Chapter One - The Blind Cage

Seraphina Vellaro – POV 

 There are cages made of iron.

 And there are those made of silence.

 Mine is both.

 I was born without sight. 

'A punishment', my father once said, for being born to a queen who dared believe she could rule over men, over him.

He said those words to me the first time he struck me. I was five.

And he’s been reminding me ever since.

To the world outside, Danta Vellaro is a reclusive businessman, a grieving widower, a man who lost everything to betrayal. But to me, he is a monster. Not because he shouts, or hits, or starves me—though he does all those things. No, he is a monster because he believes I deserve it.

Because I was born blind.

“It’s weakness,” he spat once, grabbing my face so hard my jaw cracked. “You’re broken. A curse. If it weren’t for your mother, I’d have drowned you at birth you filty bitch!.”

That day, he held my face in one hand and the fireplace poker in the other.

I don’t remember how long I screamed.

When mother was alive, he never touched me.

Apart from the incident when I was five he never did again because of mother. 

Celeste Vellaro was a storm wrapped in silk, and he feared her—though he never said it. He played the loyal husband well. 

To outsiders, they were untouchable. But I heard the fights behind closed doors. Her fury was sharp and cold; his anger, loud and clumsy.

And yet, in her arms, I was safe.

She would brush my hair at night and whisper stories of the stars, even though I couldn’t see them. She called me her falcon, said my blindness was a gift. “You see deeper than most, Seraphina. You see with your soul.”

I didn’t believe her.

Not until she died.

The official story was an electrical fire in the west wing. But I remember the smoke. The screaming. The way she’d shouted my name.

And I remember the silence that followed.

No one found her body. Only ashes.

Danta held a closed-casket funeral with glassy tears and cameras, pretending to mourn. That night, he shattered the last of my mother’s music boxes and forced me to sleep on the cold floor.

“She’s gone now,” he hissed. “No one’s left to protect you.”

He was right.

The days bled into one another after that.

I stopped counting birthdays.

He let the staff go, one by one. The guards remained, but they never looked my way. 

To them, I was a ghost, cursed and unwanted. Meals came late, if at all. My clothes grew tight, then loose. My body ached from sleeping on wood.

He only ever called me by my name when he wanted to hurt me, curse me, break me.

“Get up, Seraphina.”

“Shut up, Seraphina.”

“Speak again, and I’ll sew that mouth shut, Seraphina.”

Some days, he’d take me down to the cellar, where his collection of old relics and weapons lay hidden. He’d make me touch them—cold metal, sharp points—and tell me how useless I was to inherit any of it.

“Your mother thought you could lead,” he’d sneer. “She thought this”—he’d knock my cane out from under me—“was strength.”

And every time, I’d hear her voice in my head, faint but stubborn.

'You see with your soul.'

Now the only one I had was Gloria.

She had served my mother since before I was born, a quiet, strong woman with hands that never trembled. 

She brushed my hair like my mother once had. Hid food beneath my bed when the kitchen was locked. Whispered prayers in Sicilian when she thought I was asleep.

She was the only reason I had survived this long.

The only thread I had left to the woman who’d loved me.

But then… she left.

I woke one morning, two weeks ago, to silence. No footsteps in the hall. No smell of porridge or mint tea. Her room was empty. Her scent gone.

I called for her. Again. And again.

No answer.

I searched every room I could reach, stumbling through corridors like a child. I even braved the east wing—the one Father forbade me from entering. Still, no sign. No whisper. No warmth.

And then I discovered something worse.

The small chest that had belonged to my mother—the one Gloria kept hidden under her floorboards—was gone. I used to run my fingers over its lock while she wasn't looking. Inside was something sacred, something I had never been allowed to touch.

A journal.

Or perhaps more.

My mother’s relic. Her legacy. Her secrets.

Gone.

And so was Gloria.

For three days, I told myself she would come back. That she had gone to find help. That maybe she had found someone who still remembered my mother’s name with reverence, not fear.

But by the fourth night, doubt set in.

And by the fifth... I was certain Danta had found her.

Killed her. Buried her. Just like he did to Mother.

He hasn’t spoken about her disappearance. Not once. But I hear the change in his voice—slower, calculating. He thinks I know where she went. Thinks I’m hiding something.

Every day since, I’ve wondered when he’ll come into my room and decide I’m no longer worth keeping.

That I’m more valuable dead than alive.

Maybe I already am.

I lie awake every night now, staring at nothing.

The darkness doesn’t scare me.

It’s always been here.

But the silence does. Because it’s the sound of forgetting. Of being erased. Of living so long in a cage that you forget how it felt to breathe.

Sometimes I press my hand against the window frame. The glass is thick and cold. I don’t know what season it is anymore. I don’t know if the garden is still alive, or if the grass has overgrown the stones.

I imagine what it would feel like to walk barefoot across a field. To eat something warm from a bakery. To speak to someone who doesn’t call me weak or worthless.

I want to run. To scream. To be something other than a history left behind.

I want to be free.

Not just from this house, or my father.

From the fear that I am nothing.

From the belief that my mother died in vain.

From the thought that Gloria abandoned me.

From the silence.

I don’t know how long I’ll last.

But I swear this:

If I ever get out…

If I ever feel the sun again…

I will never let him take it away from me.