Seraphina’s POV
Returning to Loisage felt like stepping onto a stage after the curtains had already risen.
Word of the engagement had clearly traveled faster than any letter I might’ve sent. Within hours of my arrival, students were whispering. Some smiled. Some stared. Others offered tight-lipped congratulations as if expecting me to either explode with pride or immediately deny everything.
I did neither.
Because I didn’t need to.
The ring on my finger—thin, simple, etched with runes only a werewolf could read—spoke loudly enough. So did the way my name now passed between mouths not with mockery, but with caution.
Not admiration.
Not yet.
But something adjacent.
It was strange, how quickly people changed their tones. Even girls who’d ignored me entirely the year before now found opportunities to brush past me in the corridor, all wide-eyed smiles and “Oh, Lady Moonbane, I just love your coat.”
I didn’t answer the
Seraphina’s POVReturning to Loisage felt like stepping onto a stage after the curtains had already risen.Word of the engagement had clearly traveled faster than any letter I might’ve sent. Within hours of my arrival, students were whispering. Some smiled. Some stared. Others offered tight-lipped congratulations as if expecting me to either explode with pride or immediately deny everything.I did neither.Because I didn’t need to.The ring on my finger—thin, simple, etched with runes only a werewolf could read—spoke loudly enough. So did the way my name now passed between mouths not with mockery, but with caution.Not admiration.Not yet.But something adjacent.It was strange, how quickly people changed their tones. Even girls who’d ignored me entirely the year before now found opportunities to brush past me in the corridor, all wide-eyed smiles and “Oh, Lady Moonbane, I just love your coat.”I didn’t answer the
Seraphina’s POVIt was quiet at Moonbane Manor.Not the kind of quiet that invites rest, but the kind that waits. Our family had always existed in silences like this—between storms, between choices, between lives that were never really ours to begin with.After the engagement feast, I returned alone.Stephen was already there. He hadn’t attended. No one asked why.Helena said nothing, either.But when I stepped into the corridor that led to the south wing, the part of the house where we’d grown up, I found fresh footprints in the dustless floor—his boots, pacing.And I knew.I didn’t see him until morning.The library windows were open, letting in gray light that looked like it belonged in another century. Stephen was seated at the long table beneath the main balcony, a stack of old estate ledgers untouched in front of him.He didn’t look up when I entered.I crosse
Seraphina’s POVThe night after the engagement feast was a quiet one.No carriages rolled past the manor gates. No voices echoed through the marble halls. Even the wind outside seemed to hesitate, as if wary of interrupting the aftermath of so many masks and intentions.But I couldn’t sleep.Not because of nerves.Because I remembered too much.Diantha’s voice. Corwin’s tone. The way she bristled under his instructions, not like a lover arguing, but like an impatient buyer demanding a product she had already paid for.That wasn’t affection.It was investment.And when power is passed through hands like coin, even desire becomes a currency.I sat by the writing desk in the corner of my borrowed chamber. The room was too rich for comfort—velvet curtains, engraved walls, a gold-leaf mirror that caught even my breathing in its frame. But the desk was old, perhaps older than the room
Seraphina’s POVThere was nothing intimate about a werewolf engagement ceremony.No vows whispered in secret. No tender moments beneath starlight. Just tradition, old and iron-clad.Before the feast truly began, I had been led—silently, efficiently—into a side chamber carved from obsidian and silver. There, a Riddle elder I didn’t recognize placed a single slash of ritual ink across my wrist, cool and stinging. In front of the assembled witnesses, Ambrosius pressed his thumb to the mark, sealing it in with his blood.Not his magic.His blood.Because the bond wasn’t made with power. It was made with lineage.That, more than anything, was what this was about.The rest was ceremony: a brief hand-touching, a shared drink from a chalice older than the current Council, and a line of bored nobles murmuring their approval as if this engagement were no more significant than a seasonal hunt.By the e
Seraphina’s POVThe Riddle estate had always been large, but tonight it felt vast.Every corridor was filled with movement: trailing silk, echoing footsteps, murmured names. Music flowed through the air like smoke—something stringed and elegant, measured to impress rather than entertain. Everything had been crafted for spectacle.And I was the centerpiece.Or rather, the symbol.Lady Seraphina Moonbane. The future bride of Ambrosius Riddle.It wasn’t a wedding, but it might as well have been.I stood at the top of the great stone staircase, flanked by twin statues of wolves mid-snarl, their eyes inset with bloodstone. The air was heavy with perfumes, candlewax, and the peculiar scent of old magic—something cold and deep, like a lake in shadow.The ballroom was a sea of bodies. Nobles from every corner of the Riddle-controlled regions. Allies of convenience, power brokers, descendants of ancient bloodline
Seraphina’s POVDespite everything Ambrosius had said—the firm tone, the promise in his eyes—it didn’t take long for me to realize that his “help” wasn’t the kind I wanted.Not even close.I had expected alliance. Strategy. A shared goal, dissected and laid bare on the table between us. But what I got was something else entirely: protection disguised as partnership.He never said it outright, but it was in the way he spoke to me. The way he dismissed my suggestions.“Patience, Seraphina,” he said again and again, with that tight, barely contained tone of someone speaking to a child. “I told you—I’ll help you bring it down. All you need to do is wait for the results.”Wait?That wasn’t partnership.That wasn’t alliance.That was babysitting.And I was tired of being coddled.I tried to offer input. Careful ideas. Risk-calculated observations.I had spent hours going through the patterns Linnea had uncovered, the symbols I remembered from the masquerade, the timing of Diantha’s movement