Two days.
That's how long I'd been here. Trapped in a sterile cocoon of white walls and beeping machines, wrapped in the suffocating embrace of pity.
People came. Some with flowers, some with whispered condolences, their voices dipping into a hushed reverence as if speaking too loudly might shatter me.
Even Krystina.
She looked like a shadow of myself-gaunt, hollowed out, as if the incident had carved its way through her bones. There was something hauntingly familiar in her eyes, something that mirrored the desolation inside me. A reflection. A warning.
I was just like her. Maybe worse.
And yet, everyone came.
Everyone… except him.
Or maybe he did. Maybe in the silence of the night, when the world was asleep and the walls no longer had eyes, he slipped in like a ghost. Maybe it was his fingers that curled around mine, warm and firm. Maybe it was his breath I felt against my temple, murmuring my name-my name.
Not Ptichka.
Not little bird.
Not anything soft or sacred.
Just Sera.
As if stripping me of my name could undo what we had been. As if severing me from his endearments could make me forget.
But he couldn't face me.
Coward.
Liar.
The man who stole my truth and hid it beneath a crown of thorns.
Why?
Was he angry? Still furious at the way I broke apart in his hands? Or was he afraid-afraid to meet my gaze and find a stranger staring back? Afraid to see what he had done to me?
Or… was it the scar?
I turned my head slightly, catching the edge of my reflection in the metallic sheen of a medical tray. The cut stretched along my cheekbone, healed but raw, an ugly reminder of everything.
Was this what kept him away?
Did I disgust him now?
A bitter laugh curled at my lips, dry and sharp as sandpaper. How ironic. The man who tore me open with his secrets-his knives hidden beneath velvet-was the same man who couldn't look at me now.
But I wouldn't let Lucius manipulate me again.
Not this time.
He had played me like a violin once before, his lies spun with the precision of a master weaver. He had made me doubt Judas and made me question my own reality until I stood on the precipice of madness.
Not again.
I knew what Judas did was unforgivable. I knew he had twisted the truth into something unrecognizable, holding it behind his back like a dagger waiting to be unsheathed.
But I was tired.
Tired of the war. Tired of the betrayal. Tired of standing at the crossroads of love and ruin, torn between the fire and the fall.
Tired of being someone else's pawn.
I wanted to be angry. I wanted to spit his name like a curse, to let the rage consume me until nothing remained but ash and bone.
But all I felt was exhaustion.
And an ache-deep, gnawing, ceaseless-where he used to be.
I closed my eyes, exhaling slowly.
If he wouldn't come to me…
I would find him myself.
I gritted my teeth, fingers trembling as I curled them around the IV. A sharp tug-pain lanced up my arm, a hot sting that made me hiss through my teeth. The needle slid free, leaving a small crimson bead blooming against my skin.
I ignored it.
The monitors beeped wildly in protest, but I didn't care. My body was sluggish and heavy with days of stillness, but my mind was a storm. A restless, raging thing.
I had to find him.
Judas.
Face him. Tear the truth from his lips if I had to.
Just as I swung my legs off the bed, the door creaked open.
I froze.
For a split second, I expected the nurse. Or maybe Ralph-he had been hovering around more than usual. Hell, even Judas.
But the moment my eyes met hers, the breath in my lungs turned to ice.
I didn't expect her.
The woman who birthed me.
The woman I never thought I'd see again.
My mother.
She stood in the doorway like a phantom. Time had not been kind to her. Or maybe life had always left its scars-ones I had been too young or silly to notice.
One year. Or was it two?
Her hair was longer than I remembered streaks of silver running through the dark waves. Her face was thinner, sharper, haunted. And her eyes…
God.
Those eyes.
The same ccolouras mine. The same shape. But where mine were clouded with hurt, hers were filled with something unreadable. Guilt? Sorrow? Fear?
I didn't move. I couldn't.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears, drowning out everything else.
How?
Why now?
She looked as startled as I felt, her fingers twitching at her sides as if she wanted to reach for me-but didn't dare.
A thousand memories slammed into me all at once. A soft lullaby hummed in the dead of night. The warmth of her arms before she vanished. The years of silence that followed.
Pain-deep, ancient, unhealed-rippled through me.
I had missed her.
And yet, here she was.
Real. Breathing. Standing mere feet away.
I swallowed, my throat raw, my voice barely more than a whisper.
"…Mom?"
She flinched.
Like she wasn't expecting me to say it. Like the word itself had sharp edges and it cut her deep.
Her breath hitched and a sob shuddered through her as she surged forward, her arms locking around me like chains of desperation and I was pushed back onto the bed.
"Sera!"
I stiffened.
Frozen.
Her scent-something faint, something familiar-wrapped around me, and for a split second, I didn't know if she was real or just another ghost clawing its way out of my nightmares.
What was she doing here? How could she be here? Did she know… about me and Judas? Did I disappoint her? Did I fail?
My mind spiralled for lucidity, but then-
I felt it.
A presence. One I had failed to notice earlier, as silent as death itself.
The air shifted and thickened with something unspoken. A strange feeling pressed against my chest, curling into my ribs like cold hands.
I lifted my eyes.
And there he was.
Standing at the door.
Menace draped over him like a second skin, still so dark and unrelenting I felt it in my bones. His hands rested in the pockets of his black slacks, the sleeves of his black shirt rolled up to his elbows, exposing the ink that curled up his forearms like snakes. A gold watch gleamed at his wrist and my chest throbbed, catching the sterile hospital light, but nothing shone as brilliantly-
or as dangerously-as his pale eyes.
A gaze that stripped me bare. That unravelled something inside me, thread by thread, leaving me raw and shivering.
He looked different. Slightly longer hair, thick and unruly, like he'd run his hands through it too many times. The stubble along his jaw was darker, rand ougher, making him look even more untamed.
And yet-
He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
No. Not beautiful.
Ruinous.
Like a storm disguised as a man. A chaos I'd willingly throw myself into, knowing it would tear me apart.
He was the fire and I wanted to touch him. Perish in him. What kind of tricky sensations were these? I couldn't be sane. Wanting a man. A man who was no less than a devil.
My fingers twitched. An ache curled in my stomach.
I wanted to run my hands through his hair, trace my fingers over his jaw, and feel the heat of his skin beneath my palms-just to make sure he was real. Just to know he hadn't disappeared with everything else I once loved.
But he stood there, unmoving. Watching me.
And I couldn't read him.
His eyes-those same pale, merciless eyes that had looked at me like I was both his salvation and his undoing-were unreadable. Distant. As if they didn't belong to him anymore.
As if I didn't.
A hollow sort of grief swallowed me whole.
I tried to smile, tried to pull together the shattered remains of myself and offer him something, anything-
But my lips trembled.
And in that moment, I broke.
Into a million tiny pieces.
And each one screamed for him.
Some people don't leave wounds. They leave ruins. And you either spend your life trying to rebuild what they destroyed, or you learn to love the wreckage they made of you.
I had learned to love mine.
But him?
I would love him even if it destroyed me.