LOGINSeraphina's POV"You crawled, from the look of it. Your knees were torn up and your elbows were raw and there were grass stains on your face." She sat down and folded her hands in her lap. "You knocked on my door at dawn looking like you'd crawled out of your own grave and I brought you inside and that's all I need to know."I looked at her for a long time and she looked back and neither of us said anything else and after a while she picked up the empty bowl and went to the kitchen.I lay there staring at the ceiling and listening to her move around the house, the clink of dishes and the creak of the stove door and the sound of water being poured, and the steady rhythm of it was the first thing that had made me feel safe in weeks.On the second afternoon she brought bread soaked in broth and sat beside the bed while I ate it."You have a name you want me to call you?" she asked."Sera.""Just Sera?""Just Sera."She nodded. "Alright, Sera. I'm going to change the bandage on your hairl
Seraphina's POVI woke up and didn't know where I was and the ceiling above me was white, not grey wood with cracks in it but white, with a thin brown line running across one corner where the rain had leaked through at some point and dried. There were curtains on a window to my left, yellow ones, and sunlight was coming through them and landing in a warm square on the floor next to the bed.A bed. I was in a bed. Not a mat on dirt. A bed with sheets that smelled like soap and a pillow under my head that was soft enough that my face sank into it.I tried to sit up and every part of me screamed at once. My ribs, my back, my shoulders, my arms. I made it halfway up before the pain dragged me back down and I lay there breathing hard and staring at the white ceiling and trying to remember how I'd gotten here.Maren's cottage. The doorstep. The grey-haired woman who said "let's get you inside."The door to the room opened and she came in carrying a bowl of broth that steamed. She looked th
Seraphina's POV I waited and heard nothing and called her name again and a sound came from inside, weak and small. "I can't move, Sera."I reached through the opening and my hand found hers in the dark and her fingers were cold and thin and they barely closed around mine."You have to move. Now. The camp is burning and the fence is down and this is the only chance we get.""My legs don't work right." Her voice broke. "They hurt me again yesterday and I can't... Sera, I can't stand up."A wolf hit the ground ten feet from me and another wolf was on top of it and the sound of jaws closing on bone was so close I felt blood spray my arm."Pria, please.""Go." Her fingers squeezed mine once and then let go. "Go, Sera. Run. Don't look back."Her hand pulled away from mine and I knelt there on the ground with the fires roaring and the wolves fighting and Pria's voice in my ears telling me to leave her.I got to my feet and I ran and I couldn't tell if the wetness on my face was blood or tea
Seraphina's POV I started listening for heartbeats through the walls.It started by accident. One night after Pria was taken and brought back I pressed my ear against the wood to check if she was breathing and if I held my breath and stayed very still I could just barely pick up the faint thump of her pulse on the other side. It was slow and weak and it skipped every few beats but it was there and hearing it was the best thing that had happened to me in days.After that I did it every night. I'd press my ear flat to the boards and hold my breath and close my eyes and listen until I found the heartbeat on the other side. Then I'd move to the next wall and do the same. It was the only way I had to check who was still alive and who had gone quiet in the forever way that the rocking girl had gone quiet.Pria's heartbeat was getting weaker. I could still find it if I pressed hard enough and held my breath long enough but some nights it took me a long time and my own heart would speed up w
Seraphina's POVI lay on my mat and listened to Brask talk about selling me the way you'd talk about selling a horse and my nails dug into the dirt and I made myself breathe.The rogues came to my pen again about two weeks in. I heard the lock scrape and the door swung open and two of them walked in and grabbed my arms and started pulling me toward the door.My body locked the second their hands got near my waist and that sound ripped out of me and I curled around my middle so tight that one of them put his boot on my shoulder and tried to roll me flat and I still didn't uncurl.He kicked me in the back twice and the pain shot through my spine and my vision went white but my body held its shape and my arms would not come loose."Leave it," the other one said. "She's broken in the head. Brask said to stop wasting time on her."They walked out and the door closed and I lay there with boot prints on my back and my ribs screaming and my arms still locked in place.The last time they tried
Seraphina's POVI opened my mouth to answer and nothing came out because what do you say to that. What words exist for a girl on the other side of a wooden wall who just came back from the tent and told you she's always hurt and you can't do anything about it except sit there and listen to her breathe.By the end of that week I was crawling to the bucket because my legs wouldn't hold me when I tried to stand. My arms had gone thin and my ribs were pushing through my skin and the dress I'd been wearing since the night I left Blackthorn hung off me like a sack on a pole.A week in they came for me again. Two of them this time, bigger than the last pair, and they didn't reach for my arm. They kicked the door open and one grabbed my ankles and dragged me across the dirt floor on my back while my nails broke off in the packed earth.The second a hand touched my waist my body locked down and that sound came out of me again, low and rough, and I curled so tight they would have had to snap my
Seraphina's POV I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him between my legs. "Don't you dare stop."He didn't kiss me again. Instead he pushed my thighs apart with both hands and looked down at where my dress had ridden up, at the thin fabric of my underthings darkened with wetness, and the so
Seraphina's POVI woke up to the sound of his heartbeat under my ear and for a few perfect seconds I forgot where I was.Then the candle guttered out on the bedside table and the chamber went dark, and reality hit me like cold water. I was in the hidden chamber. I'd stayed the whole night. The thin
Seraphina's POVThen the next morning Ezra came back from a long patrol and nodded at me in the hallway the way he always did, tired and distant, and the urge to grab his arm and tell him everything just to stop the poison eating through me was so strong I had to bite the inside of my cheek until i
Seraphina's POVHe didn't stop. He thrust into me deep and steady while I rubbed my clit and our eyes held and our bodies moved together, and when the orgasm finally hit it started so deep in my spine that my legs locked before the pleasure even reached between my thighs. It rolled through me in







