Chapter 84 Seraphine
I swallowed, my throat burning.
And then I laughed.
It came out sharp and ugly and wrong, even to my own ears.
“Oh my gods,” I snapped, pushing myself upright despite the nausea. “Do you hear yourselves right now? Because from where I’m sitting—chained, poisoned, drowned, nearly turned into a science project—this sounds a lot like a council meeting where everyone talks about me instead of to me.”
The room froze.
Good.
“I didn’t mean to kill her,” I said, my voice rising, cracking at the edges. “I didn’t even know if I had. You think I woke up this morning like, ‘Hey, what a great day to accidentally erase someone’s existence?’”
I pointed at Thane. “He said I burned what she was, not what she is. Her shadow. Her borrowed power. Because apparently that wasn’t even hers to begin with.”
Lucian’s eyes sharpened. “Explain.”
I whirled on him. “No. You don’t get to interrogate me like I’m a witness on your stand. I’m the crime scene.”
I sucked in a breath and kept going, because if I stopped I might actually break.
“She wasn’t a dragonborn,” I said. “Not really. The shadows weren’t hers. She borrowed them—from Kael. When she was his consort.”
Dante stiffened. “That’s not possible.”
I laughed again, bitter. “Funny. My dragon disagrees. You know, the ancient entity currently squatting in my soul?”
Lucian’s jaw tightened. “Then Renee wasn’t empty.”
“No,” I shot back. “She was hollow. Congratulations. Gold star for the understatement.”
Thane inclined his head. “Accurate.”
Amara rounded on him. “You’re seriously just going to agree?”
“She asked for truth,” Thane replied calmly. “I gave it.”
I felt Dante surge forward—felt the heat, the instinct—but he stopped himself, fists clenched so tight his knuckles glowed.
“You used her,” Dante said, voice dangerous. “All of you did.”
“Yes,” Thane said without flinching. “And she used us right back.”
“That doesn’t justify—”
“Oh my god,” I snapped, cutting across them. “Can you not debate ethics like this is a philosophy class? She’s dead. Or emptied. Or whatever horrifying technical term makes you feel better about it.”
Amara’s voice broke. “She still died.”
Thane’s gaze softened, just a fraction. “She lost what she stole. What remained couldn’t survive the void.”
Something twisted violently in my stomach.
“I didn’t want this,” I said, louder now, tears burning hot. “I didn’t want any of this. I wanted to write articles and drink bad coffee and argue about commas. I wanted my biggest problem to be deadlines, not extinction-level dragon politics.”
Dante knelt in front of me then, careful, like I might shatter if he moved too fast.
“Sera,” he said gently. “Why didn’t you tell me you could hear her? Feel her?”
I stared at him, incredulous. “Because I didn’t know how. Because I was scared. Because every time I touched anything with power, it turned into a catastrophe. Because apparently I can’t sneeze without rewriting mythology.”
Lucian exhaled. “A priestess awakening during an extinction-level crisis.”
I shot him a look. “Wow. Thank you. That’s going straight on my résumé.”
Amara glared at him. “Not helping.”
“I know,” Lucian muttered. “But it explains—”
“I don’t care what it explains,” I interrupted. “I care that none of you gave me five damn minutes to tell you what actually happened before jumping to conclusions.”
Thane studied me. “You asked why this is happening. Why you.”
I met his gaze, fury and exhaustion tangled together. “And?”
“Because you can survive it,” he said. “Because dragonkind needs guides now. Not just kings.”
Dante’s fire flared. “She is not your solution.”
“She isn’t mine,” Thane replied evenly. “She’s her own.”
That… landed harder than I expected.
Amara squeezed my hand. “Okay. We are not deciding the fate of dragonkind tonight. She can barely sit up.”
Lucian nodded. “She needs rest.”
Dante looked torn, every instinct in him screaming to keep me close.
I looked up at him, voice raw. “Please. Just… let me breathe.”
He closed his eyes, nodded once. “Okay.”
Then Thane spoke again, because of course he did.
“She’s already changed.”
Dante’s eyes snapped open. “Finish that sentence carefully.”
“She spoke to her dragon,” Thane said. “She manifested black fire. She protected innocence without instruction.”
Silence slammed down.
“That makes her something new,” he finished.
I laughed again, sharp and brittle, and wiped at my face with the back of my hand.
“Oh, so since you seem to have all the damn answers,” I said, locking eyes with Thane, “why don’t you tell me—what am I, then?”
The word am came out shaking.
Amara stepped closer, her voice soft, grounding. “Sera, slow down—”
“No,” I snapped, rounding on her. “No, don’t do that. Don’t try to tuck me back into the corner and tell me to breathe when none of you are actually listening.”
The room felt too small. Too tight. Too full of people who had power and still somehow missed the point.
“This is pointless,” I went on, the words spilling faster now, hotter. “All of this—this arguing, this circling around me like I’m the problem or the solution or some fucking prophecy—while our entire kind might be going extinct.”
That finally made them all still.
I pushed myself fully upright despite the ache screaming through my bones and gestured sharply behind them—toward the rows of women still strapped to the beds, eyes wide, hollow-cheeked, watching us like this was their last hope.
“You see them?” I said. “They matter. Just as much as I do. More, maybe. Because there are more of them.”
A few of the women shifted, chains rattling softly. One of them met my gaze and nodded, just once.
“You’re all so busy worrying about me,” I continued, voice cracking with fury and something dangerously close to grief, “about what I am, what I might become, who gets to claim me—while they’re lying there wondering if they’re going to survive the night.”
Dante opened his mouth. I cut him off with a raised hand.
“No. I don’t want comfort right now. I want honesty.”
I turned back to Thane. “If dragonborn women are dying—if they’re failing to awaken, if Kael and you are drowning them, injecting them, experimenting on them like lab rats—then that’s the real problem. Not me.”
Thane’s jaw tightened. “We’re trying to prevent extinction.”
“And how’s that working out?” I shot back. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re just killing us faster.”