The soup and silver eyes

Chapter 5

POV Seraphina

The doors swung open, and the smell hit me first. Something burnt. Something sour underneath it, like spoiled milk left too long in the sun. The room beyond was dark, curtains drawn tight against the morning light, and shadows clung to every corner like they had grown there on purpose.

A boy stood in the middle of the wreckage, chest heaving, small fists clenched at his sides.

He could not have been more than nine, but there was nothing soft about him. His hair stuck up in messy dark tufts, and his eyes, when they landed on me, were not brown like I expected. They were silver. Pale, glowing silver, the kind of eyes only a wolf carried when the beast sat too close to the surface.

Broken plates littered the floor around him. A wooden chair lay on its side, one leg cracked clean off. And on the small table by his bed sat a tray of untouched soup, steam still curling faintly from the bowl.

"Who are you?" Theo demanded, his voice sharp for a child so small.

"My name is Seraphina," I said carefully, keeping my hands loose at my sides, the way I had been trained to stand in front of an agitated child. "I am here to—"

"I know why you are here." He cut me off, lips curling back. "You are another one my father dragged in here to fix me. Like I am broken."

Behind me, I felt Damian's presence retreat down the hallway. Of course. He was not going to stay and watch this. He was leaving me alone with his son, exactly the way he had left me alone with everything else since the ballroom.

I stepped further into the room, careful not to crush the broken porcelain under my sneakers.

"I am not here to fix you," I said. "I am here to teach you."

"Liar." Theo's small hands shook. "Everyone lies. Isabelle lies. My father lies. You will lie too."

My chest tightened at the venom in his voice. No nine-year-old should sound like that. Like the world had already taught him every ugly lesson it had to give, and taught it early.

"I have not lied to you yet," I said gently. "Give me a chance before you decide."

He stared at me for a long moment, silver eyes flickering, something raw and wounded moving behind them before the anger slammed back down over it like a lid on a boiling pot.

Then his hand shot out and grabbed the bowl of soup off the tray.

I saw it coming half a second before it left his fingers, some instinct deep in my blood screaming louder than my human mind could process. My body moved before I even decided to move it. I dropped low and twisted sideways, and the bowl sailed past my ear close enough that I felt the heat of it brush my cheek. It shattered against the wall behind me, soup splattering in an ugly brown streak down the wallpaper.

Silence.

Theo's chest was still heaving, his small fists still raised for another throw, but his eyes had gone wide, fixed on me like he had just seen something he was not supposed to see.

"How did you do that?" he asked, his voice suddenly smaller, more child than monster.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I forced my face into something calm, something unreadable, even as my wolf paced restlessly beneath my skin, alert and sharp from the near miss.

"Do what?" I asked, playing dumb, though my pulse had not slowed.

"You moved too fast," Theo said, stepping back from me now, his brows drawing together in suspicion. "Human tutors do not move like that. They freeze. They scream. They cry and run to my father." His eyes narrowed, studying me the exact same unsettling way Damian had studied me the night before, like he was searching for a crack in my armour. "What are you?"

"I have quick reflexes," I said carefully. "That is all."

It was not all, and we both knew it, but I was not about to hand a nine-year-old boy the truth about my blood before I even understood it myself.

Theo did not look convinced. He crossed his thin arms over his chest, chin lifting with the same arrogant tilt I had seen on his father, the same stubborn Kingston pride carved into a smaller, angrier face.

"You are not scared of me," he said slowly, like he was working out a puzzle. "Everyone else is scared of me. Why are you not scared?"

I did not have an easy answer for that. The truth was, something about this small, snarling boy did not frighten me at all. If anything, the loneliness soaked into every corner of this ruined room frightened me more than he did.

"Maybe I am just harder to scare," I said instead.

Theo studied me a moment longer, silver eyes sweeping over my face, my stance, the empty space where the bowl had shattered against the wall. Then something shifted in his expression, something colder and far too knowing for a child his age.

A small, ugly smile curled at the corner of his mouth.

"I know why you are really here," he said, his voice dropping low, almost sing-song. "You are not here for me at all."

My blood went still.

"You want him," Theo said, tilting his head toward the door his father had disappeared through. "Just like all the others. You want my father."