Seraphina's POV
I sat alone in the living room of the Ashwyn house, and for the first time since I arrived in Varynthia, I felt something close to real fear settle deep in my chest. The servant who had escorted me there had been polite, almost too polite, but the moment she left and the door clicked softly behind her, the silence that followed made everything feel a lot scarier than it should have been.
The room itself was beautiful in a way that was hard to ignore, with wide windows that let in light, elegant furniture arranged perfectly, and decorations that all seemed to follow the same theme of snakes and curved shapes, but none of that mattered to me in that moment because all I could think about was what I was about to say when Yura walked in.
