Seraphine looked up at the vampire king, and in that moment, she knew.
The war was never just about kingdoms. Not about land, or borders, or treaties written in blood.
It was about her.
Always had been.
Valen stepped forward, slow and deliberate, like time itself moved at his will. His cloak of blackened silk stirred around his boots, the blood-soaked battlefield silent beneath his tread. And the moment his gaze locked with hers—
The world cracked.
Not in noise. Not in fire.
But within her.
A silent fissure, deep and sudden, splitting down the center of everything she thought she knew. Every scream she’d buried, every wound she'd covered with steel and grit—all of it broke open at once.
He walked to her slowly. As if approaching a sacred altar.
"Seraphine," he murmured.
Her name
