Chapter 3: Seraphina
1054 Words
"The shadow does not fear the light—it longs for it, even as it knows it must burn."
THE council chamber emptied like a battlefield after the clash—quiet, but still thick with smoke. Seraphina’s words had ended the ongoing argument and quarrel, yet she felt no triumph. Each lord had bowed, each general had yielded, but their eyes had lingered on her, heavy with doubt.
She walked the marble corridors swiftly, her gown whispering against the polished floor. Only when the cool air of the gardens touched her face did she finally breathe again. Here, beneath the lantern-flowers that glowed faintly with her presence, she felt less like a crown and more like herself. If only that could occur more often.
A sound then startled her—a low groan.
Her steps faltered. By the fountain’s edge lay a body, dark-clad, broken. Blood streaked the stone like spilled ink. For one breath, she thought it a corpse sent by the Shadowlands to taunt her. But then his chest rose shallowly.
Alive.
Her heart fell into her belly. Recognition burned at once: the features from whispers, from warnings, from war councils. The heir of Veythar.
"This has got to be a dream," she said as she tried pinching herself hard. She soon realized that it was very much infact not a dream.
The very heir to the throne of Veythar, Prince Kaelen was in her kingdom.
Instinct screamed at her to call the guards. To end him here, while he lay helpless at her feet. To prove her worth to crown and kingdom. But her hand, when it lifted, did not summon steel. It trembled with light.
“Why… why here?” she whispered, crouching over him.
She then took a moment to analyze his features.
His hair was jet black and looked like silk. Seraphina had been tempted to touch it, but flung her fingers away. "i must be running mad", she whispered to herself. His skin was a light shade of copper, lips pink and pale.
Suddenly, his eyes fluttered open, dark as midnight storms. For a moment, he looked at her not with hatred but with raw, unguarded pain. Then his lashes lowered again, and the sound of his breathing grew ragged.
Mercy struck before reason. She could not leave him. With hushed commands, she summoned two loyal handmaidens she had known ever since she had been a little girl, swearing them to silence. Together, they bore him through secret halls, into the forgotten chamber of the old healers. The place smelled of dust and herbs long dead, but it would be safe.
“Lay him here,” she whispered.
"Please be safe, your highness" they said as they bowed and took their leave.
When they left, she stood alone beside him. She then caused her light to flare at her fingertips, spilling warmth into his wounds. His breathing steadied, faintly, stubbornly.
He stirred. Groaned. Opened his eyes again.
“The princess of Elyndor,” he rasped, his voice roughened by pain. “Merciful… as the stories say.”
"My sun, what beautiful dark eyes" she said to herself.
Her breath caught. “You know who I am?”
“How could I not?” His eyes—dark, relentless, even clouded with pain—met hers. “You are the flame I was taught to hate.”
“Then why come?” she asked softly. “Why risk crossing into Elyndor at all?”
He gave a low, humorless laugh that broke into a cough. Blood flecked his lips, but he still looked at her as though she were the one cornered. For a moment, something unguarded flickered across his face—something like shame. His jaw clenched.
“Because someone wanted me here,” he said. “Not for victory. For their gain. And I obeyed like a fool.”
The admission startled her. She had expected lies, threats, but not this blunt, wounded truth.
“Would they use their heir as a pawn?” she whispered.
His gaze flickered, shadowed with something she couldn’t name—anger, shame, betrayal. “In Veythar, even blood is a tool. Even mine.”
His bitterness rang too sharp to be false. It unsettled her more than any threat could have.
Silence stretched between them, heavy with things neither dared say.
At last, he pushed himself upright, swaying but unyielding.
“I can’t stay, Princess. Your mercy has already cost you. If your council finds me, you burn with me.”
She bristled, though her voice trembled. “Elyndor does not undo itself by showing compassion. Light does not fear the shadow.”
His eyes narrowed, a faint, wry smile ghosting across his lips. “Spoken like someone who has never stood too close to the dark.”
“You won’t survive the journey,” she said, stepping forward despite herself.
“I will,” he answered, though his voice wavered. “And if I don’t… at least it won’t be by Elyndor’s blade.”
He rose unsteadily, every movement cut with pain but also with defiance. In the doorway, he paused, shadow wrapping around him like a cloak.
“You should have let me die in your garden,” he said, his voice low, almost tender beneath the rasp. “Mercy is dangerous, Princess… especially when given to the dark.”
Then he was gone, swallowed by the halls, by the night, by the fate that dragged him back to the shadows he called home.
Seraphina stood rooted in the silence he left behind, her hands trembling, her light flickering like a flame in storm-winds. His words lingered, curling around her like smoke, refusing to fade.
Finally, she returned to her chambers, the weight of the crown heavier than ever upon her shoulders.
"What a day" she whispered to herself. She was still in shock at what had happened. Surely it wasn't all real?
She lay upon her bed, staring at the canopy above, replaying the moment she had chosen mercy over steel. The warmth of her light pulsed faintly at her fingertips, as though it remembered his touch.
Closing her eyes, Seraphina told herself it was the last she would ever see of him.
But in the quiet before sleep claimed her, that certainty felt like a lie.
- Writer
