~ Seraphina's POV ~
The cold felt different tonight.
Not the kind that gnawed at your skin or stiffened your bones — no, this was older. The kind of cold that belonged to long-forgotten tombs, to the blood-soaked earth that remembered every name, every sin that you have committed.
I flexed my fingers. The raw skin around my wrists still ached where the chains had once cut deep, but pain was a distant thing now. An echo I barely heard.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d lain there in the half-light, not moving, breathing in rage, letting it settle. Letting it mold me into something harder, colder than the girl they had broken.
The girl they thought had died on that cliff.
But that girl was dead.
And something else was rising in her place.
These people are hiding too many things.
Maybe my
