Chapter 89 Seraphine
I rubbed my arms, even though the fire didn’t burn. “What did he say?”
She looked at me, eyes narrowing. “He called to me. Not you. And he told us to complete the transition.”
Ice slid down my spine.
“Complete—” I stopped. “Like… now?”
She snorted, black smoke curling from her nostrils. “That’s the problem. You can’t.”
“Why not?” I asked. “I mean, clearly things are happening. Black fire, unconsciousness, dramatic fainting—”
“Because this isn’t a switch,” she cut in. “It’s a becoming.”
She reached out—not threatening, not gentle either—and placed her clawed hand over my chest. I felt it immediately. The echo. The pull.
“We are not done forming,” she said. “Not together. Not yet. It takes time for the human mind and dragon soul to braid without tearing each other apart.”
My throat tightened. “How much time?”
She hesitated.
That scared me more than any answer.
“Months,” she said finally. “Sometimes years. Especially for someone like you.”
“Someone like me,” I echoed.
She met my gaze, fierce and unwavering. “A priestess doesn’t just wake. She integrates. Learns restraint. Learns choice. Learns how not to burn the world every time she feels too much.”
I winced. “Wow. Okay. Rude but fair.”
Her mouth twitched despite herself.
“He tried to rush us,” she continued. “To force an end state that isn’t ready. That’s why I’m angry.”
“And what happens if we had completed it?” I asked quietly.
Her fire flared—violent, protective. “Then you would have lost pieces of yourself. Memory. Emotion. Humanity. Power without anchoring is just another kind of death.”
I sucked in a breath. “So he almost broke us.”
“Yes.”
Silence settled between us, thick and humming.
“I didn’t feel like it was malicious,” I admitted. “More like… desperate.”
She tilted her head. “Desperation still kills.”
Fair.
I wrapped my arms around myself. “So what now?”
Her expression softened—not weak, not kind, but certain.
“Now,” she said, “we slow it down.”
“How?”
“We take control back,” she replied. “No more forced awakenings. No more drowning. No more chemicals. No more commands spoken over us without consent.”
I nodded slowly. “I like that plan.”
She stepped closer until her forehead touched mine, black fire spiraling inward instead of out.
“And you,” she added quietly, “need to stop apologizing for existing.”
I laughed weakly. “You sound like Amara.”
“Good,” she said. “She’s right.”
I hesitated, then asked the question that had been clawing at me since the phone call.
“Are we… okay?” I asked. “After that?”
Her eyes softened—not dimmed, just less sharp.
“We’re shaken,” she said. “But intact. He amplified the process, not completed it. Think of it like—” she grimaced “—someone turning up the heat on an oven before the bread was ready.”
“Great,” I muttered. “So we’re half-baked.”
She snorted. “Exactly.”
I exhaled, relief trembling through me. “Thank you. For not leaving. For not— I don’t know—taking over.”
She smiled then. Not feral. Not divine.
Familiar.
“There is no me without you,” she said. “And no you without me. We don’t replace each other. We learn.”
The fire around us dimmed—not gone, just resting.
“And Seraphine?” she added.
“Yeah?”
“Next time someone speaks Dragon Tongue at you without permission…”
Her grin turned dangerous.
“…we bite.”
The darkness folded in.
And when I fell back toward my body, toward voices and hands and concern and chaos, I did so knowing one thing for certain:
We weren’t finished.
Not even close.
I woke up with fire still humming under my skin.
Not raging. Not quiet.
Alert.
I didn’t even open my eyes before I spoke.
“Lucian,” I said hoarsely, voice sharp as broken glass, “your father is staying out of this.”
The room went dead silent.
I pushed myself upright, ignoring the hands that tried to steady me, black heat flickering just beneath my skin like a warning line no one should cross.
“And the next time you think it’s a good idea to pull something like that,” I continued, locking onto him the second my eyes focused, “you better think real hard—because I won’t pass out next time. I’ll rip his throat out.”
Lucian stared at me for a long second.
Then he sighed.
Long. Tired.
“…It didn’t work,” he said quietly.
That snapped something in me.
I surged to my feet. “Of course it didn’t fucking work!” I shouted. “Were you trying to kill us? You don’t get to force two souls to merge in a week and call it progress!”
He lifted his hands slightly, palms out. “This is how I was raised,” he said. “It worked for me.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” I shot back. “That makes it survivorship bias with a god complex.”
Amara flinched.
Lucian’s jaw tightened. “We didn’t know another way.”
“You didn’t ask,” I snarled. “You assumed. And you commanded.”
I turned sharply to Amara, catching the conflict written all over her face. “Get him away from me,” I hissed. “Now. Before I do something I can’t take back.”
Amara didn’t argue.
She grabbed Lucian’s arm and hauled him back a few steps, her voice low but firm. “Luc. Not right now."
Dante stepped in instinctively, hands raised in a placating gesture. “He thought he was doing the right thing,” he said carefully. “We all did.”
I whipped my head toward him and glared.
Hard.
He stopped mid-sentence.
“…Okay,” he said quietly. “Backing off.”
I dragged a hand down my face, breath shaking, then forced myself to look past them—toward the women still lined along the room. Still watching. Still waiting.
I swallowed.
“I was going to say there’s been a delay,” I began, turning toward them, voice gentler despite everything boiling inside me—
Touch her.
The voice slid through my head like a blade through silk.
My dragon.
Clear. Calm. Certain.
Right here, she continued, guiding me. The hollow. Where a claw would go if you were fighting. Trust me.
I froze.
My hand hovered midair.
The room seemed to lean in.
I swallowed again, heart pounding. “What?” I whispered under my breath.
Touch her, my dragon repeated. Gently. I’ll do the rest.