The battlefield stayed with her.
Days later, Serena could still smell the smoke if she closed her eyes. She could still hear the sound of Darian's sword turning aside her flames, see the way his silver eyes had met hers without fear.
The humans called it a miracle.
"The witch princess saved us," they said, bowing low when she passed.
Her people called it a risk.
"You revealed yourself too openly," the Witch Queen her mother warned in the quiet of the Court's inner chambers. "The vampires will not ignore this. Their generals are not fools."
Serena thought of Darian. No. They're not.
"I couldn't watch them die," Serena replied, trying to keep her voice steady. "Not when I could stop it."
Her mother's gaze softened but did not lose its steel.
"And that is why they will use you, Serena," she said. "Your heart is too open. Your power too bright. You are a beacon and beacons attract moths. And monsters."
Monsters with silver eyes and careful words.
"I understand," Serena murmured, though she didn't. Not really.
That night, she woke with the sense of being watched.
Her window was open, curtains stirring in a wind that didn't match the weather. Power pulsed faintly along her skin, like goosebumps made of magic. She rose quietly, careful not to wake the Court attendants sleeping nearby, and stepped out into the cool air of the balcony.
Moonlight silvered the trees beyond the palace. Crickets sang. All looked normal
Except for the thread of awareness tugging her toward the edge of their lands.
She frowned.
"Fine," she whispered to the night. "Show me."
She wrapped a simple concealment spell around herself enough to blur her presence and slipped through the sleeping palace, past stone walls etched with wards, out into the forest.
The pull grew stronger with each step.
It wasn't a spell she recognized. Not witchcraft. Not human magic.
Something else.
She followed it to the border of their hidden realm, where the trees thinned and the old road reappeared, broken and forgotten by humans long ago. Crumbled stone lined the path, overgrown and half swallowed by roots.
Ahead, the skeleton of an ancient temple rose from the dark, its pillars cracked, its roof half-collapsed. Moss crawled over fallen statues whose faces had been worn away by time.
Serena stopped just outside the broken doorway.
"You can come out," she said.
Silence.
Then a voice, calm and low, floated from within:
"You're not supposed to be here, witch princess."
Darian stepped into the moonlight, leaning casually against a shattered column.
He wasn't wearing armor this time. Just a simple dark tunic, trousers, and a long coat that brushed his boots. Without the armor, he seemed taller somehow, sharper. There was no blood on him tonight, no battlefield chaos.
But his eyes were still silver.
Serena's fingers itched for fire.
"You called me," she said. It wasn't a question. "That pull it was you."
He inclined his head slightly. "A… suggestion. Nothing you couldn't have ignored."
"Don't play with me," she snapped.
"Wouldn't dream of it," he said lightly. "You dream enough on your own."
Her eyes narrowed. "Were you in my mind?"
"Not entirely," he said. "Your kind shines. Even when you think you are hidden. I simply… followed."
"You had no right."
"Neither did you," he countered, "coming to the aid of humans that weren't yours to protect."
Serena bristled. "They were people."
"And vampires are not?" he asked quietly.
The temple fell silent.
She hadn't expected that question. Not like that. Not from him.
"You slaughter them," she said. "You drain them. Use them."
"Not all of us," he replied. "Not for pleasure. Not for sport. It is what we are, princess. You wield fire. We wield hunger."
"Don't make this sound noble," she said, disgusted.
"I'm not," he said. "I'm telling you the truth."
For a moment, their gazes held, the air between them tight.
Serena exhaled slowly, forcing her anger down.
"Why ask me here?" she finally said. "To try and justify your war?"
"No," Darian said. "To understand you."
She blinked. "Understand me?"
He pushed away from the pillar, taking a few unhurried steps toward her. The moonlight caught faint scars on his throat thin, pale lines that looked very old.
"On that battlefield," he said, eyes never leaving her face, "you could have unleashed much more than you did. I saw it in your magic. You are holding back."
"Maybe I didn't want to destroy the land itself," she said, folding her arms.
"Maybe," he said. "Or maybe you are not a weapon your people think you are."
Her jaw tightened. "You don't know my people."
"I know enough." His tone sharpened. "You hide while humans suffer. You keep your stars and storms to yourselves. You tell yourselves it is balance. That you are not meant to intervene. And yet…" He studied her face. "You did."
She hated that he was right. She hated that it bothered her that he was right.
"What do you want from me, Darian?" she asked.
He considered this for a long moment.
"Conversation," he said at last.
She stared at him.
"Conversation," she repeated flatly.
"Yes."
"That's all?"
"For now," he said.
The "for now" should have been a warning. Instead, it tugged at her curiosity.
"You risked coming this close to the Court for… conversation?" she said. "Do your people know where you are?"
"Of course not," he replied. "They'd expect me to kill you on sight."
"You should try," she said, lifting her chin. "You'd burn."
His mouth twitched. "You sound very sure of that."
"I am very sure."
"Good," he said softly. "Confidence is attractive."
The word hit her like a slap she hadn't seen coming.
"Don't," she snapped, cheeks warming. "Do not flirt with me."
"Who said I was flirting?" he asked, one brow raised. "I'm merely observing."
"You're infuriating," she muttered.
"And yet," he said, "you came."
She hated that more than anything.
Serena looked away, toward the shattered stone altar at the center of the temple. Vines had grown across it in intricate patterns, weaving their way through ancient carvings. Once, long ago, humans had worshiped something here. A god. A star. A promise.
"Why this place?" she asked.
"It's forgotten," Darian said. "Like most truths."
She walked slowly toward the altar, trailing her fingers over the vines. The stone hummed faintly beneath her touch, responding to her magic.
"You think witches are cowards," she said quietly.
"I think witches are… careful," he replied. "You have the power to unmake what we build, but you fear the cost of using it. Vampires, on the other hand" He shrugged. "We are built for war."
"Built?" she echoed. "As in… made?"
His gaze flickered to her.
"Our births were not like yours," he said. "We were turned in the beginning. Taken by the mist. Reshaped. We did not choose this, princess."
"You choose what you do with it," she shot back.
His jaw clenched. Just a little. "Do you know what it is like to wake and hear the world bleeding?" he asked softly. "To hear heartbeats like drums, like songs, like something you cannot reach without breaking it? To exist on a hunger you did not ask for?"
She swallowed.
No, she did not know what that was like.
"I know what it is like," she said, "to wake and feel the world burning. To feel every wound in the earth like it is my own skin, and to know I can't heal it without killing the ones who caused it."
Their eyes met again.
Something shifted.
Not sympathy, not yet. But recognition. A strange, fragile understanding.
"You see?" he said quietly. "You and I are not so different."
"We are nothing alike," she said but her voice lacked heat.
They fell into an uneasy rhythm.
She asked him about the Night Legion. He told her they were not all monsters, though many relished the name. Some fed carefully, trading protection for blood. Some hunted only on battlefields, where death was already thick in the air.
He asked her about the Witch Court. She told him they were not all cowards, though many had grown comfortable in secrecy. Some wanted to step into the light. Some wanted to abandon humans entirely.
"Why protect them?" he asked at one point, genuinely curious. "Humans. They forget you. They fear you. They turn on you as easily as they turn on us."
"Because they're us," she said. "Or they were, once. Before the mist. Before the split. We're what's left of what they could have been. We owe them something."
"You owe them nothing," he said. "Your kind did not cause the mist."
"I don't know what caused it," she said. "No one does. But I know this: if we have the power to stop cruelty and don't, then we're no better than those who wield it."
His eyes softened not with agreement, but with a strange kind of respect.
"Your heart will get you killed," he said.
"Yours will get the world killed," she shot back.
He almost laughed at that.
Time slipped strangely inside the temple.
They talked of small things too, eventually. Old songs. Fallen cities. Stars that had names once but didn't anymore. She realized, slowly, that Darian had lived through ages she had only read about in dusty scrolls.
"You remember the first human kingdoms," she said once, stunned. "When they still prayed to the old gods."
"I remember when they met the old gods," he said dryly. "The gods were unimpressed."
Despite herself, she smiled.
He noticed. And didn't look away.
The moon had climbed high when Serena finally stepped back.
"This can't happen again," she said, suddenly aware of how far she'd gone from the rules of her people. "If the Court finds out I met with you"
"They'll punish you?" he asked, studying her.
"They'll lock me down," she said. "Or worse. They'll move against you before we're ready."
"And are you planning to move against us, princess?" he asked softly.
"Maybe I should," she said.
He nodded once, accepting that.
"And yet," he said, "you're still here."
A low wind slid through the broken temple, stirring the dust.
Serena wrapped her arms around herself.
"This is dangerous," she said.
"Yes," he replied.
"You're dangerous."
"Yes."
"You kill people."
"Yes."
"Then why don't I feel afraid?" she whispered, more to herself than to him.
He was silent for a moment.
"Because you are used to being the most powerful thing in the room," he said. "And for the first time, you have met something that can stand in the same space and not bow."
Her heart thudded uncomfortably.
"I hate that you might be right," she muttered.
"You'll get used to it," he said mildly. "I'm right often."
She rolled her eyes. "Infuriating."
"You've said that before," he said. "I'm starting to think you like it."
She turned away, hiding the traitorous curve of her lips.
"This was a mistake," she said. "I shouldn't come here again."
"Then don't," he said simply. "You're free to choose, Serena of Lyris."
He stepped back into the shadows, his form already dissolving into the darkness in that unsettling way of his.
"But if you wish to understand your enemy," his voice floated back, "I will be here when the moon is high and the world is quiet."
"And if I don't?" she called.
"Then we will meet next on a battlefield," he said. "And we will both pretend this night never happened."
Her throat tightened.
She stood there long after he was gone, staring at the spot where he had been.
This is foolish, she told herself. He is your enemy. He leads the army that slaughters humans, that threatens your people. He is a monster.
And yet, another voice whispered, quieter but sharper:
He is the only one who understands what it is to carry power that could break the world.
When she finally returned to the Court, the dawn was bleeding faint pink into the sky.
Her mother was waiting on the balcony outside Serena's room, eyes shadowed.
"You went out," the Queen said. Not a question.
Serena swallowed. "I needed air."
Her mother's gaze searched her face.
"Be careful, my daughter," she said softly. "The world beyond our wards is not kind. And there are things in the dark that would love to turn our hearts against us."
For a heartbeat, Serena thought her mother knew everything.
But the Queen only sighed and turned away.
Serena lay awake for a long time after that, staring at the ceiling, listening to the quiet pulse of magic in the walls.
She made a decision.
Tomorrow, she would not go to the temple.
The next day, she told herself the same.
On the third night, when the moon was high and the world was quiet Serena found herself standing again at the broken doorway of the ruined temple.
Darian was already there.
"You're late," he said.
She glared at him.
"Get used to it," she replied. "I'm infuriating too."
His smile, small and quick, felt like the beginning of something she did not yet have a name for.
Something that would change everything.