Page 17

17

SERAPHINE

T he coffee in my hands has long gone cold.

I sit by the wide window of my living room, the sheer curtains pulled just enough to let the morning bleed in, soft and dull like a wound trying to heal. The city below buzzes, unaware that something ancient is stirring beneath its streets and stories.

My heart’s still wrapped in the echo of Jackson’s voice, his touch, his fear.

“I’m the fucking key.”

He wasn’t wrong.

And the worst part?

I didn’t even know.

Not until now.

Not until the pieces started fitting together in the way they always do when it’s too damn late.

The first time I heard the word Primordial, I was six.

We were still in hiding then—tucked deep in the western forest, behind layers of glamor and silence, inside a house that didn’t exist to anyone but those who shared our blood. My mother taught me how to cast sigils with ash. My father taught me how to lie so the truth never betrayed me.

But my uncle? He told stories.

He whispered them into the flickering hearth while storms bruised the sky. Tales of ancient witches, born from the marrow of the first spell ever spoken. Women and men who bent the veil between worlds until it cracked. They didn’t use magic.

They were magic.

But they were too powerful, too unpredictable.

So they were hunted.

Caged.

Burned.

Or worse—bound.

My mother was one of the last. Primordial. First-line. Born of a bloodline that had no beginning—only memory.

My father was the exile son of an Elven court that had fallen long before peace was ever written on paper. A prince turned fugitive. His ears clipped short to hide what he was. His power buried beneath warded scars he carved into his own skin.

Together, they created me.

Half-witch. Half-elf. Half-ghost.

There was no place in the world for something like me.

So they tried to build one.

But then the Veil fell.

Magic surged into the world like a dam breaking, and humans realized the bedtime stories were real. The old bloodlines came out of hiding. The Council formed to govern the chaos. The Fae courts rose. The vampires claimed their nobility. The shifters marked their territories.

And my family?

They were the sacrifice.

One by one, they were hunted, forced into the open.

My father surrendered to protect the rest of us.

My mother… made a different choice.

She burned down the tribunal meant to sentence me.

I remember the flames in her eyes more than the fire itself.

I remember her screaming my name, her hand outstretched as the world ended around us.

I survived.

Because she made me survive.

Because she locked me in a spell stitched with her last breath and told me to live.

I’ve been living ever since.

And dying a little every day from it.

But what I can’t figure out—what keeps gnawing at the corners of my mind—is how anyone else knows.

No one’s alive who saw me born.

No one survived the fall of that house but me.

Not a soul in this plane or any other should remember my name, let alone what I am.

And Jackson?

Jackson.

How could they know about him?

How could I not know?

I’d heard the rumors, of course. Quiet things spoken only in the Undermarkets. Whispered legends among the old bloods and bone readers. That sometimes, in the strange spinning of the world, two souls find each other again. Not by chance—but by recognition.

They called it the Tether.

The Binding.

An echo of love lived before.

A mark of magic so deep it twisted through time itself to pull them back together.

I thought it was bullshit.

A fairy tale for broken witches and lonely immortals.

But now…

Now I can feel it.

When he touches me, it’s like the world forgets how to breathe.

When he speaks, part of me knows the cadence, the shape of his syllables like I’ve heard them in dreams that never had names.

And when he looks at me?

It’s like I’ve already broken his heart once before.

I bury my head in my hands, pressing my palms against eyes that ache from truths I’m not ready to name.

If this is real—if Jackson is my tether, my key, my echo—then they don’t just want to use me. They want to shatter me. Because to bind me to him, to twist what we are into something they can feed on, that’s the key to unlocking Tharos.

It’s not just blood. Not just magic.

It’s love.

Twisted. Corrupted. Sacrificed.

And I walked right into it.

There’s a knock at the door. I don’t answer. Because I know it’s not him.

He needs space. I can feel it—like something inside me got ripped sideways, the silence between us weighted and thick. He’s trying to come to terms with what I am. With what we are.

I can’t rush him. But I want to.

Gods, I want to take all of this out of his hands. I want to fix it before he falls too deep. Before I do.

I didn’t ask to love him, for him to love me. Maybe we don’t not yet, but if he’s the key, then we did… in another life. And we most likely will again.

Is that why I hated him so much? Is the line really that fine between the two emotions? Was it my body trying to reject what it knew was inevitable? Something I can’t even control–

But love doesn’t ask for control.

It just is.

And sometimes, it destroys everything it touches.