Seraphina's POV
The brain scan on Dr. Catherine's computer screen looked like a storm cloud—white and angry, swallowing the left side of my skull.
"I'm so sorry, Seraphina," Dr. Catherine said, and I knew before she spoke the next words. I'd seen that look on her face before, when she told Mrs. Chen her husband had weeks, not months. When she explained to little Tommy's parents that there was nothing more they could do.
I never thought I'd be on the receiving end of that expression.
"Glioblastoma. Stage four. Inoperable." Her voice was soft, practiced, the kind of gentle that came from delivering death sentences every week. "With treatment, maybe six months. Without it..."
"How long?" My voice didn't sound like mine. It was too steady, too calm.
"Thirty days. Perhaps less."
Thirty days.
My hands started shaking. I pressed them against my thighs, but they wouldn't stop trembling.
"There must be something—"
"I wish there was." Dr. Catherine's eyes were wet. "I've consulted with specialists in three different cities. The tumor is wrapped around your brain stem. Surgery would kill you faster than letting it run its course. Chemotherapy might buy you a few weeks, but the quality of life—"
"Would be terrible," I finished. I'd watched enough patients waste away in hospital beds, their final days stolen by treatments that only delayed the inevitable.
Dr. Catherine nodded. "I'm so sorry."
I was twenty-six years old. Twenty-six.
I hadn't fallen in love. Hadn't traveled beyond my tiny village of Ashenhaven. Hadn't done any of the things I promised myself I'd do "someday."
Someday had just become never.
"What do I do now?" I whispered.
"Live." Dr. Catherine reached across her desk and squeezed my hand. "Whatever that means to you, Seraphina. Live every single day you have left."
I didn't remember driving home. One moment I was in the parking lot, staring at my hands on the steering wheel. The next, I was sitting in my tiny apartment above the village healing shop where I worked.
Thirty days.
I looked around my room—at the medical textbooks stacked on my desk, the acceptance letter from the university I'd never attend now, the dried flowers from patients I'd helped heal. My whole life had been about saving others.
Who was going to save me?
My phone buzzed. Text from my father: Working late again. Don't wait up.
Translation: drinking at the tavern again, drowning in the same grief that had consumed him since Mom disappeared fourteen years ago.
I didn't bother responding. What would I even say? Hey Dad, I'm dying. Want to actually be my father for the last month of my life?
The laugh that escaped my throat sounded hysterical.
I grabbed a notebook from my desk—the pretty one with the leather cover that I'd been saving for something special. If there was ever a time to use it, this was it.
My hand shook as I wrote across the top of the first page: Things to Do Before I Die
The words blurred. I blinked hard, forcing back tears.
What did I want? What had I always wanted but been too scared, too practical, too good to chase?
Kiss someone who makes me forget my name
I'd only been kissed twice. Once by Peter Marsh behind the bakery when I was sixteen—clumsy and wet and disappointing. Once by Thomas Reed, the blacksmith's son, who proposed marriage last spring. I'd said no because I didn't love him. Because I wanted more than settling.
Turned out waiting for "more" meant dying without ever experiencing it.
Make love to someone
My cheeks burned even though I was alone. I was still a virgin. Not for religious reasons or lack of opportunity—I'd just always thought sex should mean something. Should be with someone I loved.
But love took time. Time I didn't have.
Fall in love, even if it's just for a day Feel alive—truly, wildly, desperately alive Die knowing I didn't waste my last breath
I stared at the list. It was pathetic, really. So simple. Things most people did by the time they were twenty.
But for me? They were impossible dreams.
I pressed my face into my pillow and screamed. Screamed until my throat was raw, until the unfairness of it all tore through me like the tumor eating my brain.
I was going to die. Soon. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
When the tears finally came, they didn't stop for hours.
I must have fallen asleep at some point because I woke to darkness.
My head throbbed—the headaches were getting worse, just like Dr. Catherine warned they would. I fumbled for the pain medication on my nightstand, swallowed two pills dry.
The clock read 11:47 PM. Three days since the diagnosis. Twenty-seven days left to live.
I'd spent them in bed, crying, sleeping, pretending none of this was real.
Some bucket list I was completing.
I grabbed my notebook again, reading over the pathetic five items I'd written. Who was I kidding? I lived in Ashenhaven—a village so small everyone knew everyone else's business. Where would I even find someone to kiss, to make love with, to—
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
Three sharp raps on my door. At midnight.
My heart jumped into my throat.
Nobody visited at midnight. Not in Ashenhaven. Not unless—
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
Louder this time. More insistent.
I stood slowly, my legs shaking. The headache made everything fuzzy around the edges, but I could see the shadow beneath my door. Someone was standing right outside.
"Who's there?" My voice cracked.
Silence.
Then: "Open the door, Seraphina Novak."
The voice was male, old, and carried the weight of authority I'd heard only once before—fourteen years ago, when they came to take my mother away.
My blood turned to ice.
No. No, it couldn't be.
My hand trembled as I reached for the doorknob. Every instinct screamed at me to run, to hide, to pretend I wasn't home.
But I was dying anyway. What did I have left to fear?
I opened the door.
Elder Rowan stood in the hallway, his weathered face grave in the flickering candlelight. In his gnarled hands, he held a single black rose.
My mother's final words before she disappeared echoed in my memory: "If they ever bring you the black rose, run."
"You've been chosen," Elder Rowan said, his voice heavy with something that sounded almost like pity.
The black rose seemed to pulse in his hands, its petals darker than midnight, darker than death itself.
"Chosen for what?" I whispered, though somewhere deep in my dying bones, I already knew the answer.
Elder Rowan's eyes met mine, and in them, I saw my fate sealed.
"As this year's bride to the vampire prince."