Chapter 68 Seraphine
I reached inward.
Not carefully this time.
Not timidly.
I nudged my fire forward.
Just a little.
Heat bloomed in my chest, stronger than before, answering eagerly now that I’d acknowledged it again. I opened my mouth—and a small burst of flame slipped free.
A fireball no bigger than my fist arced into the air.
Light exploded across the room.
Gasps echoed.
The darkness peeled back, and my breath caught.
The room wasn’t small.
It was massive.
A wide concrete chamber with high ceilings lost in shadow, rusted beams overhead, chains bolted into walls. Women everywhere—against the walls, on thin mats, slumped together for warmth. At least thirty of them.
Some still unconscious.
Most not.
Eyes turned toward me.
Toward the light.
Toward the heat.
The fire hovered, steady and contained, casting flickering orange across hollow cheeks, bruised wrists, chapped lips. I saw fear. Hope. Exhaustion so deep it looked like bone-deep ache.
Several of them were shivering violently.
A girl near the back—young, maybe barely twenty—hugged her knees and whispered, “Can you… can you make it warmer?”
Her teeth chattered. “I can’t feel my toes. I haven’t in days.”
Something inside me snapped cleanly into place.
“Yes,” I said hoarsely. “I can.”
I drew the fire inward again—not letting it flare, not letting it rage—but letting it spread. Gentle. Controlled. Like a hearth instead of a blaze.
Warmth rolled outward in a slow wave.
Not scorching.
Not wild.
Just heat.
Gasps turned into sighs. Someone sobbed quietly. Another woman slumped back against the wall, eyes fluttering shut in relief.
“Oh gods,” someone whispered. “It’s warm.”
I let the fire settle into the room itself, bleeding into concrete and air alike, raising the temperature just enough to matter.
My hands trembled—but I didn’t stop.
“I don’t know how long I can hold it,” I admitted. “But I won’t let it go out.”
The woman beside me smiled faintly for the first time. “You’re different.”
I shook my head. “I’m just angry.”
The girl near the back lifted her head a little, eyes glassy but hopeful.
“…Will you be able to do that all the time?” she asked. “The heat, I mean.”
I swallowed.
“I don’t know,” I admitted honestly. “This just started for me. Like—recently. I’m still figuring it out.”
That didn’t seem to discourage her. If anything, it made her look at me like I was real. Fallible. Not a miracle—just someone standing where she was standing, only louder.
I let my gaze travel the room again, slower this time.
That’s when I noticed it.
Two women.
They didn’t glow the way I did—but there was something about them that felt… dense. Like gravity. Like the air bent around them just slightly. One sat upright despite her restraints, jaw clenched, eyes sharp even through exhaustion. The other leaned against the wall, breathing slow and steady, watching everything with unnerving calm.
They felt different.
Like me.
My pulse picked up.
“Hey,” I said quietly, careful not to draw attention. “You two. Where are you from?”
They exchanged a look.
“…What?” the upright one asked. “From where?”
I tried again. “What district.”
Blank stares.
Okay. Different language.
“Who runs your side of town?” I asked instead. “The boss. The one everyone answers to.”
That landed.
The upright woman answered first. “Valin.”
My stomach dropped.
The other woman hesitated, then said softly, “Kael.”
A chill cut through me that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature.
Of course.
Of course Renee wasn’t just grabbing random women.
Shadow.
Death.
Fire.
My mind raced, pieces snapping together too fast to ignore.
Valin.
Death King.
Ruler of the quiet places. The forgotten zones. The spaces between endings. Dante had said death was perfect to him. That he saw stillness as mercy.
Kael I already knew—shadow, obsession, control.
And Renee?
A shadow dragonborn.
A hunter.
She wasn’t collecting victims.
She was collecting pieces.
I looked back at the woman who’d said Valin, studying her more carefully now. The way she held herself. The way her presence felt heavy but… calm. Like a lake in winter.
“…Do you feel cold all the time?” I asked her.
She blinked. “Yes. Even when it’s hot.”
That settled it.
Death-aligned.
The other woman—the one who’d said Kael—shifted restlessly, shadows clinging unnaturally close to her skin despite the light.
“And you,” I said gently, “do you feel… watched? Like something’s always just behind you?”
Her lips pressed thin. “…Yes.”
My hands curled into fists.
Renee wasn’t just kidnapping women.
She was harvesting dragonborn—before they woke. Before the kings found them. Before they could choose.
A low murmur rippled through the room as the women sensed the shift in me. Fear. Confusion. Questions they didn’t yet have words for.
I steadied my breathing and kept the fire where it was—present, quiet, constant.
“Listen to me,” I said softly but firmly. “If you feel something inside you—heat, cold, shadows, pressure—you don’t let it run wild. You don’t fight it either. You keep it close. Like this.”
I placed a hand over my chest.
“Small. Controlled. Yours.”
The girl near the back nodded, clutching herself tighter—not from cold this time, but focus.
Footsteps echoed again in the distance.
Closer.
I pulled the fire back down, hiding it deep, leaving only the warmth soaked into the room like memory.
Darkness reclaimed the edges.
But it didn’t feel as suffocating now.
Before anyone could move, the woman beside me whispered, almost reverently, “She’s going to regret taking you.”
I stared at the door, heart pounding, and thought of Dante—of embers, of blue fire, of promises made and broken.
“She already does,” I said quietly.
And somewhere deep inside, my dragon stirred—not raging, not locked away—
Awake.
Waiting.
I made a promise to myself right there in the dark.
Not to the dragon.
Not to fate.
To me.
If I make it out of this—and I will—whether Dante comes for me or not, I’m not running anymore.
I’ll survive this. I’ll get free. I’ll walk out of whatever hell Renee thinks she’s built with my head held high and my fire intact.
And when I do?
I’ll find Dante.
I’ll look him in the eye and tell him I was scared.
That I didn’t know how to be wanted for all of me.
That I panicked instead of trusting him to see me.
And if he still wants me then—
me, not just the fire—
I’ll make it right.