SERAPHINA’S POV
The woman beside Lucian did not answer immediately.
She simply looked at me with those unnervingly familiar eyes, and something deep inside my instincts recoiled in confusion because nothing about her felt right.
She didn't carry the hollow absence of Catherine’s puppets, nor the fractured corruption clinging to rogues altered beyond recognition.
Her presence felt…layered. Like standing in front of a mirror submerged beneath dark water, where the reflection moved a fraction too slowly.
If she were indeed a puppet, Catherine must have taken her sweet, sweet time with her.
And then placed her beside Lucian like a chain made of flesh and memory.
I looked from her to him, and my voice came out lower than I intended.
“This is why?”
Lucian’s expression did not change, but pain shimmered in his eyes, raw and liquid. For a heartbeat, he looked so much like the man who had once stood beside me in the ashes of my life and offered his hand.
