Page 7

7

SERA

T he wind wails beyond the stone walls of House Drazharel, threading through narrow corridors and towering spires like a ghost searching for a way inside. The night presses thick and silver against the windowpane, a wash of moonlight stretching across the polished marble floor.

I sit at the window, knees drawn to my chest. I’m back in my room, staring out at a world I do not know. The servants brought me back after that suffocating interaction in the dining hall.

Here, I can relax because Veylan Drazharel is not around. I enjoy watching the mysterious world outside.

A distant stretch of darkness sprawls beyond the fortress walls, a sea of jagged mountains and rivers of shadow, but somewhere beyond them—beyond this cage—there must be something else. Something wide and endless, something untamed and free.

Something I have never seen.

But I dream of it.

The sound of waves crashing against a shore I have never touched. Salt-laced winds threading through my hair. A melody woven into the tides, calling for me, whispering my name in a tongue I do not understand.

It isn’t real.

It can’t be real.

I press my forehead against the glass, inhaling carefully, as if I might breathe in something that is not this place. As if I might drink in the memory of the ocean that has never been mine.

The air is overflowing with incense, the smoldering remnants of firewood, the phantom trace of him.

Veylan.

His presence lingers even when he is not here.

I do not understand him.

I do not understand why I am still alive.

His silence is worse than his cruelty, worse than his eyes tracking my every movement. I have spent days in this room, untouched yet imprisoned, ignored yet studied.

A game of restraint, of patience.

I don’t have any clue as to who will lose first.

The floor beneath my feet is cool as I unfold my legs, standing slowly, stretching out the stiffness of sitting too long. The fire in the hearth has burned low, its embers pulsing with the slow heartbeat of dying warmth.

I am alone.

My pulse is steady, but something coils beneath it, something restless, a thread of tension that doesn’t belong.

It started after the first night.

A sensation. A shift.

A change in the room itself when I breathe too deeply.

At first, I thought it was nothing—an illusion born from exhaustion, from the oppressive silence of these walls pressing in too tightly. But then, I felt it.

The way the candle flames flicker when I exhale. The way the shadows stretch in places they shouldn’t.

But it happens when I hum.

Not even words.

Just a breath of sound.

A vibration in my chest, slipping into the air like something alive.

I haven’t dared to test it. Not with him so near. Not with his silver gaze stripping me down to something fragile, something waiting to be unraveled.

But now…

Now, the silence hums louder than my fear.

So, I try.

A single note. Barely a whisper.

The walls do not shake. The floor does not crack beneath my feet. The world does not change.

But the air, it moves.

A shiver skates down my spine as the fire in the hearth pulse, a slow inhale of something unseen. The drapes along the far wall stir, though there is no wind.

I freeze.

It was real. It was real.

I press a hand to my throat, feeling the lingering hum vibrate beneath my fingertips, my pulse pounding in time with it.

This is not normal.

This is not human.

The realization sinks into my stomach like a stone, heavy, sinking deeper, dragging me under.

What am I?

The question spirals, tight and breathless, clawing at the edges of my thoughts, but another slams into it—does he know?

Veylan.

His magic had reacted when I sang for him. I saw it in his eyes. Felt it in the way the air crackled between us.

He suspects.

He must.

A sharp breath rushes from my lips, but I swallow it back down, pressing my fingers against the glass. If I can feel it, if I can sense the shift in the room—then so can he.

He is waiting.

Watching.

I am running out of time.

The next breath I take is careful, deliberate. I lock it down. The fear. The questions. The strange, unnatural thing inside me that threatens to wake up.

I will not let it.

Not here. Not in his house.

I step back from the window, wrapping my arms around myself, my nails biting into the soft fabric of the dress they gave me.

Tomorrow, I will wake up in this same room, under the same watchful gaze. I will eat when he commands, sleep when he allows, live at his mercy.

And I will pretend.

Veylan Drazharel does not need to know that I am dangerous.

When the time comes, I will be ready.