The door to her bedchamber creaked wider, spilling the scent of rain and iron into the chamber. Framed in the doorway stood her elder brother, Lord Garrick Araminta — war hero, heir apparent, and the pride of their mother's cold ambition. His silhouette was cut sharp against the light spilling from the corridor. The lamplight gleamed against the medals at his breast, but Seraphina knew how hollow they were. She had seen him die once so now it was like watching a vaporization spring from mist. Garrick Aramint stood at the threshold, boots leaving muddy crescents on the marble. He paused, taking in his sister as if she were both a ghost and an accusation.
Rain clung to his auburn hair, and his uniform—mottled like cracked obsidian and flecked with neatly arranged battle-worn medals—bore the scent of saddle leather and midnight marches—remnants of the war that, in another life, claimed him first. He had been at the territory border for the last five years on orders of the King, and before that, nobody but his enemies knew. He stepped inside, boots whispering against the marble, each movement a study in discipline. The same soldier's bearing. The same cruel grace. His shoulders carried the faint weight of distant battlefields and foreign lands, burdened from the five years he had spent away on a territory expedition. A stark contrast to the frivolous silk and lace that surrounded them but his eyes—gray as old ash—had aged, not in years but in something darker. His gaze swept over her — assessing, calculating — before landing on the steaming cup still cradled between her palms. "You look pale. Has Mother overworked you again?"
The concern in his voice was so light it almost sounded like mockery. Seraphina's pulse beat painfully in her throat. In this life, he sees only his troubled, inconvenient sister, not the woman who had grieved him twice. Her rehearsed greetings became lost in the chasm between memory and reality. Seraphina exhaled through her nose, forcing calm into her voice. "Mother does not overwork. She orchestrates." Garrick's jaw ticked, a muscle flexing in the quiet. "She mentioned you've taken to giving orders now." Elara's gasp cracked like a whip in the room and Garrick stilled, turning his pointed gaze on her. Seraphina lifted a hand, dismissing her quietly. Elara curtsied so swiftly she nearly tripped over her skirts before vanishing into the adjoining room, hesitant but obedient.
Though they had exchanged brief obligatory letters over the years, their words had always been formal, cautious, laced with duty rather than affection. Garrick was a man loyal but distant, forever aligned with their mother's ambitions and expectations, a bond that had stretched taut between them since childhood. For a suspended instant, neither of them spoke. Seraphina set her teacup down carefully. "You're early," she said. "Your regiment isn't due back until next week."
His expression didn't change, though the smallest hint of amusement ghosted across his mouth. He glanced over her shoulder, sharp eyes darting to the gauzy curtains and shadows, "I don't recall needing your permission to return home.". "No," she replied, "but the kingdom does not grant its captains rest without reason. So tell me, Garrick—what brings the crown's favored son, excuse me I mean mad dog, crawling back to the viper's nest?"
Something in his gaze flickered, but only for a moment. "You always did read too much into things. I came because of you. Our battalion was halfway here and I rode straight through two night to get here. To see you. You have no words of joy to greet your older brother with?" The words struck like a bell in her chest. Her lips parted, but before she could speak, he continued, voice softer now. "Your illness spread through the camp like wildfire, speaking that the rose of Araminta had wilted. They said you nearly died. I needed to see for myself."
The irony clawed at her throat. I did die, brother. You watched the flames consume me. Instead, she smiled — tight, bitter, and practiced. "As you can see, I've survived my own death rather well." He turned, running a hand through his hair, mud patterning the ground. "You still do not listen." He bristled, unhooking his sword-belt with a practiced snap. His eyes—so like hers, but grey as winter branches—hardened.
"Last month you swore you'd follow duty, at least in the letter Mother sent me, but I wonder if your fear has made you beg out of your engagement to Celosia yet? ." His voice was low and bitter. He pulled off his gloves one finger at a time, as if stripping away layers of resentment before flinging it at the ground with a wet thud.
Garrick moved closer, the scent of steel and rain following him, the ghost of the battlefield clinging to his uniform. "When I greeted Mother first, she did say you wished to discuss the Beast of the Battlefield---excuse me I mean Celosia arrangement." A smirk, low and vicious drifted down his lips as he neared her, Seraphina's knees inches from his stance as she looked up at him.
"I do." She twisted, turning her body away from him, a fist clenching at the fabric from one of the ballgowns draped over the armrest that Elara had yet to put away. Garrick laughed as if he was being strangled, "You'll ruin us if you flee it.".
"No," she said, voice sharp enough to cut. "I'll ruin her plans. There's a difference." His hand shot out, gripping her wrist before she could turn away. His eyes burned with a warning she remembered too well.
"You don't understand the world you're playing in, Sera. Men like Celosia—".
"—are the empire's beasts, I know." She yanked free, the silk of her sleeve slipping against his bare hand. She flinched at the name, wrist pulsating with her brother's finger marks. In her first life, she never realized how much he sought to protect her—even from himself. She looked up, meeting his gaze directly. "What if I told you he was not our true enemy?"
Garrick's jaw tightened, misunderstanding flickering in his eyes. "He cost me half my men at Redmere Gate. Breaking our alliance with him bring nothing but ruin to all of us. You have no idea what he is." He shifted, the scar beneath his collar barely visible, a mark of battles fought and secrets kept. Matte black leather boots creaked softly against the marble floor, heavy with the authority of a man forged by war and duty, as he turned from her, a bolt of lightning crack across the sky like a warning. "Your world and mine. Never quite the same, Seraphina." Garrick's voice, roughened by years in foreign camps beneath foreign skies, cut through the thick air between them.
"You think that makes you wiser?" she asked softly. "Because you've seen men die for banners and kings who never learned their names?" She noted his back imperciably hardened. "Because I've seen what happens when pride blinds the ones who stay behind." Silence bloomed, taut and bitter. The hearth in her bedroom crackled faintly, throwing light over the wet hem of his cloak, the mud at his boots, the tremor in her hands. She rose from her seat and took a step closer to her older brother, her own flesh and blood.
"You call it pride. I call it survival." He looked at her then—really looked—and for a heartbeat the soldier vanished. Only the brother remained, the boy who once carried her through the storm cellar when she was too small to walk through floodwater. The boy who swore, with childish sincerity, that he would never let the world touch her.
"Survival?" he echoed, voice quieter as his face grew slack. "You think you'll survive crossing Mother? Or Celosia? Much less the King and The Council?" Her tone cooled to glass as he looked down at her. "You think the empire only plays one game, Garrick? Mother moves through salons and marriage contracts. Celosia and you through war. But I've seen both worlds now, and they bleed the same. Someone must learn to cut with a different blade." He exhaled, the shaking in his breath betraying something almost like fear. "You sound like Father when he came back from the front."
The name landed between them like a grave marker.
Seraphina looked away, to the dark windowpane, the breaking storm outside thrashing hard enough against the window to echo the rising edge in her voice. She knew that the storm would not end yet, their rolling patterns common when the Month of the Dawn turned into fall . "Then perhaps I've inherited more than Mother wished." He turned from her, fingers brushing the hilt of his sword. Rain whispered against the glass and when he finally spoke, his voice was low. "I leave for Valenfort in four days, after the Summer Gala. The Celosia front is restless again." Her breath hitched. Valenfort. The name was a wound and a warning both. "You'll see him." she said, more to herself than to him.
His head turned sharply. "See who?"
She smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. "The man everyone calls a beast."
Garrick studied her for a long, unreadable moment. Then, with that same soldier's restraint, he said, "Beasts are only dangerous when you forget they can think." Seraphina's lips parted to reply, but he was already moving again—slowly, circling her as she sat as if she were one of his recruits under inspection. His boots struck the cherry wood floor in measured rhythm, each step a punctuation of disapproval. "You've always had this... performance about you," he said, voice smooth now, almost conversational. "The way you speak in riddles. The way you hide meaning in silk and smiles. It works on Mother's courtiers, perhaps. On lesser men. But I know what you are." Her chin lifted, a reflex against the sting of his words.
"And what is that, brother?"
"A girl who mistakes defiance for strength." His tone was mild, almost pitying. "Who's never seen what real power does when it stops pretending to be noble. All you are doing is play Seraphina." She laughed quietly. "And you have, I suppose? Tell me—how noble were you when you burned Redmere's fields? Or when you left half your men to die at the gates you swore you'd defend?" His eyes snapped to hers, the gray deepening to iron. For a moment, she saw the man the empire had built from bone and obedience—the man who would not flinch even when the world burned around him. His hand shot out, gripping her chin—not harshly, but with the kind of control that was more chilling than force. His thumb pressed just beneath her jaw, forcing her to meet his gaze.
"Careful," he murmured. "You sound like the kind of woman they hang for treason." Seraphina held his stare, pulse fluttering beneath his hand betraying her fury, the violent urge to spit in his face. "You sound like the kind of man who would tighten the noose himself." Something flickered in his eyes—shame, rage, or maybe admiration—but it vanished too quickly to tell. He released her abruptly and turned away, raking a hand through his damp hair. "You think I don't know what Mother's done to you?" he said finally, voice low, almost a growl. "I have watched her shape you into a pretty doll to barter away! I fought wars to keep our name alive, Sera. You only have the luxury of rebellion because I bled for it." He slammed a fist on her night stand, the glass jewlery box shuddering at the force as he wrenched her chin away causing her to stumble. Her chest tightened, anger and grief twisting together, a thin blade of rage rising in her throat.
"You bled for her, not for us!"
"That's the same thing!" he snapped. "You don't get to throw your sacrifices in my face as if they purchased the right to control me." She hissed, rising from her chair and clenching her hands into fists. Thunder roared outside as if in response—so close the window rattled. For a moment the room was lit in a brief, electric flash, revealing the raw strain in his features, the tremor of a man barely holding himself together. "I'm trying to protect you," he said, breath shaking as he stepped back from the nightstand, smoothing a hand over her bedsheets. "You think I want you trapped in Mother's schemes? You think I want you married off to some Council-approved viper?" His jaw clenched. "But you don't understand the danger you're in."
"Oh, I understand perfectly," she said. "I understand that every choice I make seems to belong to someone else. Mother pulls one string, the Council pulls another—and you—" Her voice cracked, more hurt than she meant to reveal. "You grab my chin and call it protection." Garrick turned sharply, and for a heartbeat the mask slipped once more. Bitterness carved deeper lines across his face and his mouth curled into a smile that did not reach his eyes. "You always did like pretending you were different. You read your poetry and played at being tragic while the rest of us did what was necessary. Father indulged you and look where that got him." His words hit like backhanded slaps—soft, but cruel.
"You want to ruin the engagement? Fine. You'll still marry who she chooses, and when it all collapses, I'll be the one sent to clean up your mess. Again. Until you lay broken across the floor like you were when father died." Seraphina stared at him, breath shallow, her corset throbbing in constraint. "If cleaning up after me keeps your boots polished for the crown, I'm sure you'll manage! Stop treating me like a possession you're afraid to misplace." The words hit him. She saw it in the tightening around his eyes, the way his fingers curled as if gripping something invisible and fragile. He laughed—short, sharp, humorless. "Still the same tongue. You never learned when to bite it." The air between them was thick with all the things they would never say—love, resentment, grief. At last, Garrick broke the silence, a hand rising to grip the back of his neck and turning to face her once more. "You're not ready for the world you think you can change," he said. He stared at her for a long, dangerous moment, gray meeting green.
Then, with a smirk and a low exhale, he said, "You're your mother's daughter after all." He crossed the room, stopping just before the door. "Be careful what you awaken, Seraphina," he murmured. "This kingdom doesn't forgive clever women."
And then he was gone.
The door closed with a dull, final sound. Her brother's words circled her mind, sharp as glass. Be careful what you awaken. The scent of wet iron lingered in the air — Garrick's scent — and though he was gone, it felt as though he'd left a dagger lodged somewhere beneath her ribs. Seraphina stood perfectly still, her body a sculpture carved from restraint. Only when her shoulders began to tremble — the quiver of her gloved fingers, the shallow rise of her chest — did she move. Her knees gave way first. She sank to the edge of the chaise, head bowed, silk skirts sighing around her like something alive. For a long time, she simply sat there, breathing through the ruin in her chest, trying not to let the tears come. Garrick's voice lingered in the room, that cutting blend of pity and command.You're not ready for the world you think you can change.
She wanted to hate him. She did — and yet, buried somewhere beneath the contempt was the sick ache of love that refused to die. He had always been the better soldier, the better child, the one who learned how to please Mother by learning how to silence himself. Seraphina had inherited only the will — never the discipline. And in her first life, she'd mistaken his cruelty for care, his obedience for loyalty.
Now, with the weight of a second chance pressing into her lungs, she saw it clearly: Garrick was a tragedy written in the blood of the kingdom's handwriting who did not understand that women become monsters when they have been caged too long. The clock in the corner struck once — a dull chime that made her flinch. She reached for the teacup she'd abandoned earlier, but the tea had gone cold. Her hand lingered around the porcelain before withdrawing. Her gaze drifted to the writing desk by the window. The invitation to the Summer Gala still glinted there, mocking her in gold script. Beneath it, half-hidden beneath the velvet blotter, lay a sheaf of stationery — untouched since her illness.
She moved to the window, pressing her fingertips to the cold pane. Below, the gardens shimmered with silver rain, every petal jeweled with light. Somewhere far away, thunder rolled over the distant hills—toward Valenfort. Seraphina's gaze faltered as Garrick's words echoed. For all his talk of beasts, she thought, her brother was the most dangerous of them all—because he still believed he was righteous. "Beasts," she whispered. "This kingdom breeds them. But it made me, too." Outside, lightning flared — illuminating the garden below, where Garrick's horse waited beneath the eaves. His figure was still there, speaking to one of the guards, head tilted up toward her window. For a brief, reckless moment, she imagined opening the casement and calling his name.
Instead, she turned away.
A soft knock at the door fractured the quiet. She didn't turn. "I wish to be left alone." The door creaked open anyway. "It's only me, my lady," a gentle voice murmured—Elara, her maid. "Your brother asked that I ensure you had everything you needed before he departed." Of course he did. Garrick's care always came wrapped in chains, like a kiss after a wounding. "I don't need anything," Seraphina said, carefully neutral. Elara hesitated. "Should I… tell him you'll not come down to see him off?" A flicker of guilt threatened to rise—she crushed it before it could take form. "No," Seraphina said softly. "He's already seen enough."
Elara bowed her head and slipped out again. The door clicked shut, soft as a sigh. The storm rattled the shutters once more, like knuckles brushing the house, reminding her that time was moving whether she wanted it to or not. The room felt too small now, the storm pressing against the walls as if trying to breach her ribs as she stood with the mosaic of rain behind her alone. Her breath came slow, measured—Mother's lessons creeping back like old ghosts: Never let them see you shaken. Never let them see you undone. But she was undone. Not by fear—by the dragging weight of choices she hadn't yet made.
Seraphina crossed to the writing desk again and stared down at the crisp paper — imaging the calm, regal mask her mother had spent years perfecting sliding back over her face. Somewhere beneath that porcelain surface was a woman her family did not yet recognize and when they finally did it would surely be too late. Thunder rolled across the horizon. The Summer Gala was seven days away. She picked up the quill and a fresh sheet.
The storm answered with a flash of light against the bruised sky. For the first time in both lives, Seraphina Araminta did not feel afraid.
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