part ways.
Because after all, our separation was undeniable.
She was truly my only friend, and I realized that was enough for me. She was the only person who ever looked at me and didn’t see my last name first.
I understood her, and though I hadn’t told her everything about my life–about the blood in my lineage or the weight of my inheritance—she understood me more than anyone ever had .
But she never would tell me about her nightmares.
Elyssa was quiet for so long I thought she might not answer at all. Then I felt her shake her hand against my shoulder. A small, deliberate shake that told more than words ever could.
“No,” she said. The word was barely audible.
She pulled back just enough to look at me, and even in the dim light, I saw the tracks of tears on her cheeks, the redness around her eyes, the way her jaw was set with stubbornness.
“They’re mine to carry. Not yours. Especially not yours.
My past is haunting, and I refuse to drag you into it. ”
The words landed with a weight I understood intimately.
I knew what it was to hold something close because the alternative—letting someone else see it, share it, bear it—felt more dangerous than carrying it alone.
I knew what it was to believe that your pain was yours to manage, yours to bury, and yours to perform around.
But I also knew what it was to carry something alone and feel it grow heavier with every passing day.
“I have nightmares too,” I said.
The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
Before I could run them through the careful filter of discretion that had been installed in me since childhood.
I forgot to ask myself if this was safe to say, if this was wise to confess, or if my confession would cost me.
Elyssa went still. Even her breathing seemed to pause.
“What are they about?” she asked, her voice rough from crying.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat, and my arm tightened around her shoulders.
“There’s a man,” I said. The words came out slowly, each one extracted from where they had been buried deep.
“He doesn’t have a face. I’ve never seen his face; I don’t think my mind will let me.
But he’s on top of me, and his hand is over my mouth, and he takes—” My throat closed.
I swallowed. “He takes what I’m not willing to give. What I never agreed to give.”
Elyssa’s hand found mine. Her fingers were warm and steady, and she carefully interlaced them with mine.
“Serafina.” Her voice hardened, undeniably more protective. “Has someone… did someone assault you?”
“No,” I whispered shakily. Not yet…
The words hung in the dark between us.
I had been sold as a broodmare when I was a mere child, before I even understood what it meant.
“The faceless man in my dreams,” I continued.
“He’s my betrothed. The man I’m going to marry.
The man whose heir I’m meant to carry.” I turned my hand in hers, gripping it tightly.
“There’s a gold, gilded cage waiting for me.
My mind just shows me what that cage looks like every night before I have to eventually step inside it.
One day, I will get that dreadful call from my father, and I will be forced to go back home–back to where I belong.
Back to the man who was promised my soul, my body. ”
Elyssa didn’t say anything for a long time. I could feel her breathing beside me, the rise and fall of her rib cage against my arm, and I waited for the platitudes—the comfortable lies that people offered when the truth was too ugly to sit with.
She didn’t offer any of those.
“I’m sorry,” she said instead. Just that. Two words stripped of everything except what they actually meant.
“Your past is haunting, and my future is terrifying to even think of,” I murmured. “I guess we’re more alike than you think.”
“We are,” Elyssa said quietly. “More than you know.”
Her thumb moved across the back of my hand, a slow, rhythmic stroke that grounded me.
I shifted on the mattress, fully lying beside her, and I leaned into her.
The sheets were still damp with her sweat, but I didn’t care.
Elyssa adjusted her weight and turned on her side to face me, our hands still linked between us.
I curled my body toward hers until our foreheads were nearly touching and I could almost hear the steady beat of her heart through the thin fabric of her shirt.
We lay there in the dark, breathing together.
Neither of us spoke. There was nothing left to say, and the shared silence was soothing.
Elyssa’s breathing slowed, her eyes fluttering close. The warmth of her hand remained in mine, a solid reassurance in the darkness of her room. My eyelids grew heavy.
I didn’t fight it. For once, I didn’t fight it.
Inhale, exhale.
For the first time in longer than I could remember, sleep came without the faceless man waiting for me on the other side of consciousness. There was only the rhythm of our breathing, the weight of Elyssa’s hand in mine, and the fragile, improbable sense that I wasn’t alone.
I slept.
And I didn’t dream