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TWENTY-THREE

SERAPHINE

S ulfur hissed up through the stone, thick and choking. The air shimmered with heat and hatred.

Vaela’s smile was too sharp, too calm.

Seraphine had had enough.

“You want a fight?” she said, voice low and burning. “Then stop hiding behind politics.”

Vaela cocked her head. “You’d risk a ritual challenge? Here? No witnesses, no Court?—”

“I don’t need an audience,” Seraphine snapped, stepping closer, challenging her. “I need you to shut the fuck up.”

Cassian didn’t move, but she felt him tense behind her. A warning in every line of his body. He didn’t like it. Neither did she. But this wasn’t about comfort.

This was about fire. Blood. Legacy.

Vaela tilted her head, lips curving. “So be it.”

She shed her silk cloak in one smooth motion, revealing obsidian armor that hugged her like second skin. Her claws extended with a soft hiss. Her pupils slit.

Seraphine reached for her glaive. But the fire under her skin did not wait.mWhite-hot. Ancient. Furious.

The air sparked.

They circled each other in the ring of fractured stone, molten rivers pulsing around them. The duel didn’t need words—it was written in their veins.

Vaela struck first, claws outstretched.

Seraphine dodged, barely, and spun, her glaive whistling through the air. Vaela ducked low and came up with a burst of shadow magic, aiming for Seraphine’s throat.

She blocked with the flat of her blade, flame exploding from the contact.

“Getting slow, cousin,” Vaela sneered, smoke rising from her scorched armor.

“Getting bored,” Seraphine growled.

She twisted her fingers, igniting a line of fire beneath Vaela’s boots. The other woman leapt back, landing hard on the cracked obsidian. Her left leg buckled slightly.

Weak spot.

Seraphine pressed forward, glaive slashing high and low, her movements brutal and precise.

Vaela matched her blow for blow—until Seraphine feinted left, then dropped into a roll, sweeping Vaela’s legs from under her. The woman hit the ground with a snarl, claws scrabbling.

Whitefire surged in Seraphine’s palm.

But Vaela was faster.

She twisted, catching Seraphine’s wrist and yanking her down, slamming an elbow into her ribs. Air fled her lungs.

They broke apart, breathing hard, circling again.

“You think you’ve won?” Vaela panted. “The Court will never?—”

“I don’t care about the Court,” Seraphine snapped. “I care about stopping the Hollow. And I’m done letting you sabotage us.”

Cassian stepped forward, blade drawn. “Sera?—”

“No,” she said, not looking at him. Her voice was steel wrapped in flame. “I need to end this.”

She moved.

Launched forward with a roar that wasn’t entirely human. Heat surged from her spine, tendrils of whitefire spiraling out from her shoulders. Her body twisted mid-air, bones shifting, reshaping—half-dragon, half-woman. A creature of prophecy and fury.

Wings of flame erupted from her back, vast and blinding, the heat warping the very air around her. Her braid scorched free, hair fanning like a corona of fire.

Her glaive—already burning—melted into goldlight, the edges humming with magic so old it made the runes on the chamber walls flicker in response.

Vaela froze.

For a single heartbeat, she was no longer the predator.

She was prey.

Seraphine slammed into her with a scream, the flat of her molten blade colliding with Vaela’s chest with bone-crushing force. The impact echoed like thunder. Sparks flew.

Then Seraphine twisted —not gently or mercifully—using the momentum to hurl Vaela across the dome.

The woman flew like a broken doll.

She hit a blackened column with a sickening crack, slid down in a heap. Blood smeared the stone behind her. Her shoulder hung at an unnatural angle. One leg was bent wrong.

But still— still —Vaela laughed.

Seraphine landed hard, boots skidding across scorched stone, her wings fading in a ripple of embers. She stalked forward, still half-shifted, skin glowing with fire beneath her armor.

“Yield,” she growled, voice layered with something ancient and inhuman.

Vaela spat blood, her grin jagged. “Not today.”

With a flick of her ruined wrist, she flung a shard of writhing black magic at the ceiling.

Cassian shouted, “Sera?—!”

The spell detonated.

The world ruptured.

Stone screamed. The ceiling buckled. Dust exploded in a blinding wave of debris.

Seraphine raised a flaming shield instinctively, heat pressing back the collapse just enough to stay standing.

When the dust cleared?—

Vaela was gone.

No blood trail.

No trace.

Just a scorch mark where the shadows had swallowed her.

Seraphine staggered back, fire dimming.

Cassian caught her, one hand on her arm.

“You okay?”

She turned toward the altar. But then a scream tore through the chamber.

Not human or animal.

Hollowborn.

Cassian pulled his blade, eyes dark.

Seraphine’s fire reignited.

Shadows spilled from the stone. Figures emerged. Too many.

Cassian looked at her, voice low. “Ready for round two?”

Seraphine grinned, teeth bared.

“Let’s burn them all.”