Somewhere in South London, Two Days Later
I stood in the pawnshop like a man about to confess to something.
Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, too bright for a place that trafficked in desperation. The walls were lined with busted guitars, cracked TV screens, and engagement rings that had outlasted the vows behind them.
My palms were sweating.
Which was stupid.
I hadn't stolen anything.
Not exactly.
The velvet box felt too clean in my coat pocket. Like it didn't belong in a place like this. Like I didn't belong.
I cleared my throat, stepped up to the counter.
The guy behind it didn't look up.
Just mumbled, "Yeah?"
I set the box down gently, popped the lid.
Three rings. Heavy. Gold. The kind of old rich that doesn't sparkle—it broods.
He stopped typing.
Lifted one out with gloved fingers.
"Where'd you get these?"
"Inherited," I lied smoothly.
He squinted. "No paperwork?"
I gave him a blank look.
He snorted, muttered something about "dodgy posh shit," and pulled out a loupe. For the next few minutes, all I heard was his breath and the soft scrape of gold on glass.
"They're real," he said finally. "Old, too. Hallmarked. You sure you want to sell all three?"
I shrugged. "One for now."
He weighed it. Checked something on the computer. Looked back up.
"I can give you £3,800."
I tried not to react.
Inside, my pulse jumped. Outside, I just nodded.
He slid the cash across the counter, counted out in bundles too thick for comfort.
I stuffed them into my jacket without checking.
When I stepped out into the street, the world looked wrong.
Same cracked pavement. Same gray drizzle. Same sour kebab smell from the takeaway across the road.
But I felt like I'd walked into it from somewhere else.
Somewhere... off.
I turned up my hood and walked.
Every car horn felt too loud. Every face I passed felt like it was looking through me. I was wired, but tired. Grounded, but floating.
It was like my body had come back to the real world.
But my head was still in that house.
And her.
I didn't know her name.
Still didn't.
Didn't ask. She didn't offer.
But I remembered her mouth. Her voice. The look in her eyes when she let me leave—like she'd already decided that it wasn't goodbye.
I should've asked.
Should've gotten something more than a kiss, a bruise, and a handful of jewelry that smelled like candle smoke and secrets.
But I hadn't.
Because I wasn't thinking straight when I was with her.
Hell, I wasn't thinking straight now.
Back at the flat, Tiffany was curled on the couch in joggers and her old hoodie, flipping through some survival show on mute. She looked up when I came in.
"You okay?"
I nodded, dropped the envelope of cash on the coffee table.
Her eyes widened.
"Where did you—"
"Pawned something."
She stared. Then raised a brow. "Legally?"
I shot her a look.
She held up her hands. "I'm just saying. You usually only come home with bruises, not bonuses."
I collapsed beside her, scrubbing a hand through my hair.
My chest still felt tight.
Like I'd forgotten something behind.
Like something was still watching me.
I slept like shit that night.
Woke up twice in a sweat.
Not from nightmares.
From dreams.
Dreams of her voice in my ear. Of her mouth on my skin. Of candlelight and cold sheets and the slow drag of silk across my thighs.
You're free to go, she'd said.
But the worst part?
She never said I wouldn't come back.
And neither did I.
-------------------------------------------------------
I was seventeen when they sold me.
To a man with fingernails like yellow ivory and breath that smelled of rot and red wine. He was sixty-three, with skin like paper and too much coin. A French noble whose name I do not remember—because I refuse to.
He lived in a chateau with too many windows and not enough warmth.
And he wanted a bride.
Not for love.
Not even for heirs.
Just something beautiful to keep in a room and ruin slowly.
I did not cry.
My mother did.
My father did not.
He said I should be grateful.
That a girl born of a slave and a merchant, with skin kissed by African sun and a French surname too long for a title, should thank the gods for such fortune.
But I had never been thankful.
Not for the hunger in our house.
Not for the way white women looked at my mother.
Not for the way he looked at me.
So on the second night, when the chateau went quiet and the old man fell asleep with wine dribbling down his chin—I ran.
The snow was heavy that winter.
It turned my silk shoes to rags in minutes.
I bled from the soles before I reached the edge of the woods, and still I didn't stop.
Not even when the trees started to whisper in a tongue older than my fear.
Not even when the dark took shape.
He stepped out of it like it belonged to him.
Tall. Pale. Smiling without warmth.
His teeth gleamed even in the dark.
"I could eat you," he said.
"You could try," I answered.
He laughed and I think that's why he spared me.
He was the first vampire I ever met.
He was not kind.
He was not cruel.
He was curious.
He took me in, fed me, taught me how to read Latin and carve flesh.
He turned me when I asked him to.
Not because I wanted to live forever.
But because I never wanted to belong to anyone ever again.
That was six hundred years ago.
France bled and burned. Kings fell. Empires rose.
I stayed the same.
Dark and divine. Beautiful and untouchable. Every inch of me carved sharp by the world that tried to break me.
Men came and went. So did monsters.
I stayed.
Until I found her.
Villa Dahlia.
An orphaned estate choked with ghosts and ivy, forgotten by time.
I touched her walls and she breathed for the first time in a hundred years.
I made her mine.
And she made me queen.
But I never let anyone stay.
Not until him.
Not until the thief with the broken mouth and the desperate hands.
Cassian Hale.
With golden hair like tarnished halos and eyes that refused to look away.
I don't know why I let him in.
Why I let him take.
Why I gave.
He doesn't know who or what I am.
Doesn't know what I've done.
Doesn't know that the moment he stepped into my house, I tasted the future on his skin.
And it tasted like blood and fire and change.
He will return.
He has to.
Because I am Lady Seraphine d'Argent.
Daughter of fire. Bride of no one.
And I have never let go of anything that was mine.