POV: Seraphina
Three weeks passed like a dream, and I was losing myself in it.
Every morning, I woke in silk sheets softer than anything I'd ever touched. Servants brought breakfast—real food, not the old bread I was used to. Fruit and honey and cheese and meat. Things that tasted like they were made for a queen, not a traveling bard.
During the day, I was alone. Theron ruled his land. He held court. He handled the immortal politics that kept the mortal lands below from being destroyed. I knew that being king meant I couldn't have him all the time.
At night, he came to me.
But on the third day, I found the forbidden libraries.
I was walking the palace hallways, looking for the kitchen to get water, when I found a door I hadn't seen before. It was tall and made of dark wood carved with designs I didn't recognize. Something inside me felt drawn to it. I pushed it open.
The library was huge. Shelves stretched up into shadows that never stopped. Books lined every wall, old and new, their spines glowing with strange magic. I walked inside like I was moving through a dream.
The first book I pulled down was about siren genes. My hands shook as I read. Sirens were rare. Sirens were dangerous. Sirens could do things with their voices that humans couldn't understand. We could affect emotions. We could weaken spells. We could— I stopped reading and looked at my own hands. That explained everything. That explained why my voice had worked on Theron's curse. That answered why I felt different from other people, why they'd always looked at me strangely.
I was part scream.
I kept reading, book after book. I read about spells and how they worked. I read about eternal law and the Council of Immortals. I read about the Twilight King and how he'd ruled for eight hundred years, how his curse had destroyed his ability to ever touch another being without killing them.
Until me.
I found a book about the Eternal Ritual—a transformation that could make a mortal eternal. It was rare. It was terrible. But it was possible. The book showed pictures of women who had undergone it, their mortal bodies changing into something eternal and strong.
Could that be what faced me?
For three days, I read in that library. I barely left. Servants brought food, which I ate without tasting. My mind was spinning with knowledge. With possibilities. With hope.
On the fourth day, as the sun set, I heard Theron's voice calling for me.
"I've been searching for you all afternoon," he said when I finally emerged from the library. He stood in the hallway looking frustrated and glad at the same time. "Where were you?"
"Reading," I admitted. "I found the library. I hope that was allowed."
Something crossed his face—surprise, maybe, or worry. "The forbidden library?"
"Is it forbidden?" I asked innocently.
"Most people would call it that," he said. He took my hand—his cursed hand, which never hurt me—and pulled me toward my rooms. "But you're not most people, are you?"
That night, he came to me as he always did. I was wearing the silk clothes now, the ones that made me feel like I belonged in this house. My hair was brushed and beautiful. I felt less like a wandering bard and more like the woman he was treating me like.
"Sing for me," he said, sitting on the edge of my bed.
I picked up my guitar and began. But this time, when I finished, I didn't put the instrument down instantly. Instead, I asked him a question that had been burning in my mind.
"Why am I here, Theron? Really?"
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "Because I can't live without your voice."
"That's not why," I pressed. "You could hire a thousand singers. You could force them with magic. But you wanted me specifically. Why?"
He reached out and took my hand. His bad hand. The one that was meant to kill anything it touched. But when his skin met mine, all that happened was warmth. All that happened was connection.
"When I was young," he said slowly, "before the curse, I believed in things. I believed in love. I believed in link. I thought that immortality meant forever with someone who mattered." He paused. "The curse took all of that. It made me unable to touch anyone. It made me alone in a way that you can't understand unless you've lived through it."
"And my voice?" I asked gently.
"Your voice reminds me that I'm not completely alone. Your voice tells me that I'm still alive. Your voice is the only thing that makes the curse livable."
I squeezed his hand. "Is that all I am? A fix for your pain?"
"No," he said, and he looked straight into my eyes. "You're becoming everything to me, Seraphina. You're becoming the reason I wake up. The reason I rule fairly instead of cruelly. The reason I haven't wrecked everything in my rage."
My heart was pounding. This was dangerous. This was too much, too fast. But I couldn't stop myself from leaning forward and asking, "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying," he said slowly, "that I want you to stay. Forever. I want to change you with the Eternal Ritual. I want to make you forever. I want to bind you to me so that we can be together without the curse separating us."
I couldn't move.
"The books mentioned the Eternal Ritual," I said slowly. "It's painful."
"Yes."
"And I'd become like you? Immortal?"
"You'd become something more," he amended. "You'd become my queen. My consort. My eternal friend."
He stood up and walked to the window. The Twilight Realm spread out below us, beautiful and dark and endless.
"The Council will demand I marry for political reasons eventually," he said quietly. "They'll want allies. They'll want power consolidated through immortal families." He turned back to me. "But if you're already my eternal bound mate, there's nothing they can do to separate us."
"You'd choose me over political advantage?" I asked, shocked.
"I'd choose you over everything," he said. "That's why I need your answer now, before the Council comes demanding something different."
He walked back to me and took both my hands.
"Will you experience the Eternal Ritual? Will you become my forever queen?"
I should have said no. I should have remembered my grandmother's advice. I should have been scared.
Instead, I opened my mouth to say yes.
But before I could speak, the door to my room exploded inward with a force that sent both of us flying backward.
Standing in the doorway, glowing with power, was a woman made of shadow and evil.
Lady Morganna Shadowfell.
"Well, well," she purred, her voice like poison dripping from beautiful lips. "What have we here? The king making promises he has no right to make?"
Theron stood, putting himself between me and Morganna.
"This is my private chamber," he said coldly. "You have no right to be here."
"Actually," Morganna said, stepping inside with shadow soldiers materializing behind her, "I have every right. The Council sent me. They have an offer for you, Your Majesty. And I'm afraid it can't wait."
She looked past him straight at me, and her smile was absolutely evil.
"Say goodbye to your little human toy, Theron. Because everything is about to change."