The Aurelion family library was silent save for the whisper of turning pages.
Seraphina sat in an alcove near the eastern windows, surrounded by scrolls and codices that she had gathered over the past three days. The morning light—grey and diffuse, as it always was in Ashenmere—illuminated the texts before her without warmth, casting everything in shades of silver and shadow.
She had been searching for hours. Days, if she counted the time since her last meeting in the mausoleum. The task she had assigned herself was deceptively simple: find the most basic meditation methods available, techniques so fundamental that they might apply across different paths without causing interference.
The reality was proving far more complicated.
The Aurelion library was extensive, but it was also carefully curated. Generations of family patriarchs had shaped its collection to serve specific purposes—the advancement of Seraphic cultivation, the study of political maneuvering, the accumulation of leverage over rival houses. What they had not collected was fundamental theory. The basic methods, the foundational techniques that underlay all paths of power, were considered too simple to be worth preserving.
Why keep primers when your children would be taught by the finest tutors in the Imperium? Why maintain introductory texts when every Aurelion was expected to master advanced techniques before reaching adulthood?
The arrogance of privilege, Seraphina was discovering, created peculiar blind spots.
She had found scattered references to what she sought—mentions of breathing exercises in the margins of theological treatises, allusions to concentration practices in the biographies of famous practitioners. But the methods themselves remained elusive, either redacted or simply never recorded in the first place.
The Church's archives would have more comprehensive materials. She knew this with certainty. The Aurelian Seminary, where she had trained before her second awakening complicated everything, maintained extensive collections on all aspects of cultivation. But accessing those archives now would require explanations she could not provide.
Why does the betrothed of the Crown Prince need basic meditation techniques?
The question would be asked. Eyebrows would be raised. And in the current climate of suspicion and scrutiny, any irregularity could prove fatal.
Seraphina set down the scroll she had been examining—a dense treatise on the metaphysics of Seraphic manifestation that contained exactly nothing useful—and pressed her fingers to her temples. The headache from the mausoleum meeting had faded days ago, but a different kind of pain was building. The pain of frustration. The pain of a trap slowly closing around her.
"Sister dear, you look positively haggard."
The voice came from behind her, sweet as poisoned honey. Seraphina did not need to turn to know who spoke.
Lucilla.
Her younger sister glided into view, her golden hair arranged in elaborate coils, her gown cut to emphasize curves that had only recently begun to develop. At fifteen, Lucilla was already a master of the courtly arts—the careful smile that revealed nothing, the innocent eyes that missed nothing, the gentle words that carried edges sharp enough to draw blood.
"I am merely tired," Seraphina replied, keeping her voice neutral. "The preparations for the autumn gala require considerable attention."
"Of course they do." Lucilla settled into a chair across from her, arranging her skirts with practiced grace. "Though one might wonder why you spend so much time in the library when there are dressmakers to consult and musicians to audition. Anyone would think you were avoiding your duties."
Or avoiding you, Seraphina thought but did not say.
"Research is also a duty. The Crown Prince values intellectual accomplishment in his companions."
"Does he?" Lucilla's smile sharpened almost imperceptibly. "I had heard he values other qualities more highly. Beauty, for instance. Grace. The kind of warmth that makes a man feel… appreciated."
The implication hung in the air between them, delicate as spider silk and twice as dangerous.
Seraphina had known for months that her sister harbored ambitions regarding the Crown Prince. Lucilla was too young for formal betrothal consideration—the three-year age gap between them was significant at their current stages of life—but she was not too young to scheme. And scheme she did, with a dedication that would have been admirable if it were not aimed directly at Seraphina's destruction.
The logic was simple, from Lucilla's perspective. Seraphina held the position that Lucilla wanted. If Seraphina could be removed—disgraced, dismissed, or simply overshadowed—then the path would be clear for a new arrangement. The family needed a connection to the Imperial throne; they did not specifically need Seraphina to provide it.
"The Crown Prince and I understand each other perfectly," Seraphina said. "But I thank you for your concern, sister. It warms my heart to know you think of my welfare so constantly."
Lucilla's smile flickered, registering the counter-thrust. "Always, dear sister. We are family, after all. We must look out for one another."
"Indeed we must."
They regarded each other across the table of scrolls, two sisters separated by blood and united by nothing at all. In another family, in another world, they might have been allies. Confidantes. Friends, even. But the Aurelions did not raise their children to be friends. They raised them to be weapons, each one honed for a specific purpose, each one ready to be deployed—or discarded—as circumstances required.
And Seraphina was beginning to understand that her purpose was coming to an end.
"I should let you return to your research," Lucilla said, rising from her chair with fluid elegance. "I'm sure whatever you're studying is terribly important. Though if you ever need assistance—advice on how to capture a man's attention, perhaps—you need only ask."
"I shall keep that in mind."
Lucilla departed in a rustle of silk, leaving the faint scent of jasmine perfume in her wake. Seraphina watched her go, tracking her sister's movement until she disappeared around a distant shelf, and only then allowed herself to release the breath she had been holding.
Dangerous, she thought. She grows more dangerous by the day.
But Lucilla was only one threat among many. And compared to the others Seraphina faced, her sister's scheming was almost quaint.
—————
The afternoon brought a summons she could not refuse.
Her mother's sitting room occupied the most prestigious corner of the family's private wing, with windows overlooking the formal gardens and furnishings that spoke of wealth accumulated across generations. Lady Valentina Aurelion presided over this domain like a queen holding court, which in many ways was exactly what she was.
"Sit," her mother commanded, gesturing to a chair that had been positioned—deliberately, Seraphina knew—at a lower height than her own. "We have matters to discuss."
Seraphina sat, folding her hands in her lap with the precise posture she had been taught since childhood. Her mother's eyes swept over her, cataloging, assessing, searching for any flaw that might require correction.
"You have been spending considerable time in the library."
"Yes, Mother."
"Neglecting your social obligations."
"I have attended every required function—"
"Attendance is not the same as presence." Lady Valentina's voice cut through the excuse like a blade through silk. "You appear distracted. Withdrawn. The Crown Prince's household has commented on your lack of enthusiasm at recent gatherings."
The words landed like physical blows, each one carefully aimed at Seraphina's most vulnerable points. Her mother had always had this gift—the ability to find weakness and press upon it without mercy.
"I have been unwell," Seraphina said, reaching for the prepared excuse. "The autumn season affects my constitution. I am seeing the physicians about restorative treatments."
"Unwell." Lady Valentina's gaze sharpened. "Show me your arms."
The command was unexpected, and for one terrible moment, Seraphina's composure cracked. She felt her pulse accelerate, felt the beast-blood stir beneath her skin in response to sudden fear, felt the tattoo on her left arm seem to pulse with dark awareness.
"Mother?"
"Your arms, Seraphina. There have been whispers among the servants about marks glimpsed during your morning ablutions. I would see for myself that these whispers are unfounded."
The servants. Of course. In a house like this, nothing remained secret for long. The maids who attended her bath, the women who helped her dress—they had eyes, and those eyes reported to her mother, and her mother missed nothing.
Seraphina's mind raced through options. She could refuse—claim modesty, claim offense at the demand—but that would only intensify suspicion. She could comply and hope the tattoo remained hidden—but her left arm was exactly where the mark had manifested, and her sleeves were not thick enough to provide concealment if her mother chose to push them back.
"The marks the servants have seen are from a fall," she said, her voice steady despite the terror clawing at her chest. "I stumbled during my morning exercises three days ago. Bruising, nothing more."
"Then you will not mind showing me."
There was no escape. No path out of this trap that her own carelessness had created. Seraphina had been so focused on the larger threats—the Church's Inquisition, the implications of her dual awakening, the madness that awaited if she could not find a solution—that she had neglected the immediate danger of her own household.
She extended her right arm first, pulling back the sleeve to reveal unmarked skin. "As you can see, Mother—"
"The left arm, Seraphina."
The words fell like a executioner's axe. Seraphina felt time seem to slow, felt each heartbeat thunder in her ears like distant drums. She could see her future branching before her—one path leading to exposure, disgrace, death or worse; another path still hidden, still possible, if only she could find the right words, the right distraction, the right—
"My lady." A servant appeared in the doorway, breathless and wide-eyed. "Forgive the interruption, but there is an urgent message from the Imperial Palace. The Crown Prince requests Lady Seraphina's presence at the evening reception. His messenger awaits a response."
Lady Valentina's attention shifted, drawn by the mention of the Imperial family like a compass needle pointing north. "The Crown Prince sent a personal messenger?"
"Yes, my lady. He awaits in the receiving hall."
It was a reprieve. A temporary reprieve, but a reprieve nonetheless. Seraphina rose from her chair, keeping her left arm carefully positioned against her side.
"I should prepare for the reception," she said. "If I am to represent the family before the Crown Prince—"
"Yes, yes." Her mother waved a dismissive hand, already recalculating, already adjusting her strategies to account for this new development. "We will continue our conversation later. Go, make yourself presentable. And Seraphina—"
"Yes, Mother?"
"Do not disappoint us."
Seraphina departed with measured steps, fighting the urge to run. Only when she had reached the privacy of her own chambers did she allow herself to collapse against the closed door, trembling with the aftermath of terror.
Too close. That was too close.
She looked down at her left arm, pulling back the sleeve to examine the mark that had nearly destroyed her. The beast-tattoo stretched from elbow to wrist now, the stylized wing rendered in lines of deepest black against her pale skin. It was beautiful, in its way—the craftsmanship of whatever force had placed it there was undeniable. But that beauty was a death sentence, and every day it grew larger, every day it became harder to conceal.
She could not continue like this. Could not live indefinitely on the edge of discovery, one careless moment away from ruin. The tight path that Darian had spoken of was narrowing to a thread, and soon there would be no room to walk at all.
She needed plans. Contingencies. Ways out of the trap that was closing around her.
Seraphina moved to her writing desk and retrieved a small journal that she kept hidden beneath a false bottom—a repository for thoughts too dangerous to speak aloud. She opened it to a fresh page and began to write, her handwriting small and cramped to maximize the use of space.
Scenarios for survival, she titled the entry. In order of preference.
The first option was the most desirable: find a solution to the dual-path problem, achieve control over both her powers, and conceal her nature indefinitely while maintaining her position and her family's alliance with the Crown. This was what she and her fellow Fractured were working toward, the goal of their shared research and their secret meetings in the dream-mausoleum.
But she was too experienced in the ways of court to rely solely on hope.
The second option: withdraw from the betrothal on grounds that would preserve her family's honor. A religious calling, perhaps—a sudden devotion to contemplative practice that required cloistering. Or a medical condition, real or fabricated, that made her unsuitable for the rigors of royal life. Either approach would require careful staging, but both were possible.
The third option: disappear. Fake her death, or simply flee in the night, abandoning her name and her family and everything she had ever known. Start anew somewhere beyond the reach of the Church's Inquisition, beyond the surveillance of the Imperial court.
The thought of flight brought her mind to a particular consideration. Her brother Aurelius, the fourth-gem priest with his eyes on the Hierophancy, maintained connections throughout the Imperium and beyond. His ecclesiastical duties took him to the Mercurium Free Cities regularly, where he cultivated relationships with the merchant princes and banking houses that controlled the continent's trade.
Mercurium. A confederation of city-states that maintained strict neutrality between the three empires. A place where questions about one's past were considered impolite. A place where coin mattered more than bloodline, and where a woman with resources could build a new life without interference.
If she could establish a presence there—a hidden refuge, prepared in advance—she would have somewhere to run when the trap finally closed.
She would need to approach Aurelius carefully. Her brother was ambitious and self-interested, but those very qualities might work in her favor. A sister with secrets was a sister who could be leveraged, and Aurelius was always collecting leverage. If she presented the right incentives, he might be willing to help establish her bolt-hole without asking questions she could not answer.
The fourth option—the one she barely allowed herself to contemplate—was more drastic still.
In the worst case, she wrote, her pen hesitating over the words, the beauty that draws attention might be… removed.
She thought of her face, the face that poets had compared to dawn breaking over still water. The face that had made the Crown Prince look at her with interest, that had made her mother's ambitions seem achievable, that had placed her at the center of schemes and counter-schemes for as long as she could remember.
It was a weapon, that face. But weapons could be wielded by others as easily as by their owners. And sometimes, the safest thing to do with a dangerous weapon was to destroy it.
There were ways. Acids, carefully applied. Blades, precisely wielded. An "accident" that would leave her scarred beyond recognition, pitied rather than desired, invisible rather than the center of attention. The thought was horrifying—vanity was not absent from her character, however much she had been trained to suppress it—but horror was preferable to death.
She would keep it as a last resort. The final option when all others had failed.
Seraphina closed the journal and returned it to its hiding place, her mind still churning through possibilities. The evening reception awaited, and with it, the Crown Prince—the man she was promised to, the man she could never truly marry without revealing what she had become.
If I sleep with him, she thought, and the words carried a weight of bitter irony, my body will reveal everything.
The beast-tattoo on her arm was only the most visible manifestation of her corruption. There were other signs—the way her pupils sometimes flickered to vertical slits when she was startled, the inhuman sharpness of her canine teeth in certain lights, the subtle scaling that was beginning to appear along her spine. Changes she could hide beneath clothing and cosmetics, but not beneath the intimate scrutiny of a wedding night.
The Crown Prince would see. Would feel. Would know.
And what happened then would destroy not just her, but her entire family.
Her father would be implicated in a conspiracy to place a heretic on the throne. Her mother would be investigated for her role in concealing the corruption. Her brothers and sister would be examined, tested, subjected to the Church's thorough and merciless procedures for detecting taint. Even if they were found clean, the association would follow them for the rest of their lives.
All because she had been born with something inside her that should not exist.
It isn't fair, she thought, and immediately suppressed the sentiment. Fairness was a concept for children and peasants. The world of the great families operated on different principles entirely—power, leverage, advantage, and the ruthless calculus of survival.
She had been dealt a hand that could not be won. The only question was how much she could salvage before the game ended.
—————
The reception was everything she expected and nothing she wanted.
The Crown Prince's audience chamber blazed with lamplight, its walls hung with tapestries depicting the triumphs of the Aurelian dynasty. Courtiers in their finest garments circulated like schools of ornamental fish, each one seeking the attention of those above them while carefully avoiding those below. The air was thick with perfume and politics, with whispered negotiations and silent assessments.
Seraphina moved through it all like a ghost wearing a beautiful mask.
Prince Maxentius greeted her with the formal warmth that protocol required—a bow, a kiss on the hand, a few meaningless words about her beauty and grace. Behind him, his Seraph loomed in magnificent display: a six-winged figure of gold and light, its crown bearing six gems that burned with inner fire.
Sixth gem, Seraphina thought. So close to the peak. So far beyond what I will ever achieve.
Not that achievement was the issue any longer. She could not climb higher on the Seraphic path without accelerating the imbalance between her powers. And she could not remain static without arousing suspicion—a practitioner of her supposed caliber should be advancing steadily, not stagnating at the second gem.
Another trap. Another narrowing of options.
"You seem distracted, my lady." The Crown Prince had noticed her attention wandering—of course he had. A man in his position survived by noticing everything. "Is something troubling you?"
"Merely the concerns of the season, Your Highness." She summoned a smile, the perfect expression she had practiced ten thousand times before mirrors and tutors. "The preparations for the autumn gala weigh upon my thoughts."
"Ah, yes. The gala." His eyes—sharp, calculating, not unkind but certainly not warm—studied her with uncomfortable intensity. "I have been meaning to discuss something with you regarding that event. A matter of some… delicacy."
Seraphina felt her pulse quicken but kept her expression serene. "Of course, Your Highness. I am at your disposal."
"Walk with me."
It was not a request. She fell into step beside him as he moved away from the crowd, toward a balcony that overlooked the palace gardens. His Seraph drifted behind them, a silent witness to whatever was about to transpire.
The balcony was private—as private as anything could be in the Imperial Palace, which meant that there were probably three different factions with agents watching from concealed positions. But the illusion of privacy was valuable in its own right, and Seraphina understood that the Crown Prince had chosen this location precisely because of what it symbolized.
An intimate conversation. An exchange of confidences. The kind of moment that would fuel speculation for weeks.
"The Church grows restless," Prince Maxentius said quietly, his voice pitched so that only she could hear. "The Supreme Hierophant has been making demands. Pushing boundaries. Testing how far he can extend his authority at the expense of the Crown."
This was not what Seraphina had expected. Politics, yes—everything was politics in this world—but not this particular politics. Not information that touched on the highest levels of Imperial governance.
"I was not aware the situation had grown so serious, Your Highness."
"It is being kept quiet. For now." He turned to face her, and for a moment, the mask of courtly affability slipped, revealing something harder beneath. "But things will come to a head eventually. And when they do, I need to know who stands with the Crown and who stands with the Church."
"The Aurelion family has always been loyal to the Imperial throne—"
"The Aurelion family," he interrupted gently, "has always been loyal to the Aurelion family. As is true of every great house in the Imperium. I do not fault your father or your mother for their pragmatism. But I need more than pragmatism from you, Seraphina."
The use of her name—without title, without formal distance—sent a chill down her spine.
"What do you need, Your Highness?"
"I need to know that when the moment comes, you will choose me over them. Over everyone." His gaze held hers, unblinking. "Our marriage is meant to bind our houses together. But a binding that exists only on paper is worthless. I need to know that I can trust you. Truly trust you."
Trust. The word was almost laughable. He was asking for her absolute loyalty, her complete devotion, her willingness to sacrifice her family and everything else for his sake.
And she could never give it to him.
Not because she was disloyal by nature, but because she was hiding something that would destroy any possibility of trust the moment it was revealed. She was a Fractured, a dual-path practitioner, a heretic by every definition that mattered. If he knew what she truly was, this conversation would not be about alliance and marriage—it would be about interrogation and execution.
"You can trust me, Your Highness," she said, and her voice did not waver, her expression did not crack. "I am yours, now and always."
The lie was perfect. She had been trained by the best liars in the Imperium, and she had learned their lessons well.
But as the Crown Prince nodded, apparently satisfied, Seraphina felt something shift in her chest. A door closing. A path vanishing.
She had just promised herself to a man she would never marry, in a world where her very existence was a crime. And somewhere beneath the surface of her composure, the beast-blood stirred, reminding her that no matter how perfect her masks, the truth would eventually emerge.
Mercurium, she thought. I need to reach Aurelius. I need to prepare my escape.
The gala was in two weeks. The wedding was scheduled for the following spring.
She had perhaps six months before the trap closed completely.
It was not enough time. But it was all she had.