Chapter 83 Seraphine
I woke to yelling.
Not distant. Not muffled.
Right there—voices colliding, overlapping, sharp enough to cut through the fog in my head.
My body reacted before my mind did. Every nerve lit up at once, awareness slamming back into me in a rush that stole my breath.
Heat.
Water.
Cold.
Shadow.
All of it.
I could feel them.
Dante’s fire was the first thing I registered—familiar, furious, barely contained. It pressed against my skin like a storm held back by will alone. Lucian’s water wrapped around the room in response, cool and steady, a counterbalance that kept the air from igniting outright. Amara was there too, her presence softer but unmistakable, water humming close to the surface like she was bracing herself.
And then—
Thane.
Death wasn’t loud. It didn’t push.
It waited.
A vast, quiet pressure at the edge of my awareness, like standing too close to a deep, lightless lake.
Even Renee lingered.
Not her—not really—but the faintest echo of shadow, like residue burned into the walls. A memory that hadn’t realized it was gone yet.
My head throbbed.
My mouth tasted wrong.
I forced my eyes open.
White light stabbed at me. Fluorescent. Too bright. I squeezed my eyes shut again with a groan.
“—don’t touch her!” a man snapped. Human. Nervous. “She has to wake on her own—do you hear me? If you interfere now, you could destabilize—”
“I don’t give a damn about your charts,” Dante growled.
His voice hit me square in the chest.
Alive.
Right there.
Relief flared instinctively—and then immediately tangled with something else. Fear. Guilt. Confusion.
“She was helping me,” Thane said calmly, too calmly. “You need to understand that what’s happening here is bigger than—”
That was as far as he got.
I felt Dante move before I heard it—fire surging, intent sharpening—and Lucian reacted just as fast. Water snapped tight, pressure shifting as both of them went for Thane at the same time.
“No—!”
The word tore out of me before I realized I was moving.
I was suddenly upright, feet hitting the floor hard enough to send pain screaming up my legs. The room lurched. My vision blurred.
But I got between them.
Between Dante’s fire and Thane’s stillness.
Between Lucian’s water and what would have become violence.
“Stop!”
The force of it—my voice, my presence—hit all three of them like a wall.
Everything froze.
Dante stared at me like I’d stabbed him.
Lucian’s expression was no better—shock, hurt, betrayal flashing too quickly to hide.
Even Amara looked wounded, her hands half-raised like she’d been about to reach for me.
Pain exploded through my body all at once.
My knees buckled.
I barely made it to the sink before my stomach revolted.
I threw up—nothing but acid and bile—my hands shaking as I gripped the porcelain. My ribs hurt with it. My head swam.
Amara was there instantly, one arm around my shoulders, the other pulling my hair back gently.
“Okay,” she murmured, steady and close. “I’ve got you. Breathe. Just breathe.”
I did—ragged, uneven gasps that burned all the way down.
Behind us, voices rose again.
“She’s not stable,” the doctor said urgently. “You can’t interrogate her like this—”
“I’m not interrogating her,” Thane replied. “I’m asking her what she already knows.”
“You kidnapped her,” Dante snarled. “You chained her to a wall.”
“And she survived,” Thane shot back. “More than that—she changed.”
“I will kill you,” Lucian said flatly.
Amara stiffened. “Lucian—”
I slid down the wall, my legs giving out completely, until I was sitting on the cold tile floor. Amara followed me down, staying close, one hand firm on my back like an anchor.
The room tilted again—and then steadied as all of them crowded into my line of sight.
All four of them.
Thane stood to my right, unburned now, composed, watching me like I was the answer to a question he’d been asking for centuries.
Dante was directly in front of me, fire leaking through every crack in his control, his eyes wild with fear he wasn’t even trying to hide.
Lucian hovered just behind him, water coiled and ready, jaw clenched so tight I thought his teeth might crack.
Amara knelt beside me, her expression torn between anger and worry and something like heartbreak.
Thane spoke first.
“What did your dragon say to you?” he asked quietly.
Dante immediately snapped, “What the hell does that mean?”
Lucian’s head turned sharply toward Thane. “You spoke to her dragon?”
Amara sucked in a breath. “Thane.”
And then Dante was crouching in front of me, hands hovering like he didn’t dare touch me. “Sera—look at me. Are you okay? Are you hurt? Do you—”
“I’m fine,” I said weakly, though my voice shook. “I just—”
Lucian cut in, his voice low but sharp. “Why were you protecting him?”
Amara swallowed. “Why is Renee dead?”
Every question hit me at once.
My head pounded.
My thoughts tangled.
I pressed my palms to my eyes, breathing hard, trying to sort through it all—but there was no order, no neat explanation ready to go.
I dropped my hands and looked up at them.
All of them staring at me.
Waiting.
“I—” I started, then stopped.
My mouth was dry.
The doctor backed away slowly, clearly deciding this was no longer his fight.
Thane’s gaze never left mine.
“What did your dragon say?” he repeated.
That was it.
The moment the words left his mouth, I felt Dante and Lucian shift—felt their attention lock onto him like twin blades turning.
“What,” Dante said very carefully, “do you mean by that?”
Lucian’s water surged, subtle but dangerous. “Answer him.”
I looked between them—between the men who would burn the world for me and the man who had nearly drowned me to prove a point.
My chest tightened.
“I spoke to her,” I said finally. “My dragon.”
Silence slammed down.
Lucian shook his head slowly, disbelief etched into every line of his face.
“That’s not possible,” he said. “No one has spoken to their dragon in—” he stopped, searching memory, history, myth “—hundreds of years.”
Dante didn’t take his eyes off me.
“Thousands,” he corrected quietly.
Lucian turned on him. “Dante—”
“It’s true,” Dante said, voice steady but tight. “It takes practice. Power. Control most dragonborn never come close to. The only ones ever recorded doing it were priestesses… or seers.”
The word priestess landed like a weight on my chest.
My breathing hitched.
Too fast. Too shallow.
The room felt smaller by the second, the walls inching closer as if they were listening too.
I pressed my hand to my sternum, trying to ground myself, but it didn’t help. My heart was racing, my lungs refusing to cooperate.
Amara noticed immediately.
“Hey,” she said softly, shifting closer. “Sera, slow down. Look at me.”
I tried.
I really did.
But my vision blurred at the edges and the pressure behind my eyes built until it felt like I might shatter.
And then Amara asked it again—more carefully this time, but no less direct.
“Why is Renee dead?”
The room went utterly still.