Ashes Beneath The Flame
1032 Words
Chapter Six
The crowd erupted in cheers but none of it reached Seraphina. She lay in the center of the stone circle, cheek pressed against the cold ground, blood trickling from her brow into her eye. Her ribs ached. Her lip was split. Livia stood above her, victorious and smirking, a predator that had enjoyed every second of the hunt.
“Welcome to the court,” Livia whispered, just loud enough for Seraphina to hear. “You lasted longer than I thought.”
Seraphina didn’t move. She couldn’t. Ember was silent, her presence dim burnt low like a candle deprived of oxygen.
Footsteps approached. Boots. Heavy. Commanding.
Kael.
She forced herself to look up, though her vision swam. The Alpha’s gaze swept across her broken form not with worry, not with rage, but with cold calculation. Like a master inspecting his work. His lips curved, just slightly. Not into a smile. Into approval.
Approval of her suffering. Then, without a word, he turned his back and walked away.
The room swallowed the moment whole returning to wine, laughter, and the savage games of courtly life. As if the blood on the floor meant nothing. As if she meant nothing.
Elsa rushed forward only once Kael had vanished. “Come,” she said, voice low, shaking, eyes shining with unshed fury. “You can’t stay here.”
Seraphina wanted to argue, to rise on her own. But pride was heavy when your bones were fractured. She let Elsa help her up, barely biting back a cry as pain lanced through her side. The court parted just enough for them to pass, eyes following them like jackals scenting the next fall.
No one offered a hand. Not even a glance of pity.
Only silence. Only scorn.
That night, Seraphina lay curled on her side on the thin mattress, wrapped in linen damp with sweat and blood. Elsa had cleaned her wounds with gentle hands, but her healing was slow her body too battered to shift, too exhausted to call on her wolf.
“I shouldn’t have risen,” she whispered to the ceiling. “I should have let her knock me down and stayed there.”
“Weakness is what they want, “Ember growled weakly. “You didn’t give it to them.”
“I lost.”
“You didn’t submit.”
The difference tasted like iron. A soft knock came at the door. Elsa entered without waiting for permission, carrying a damp cloth and a small vial of healing tincture.
“He hasn’t summoned you,” Elsa said softly, kneeling beside the bed. “But the guards say you’re expected to appear for breakfast. Publicly. Unmarked.”
“Unmarked,? ” Seraphina echoed bitterly. “Should I wear a mask, then?”
Elsa didn’t answer. She simply handed her the cloth.
By morning, the bruises on Seraphina’s face had darkened. She did what she could rouge on her cheeks, powder under her eyes but no cosmetics could hide the pain in her posture, the limp in her gait.
The eastern dining hall was already full when she arrived. Kael sat at the head of the table, flanked by high-ranking wolves and elegant females. He didn’t look at her. Not even once. But the others did.
They watched her limp to her seat. They noted her silence. They feasted on her shame.
“You look radiant,” one of the women whispered mockingly from across the table. “Red suits you. Especially on the face.”
Another giggled. Seraphina reached for the goblet in front of her with trembling fingers. Her hands barely obeyed her.
Kael finally spoke. “I expected better form in that duel,” he said, not even looking her way.
The room went still. Seraphina looked up slowly. “You wanted me to lose.”
Kael took a slow sip of his wine. “I wanted you to learn.” Then, softly, “You are not in Crescent Moon anymore.”
The implication slithered between them like venom. “You didn’t have to humiliate me.”
“I didn’t.” His voice turned steel. “You did, by pretending you were something more than what you are.”
Seraphina’s fists clenched in her lap. Ember stirred with rage. She didn’t speak again. Neither did he.
Back in her chambers, Seraphina sank onto the edge of the bed and stared at her hands scraped, trembling, unfit for war, unfit for submission.
She didn’t cry. Not yet. She couldn’t afford to. But as the door clicked shut behind her, the silence was deafening.
There were no allies here. No father to run to. No Kael to reason with. Only the slow, suffocating realization…
She stared at the freshly folded garments laid out near her wardrobe silks too fine for a prisoner, too sensual for an innocent. A cold coil twisted in her gut.
“They’re preparing your quarters in the eastern wing,” Elsa had whispered the day after the fight, her expression unreadable. “He says it’s time.”
Time for what?
Seraphina hadn’t asked. She didn’t want to know. But now, with each day that passed and Kael’s silence thickening like fog, the answer clawed at her.
If he meant to claim her, to mark her, she would have no power to stop it. No voice. No escape.
Unless…
Her fingers curled slowly into fists.
That night, while the halls were quiet and the wolves lulled by wine and arrogance, Seraphina sat at the edge of her bed, a single candle flickering beside her. The scent of lavender oil hung faintly in the air from Elsa’s earlier visit, but now she was alone ,she began to write. A letter to her father.
The parchment trembled between her fingers. She dipped the quill again, carefully tracing the next line.
Father,
I am still alive, though I cannot say the same for my spirit. I have been forced into Kael’s court and into submission I did not choose. I fear what may come, and I long to return home to Crescent Moon, to safety, to you.
Please send for me. I will find a way to meet your men.
Your daughter,
Seraphina.
- Writer
