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Chapter 14
publish date:
2026-05-17 20:01:44
Latest chapter
Venom & Vows Chapter 54 (Sera)
Chapter 54 (Sera)"You are acting like a child," he says."I am twenty-five years old.""Then conduct yourself like it."I look out the window at the Sicilian coastline moving past and decide that the view deserves my attention considerably more than he does. I am not, I will note privately, entirely unaware that my own internal running commentary on various aspects of this situation is not exactly the most mature contribution either. But I am keeping that to myself.He is still looking at his phone."During the ceremony," he says, without looking up, "you were distracted for the first four minutes, you were visibly shaking throughout, and you spent the vows looking everywhere except where you were supposed to be looking."I absorb each item on his list with the private acknowledgment that all three are accurate."Being married to you," I say pleasantly, "is somewhat equivalent to a death sentence. So the shaking was proportionate."He shakes his head once, returns his eyes to the scr
Venom & Vows Chapter 53 (Sera)
"I am going to kill him," I tell Caspian, coming down the altar steps. Quietly. With complete conviction."Not right now," he says."Specifically today.""Sera —""He planned it." I say it through my teeth, keeping my voice below the ambient noise of two hundred guests filing out around me. "He knew the dress would slow me down. He calculated the exit. He anticipated every variable and executed it in front of both families and a full photography team and then had the nerve to smirk at me on his way out." I pause. "He is dying today.""That is a very murdery energy for someone who has been married for four minutes."Leander appears at my other side. He surveys my expression and apparently decides to try a different approach."At least he showed up," he offers.I stare at him."Some people get stood up entirely," he continues. "He was there. He said the words. Technically —""I would have preferred to be stood up," I say. "I would have taken being stood up. Standing at that altar alone
Venom & Vows Chapter 52 (Sera)
"Seraphina."My name in his voice brings me back.The priest has his book open and his eyes on me with the expression of a man who has repeated himself at least once already. Dorian is looking at me with the specific flatness of someone who has just been required to summon another person's attention at their own wedding, which I suspect is not a sentence that appears in many ceremony memory books.I missed the instruction to take his hands.I look at my hands. Then at his. Then, with a private plummet in composure that I will not be narrating to anyone, I wipe both my clammy palms on the side of my dress before extending them.This is the lowest I have ever sunk. I want the record to reflect that.His grip closes around my hands, gentle and firm and steady in a way I did not expect, and the shaking that had been working its way toward something resembling full panic in front of two hundred people slows in response to the simple fact of being held. My heart is still pounding. My palms
Venom & Vows Chapter 51 (Sera)
"I love you," Leander whispers, the moment before we take the first step."I love you both," I say, and I mean it for both of them equally, linked on either side of me, their arms solid under my hands. Then the violins begin, and the aisle opens in front of us, and we move.The church is full. Two hundred faces turn toward us in the particular way of people who have been waiting and are now watching, and I look straight ahead and I walk.I think, as I walk, about what the two of them have actually been. Not in the abstract, not in the way you think of family when someone asks you to describe them, but in the specific accumulated weight of twenty-five years. Every school difficulty navigated in the back of a car. Every family tension managed between the three of us with the shorthand of people who do not need full sentences. Every milestone, every argument, every ordinary evening that did not feel significant at the time and now, on this particular walk down this particular aisle, feel
Venom & Vows Chapter 50 (Sera)
"If I step on this train even once," I say, lifting the hem with one hand and navigating the excessive number of sun-baked stone steps that apparently every Sicilian church considers a reasonable entrance, "I am holding you personally responsible. Regardless of where in the world you are at the time.""You no longer have anyone to do your threatening for you," Caspian says from beside me, barely helping. "That era is behind you.""I have always done my own threatening," I say. "That was never outsourced."From the shaded top of the steps, Leander is watching both of us with his arms crossed and the particular expression of a man who has decided that commentary is more interesting than assistance."Seraphicent," he calls down pleasantly."You are thirty years old," I call back, still climbing, "and you are still calling your sister a villain name.""A very accurate villain name.""Bring up the spiders and I will name you specifically in my first interview as a married woman."He grins.
Venom & Vows Chapter 49 (Sera)
"It is time," Leander says, and presses a kiss to my temple before stepping back.The word lands differently than I expected. Not like a scheduling note. Like a door closing.I turn back to the mirror one final time.The bun is deliberately undone, loose curls pulled out around the face, the rest gathered and pinned with the specific imprecision that takes considerably more effort than anything actually neat. Minimal makeup, glowing rather than heavy. And the lipstick, matte, specifically matte, chosen over every gloss option in the case for a reason I have not said aloud to anyone in this room.There will be a kiss. In front of hundreds of people, at some point during the ceremony, there will be a brief and public and entirely performative kiss, and I am, in every meaningful romantic sense, still entirely a virgin in that department, and the thought of leaving a gloss print on Dorian Valenti's mouth in front of two hundred witnesses is the specific form of mortification that kept me
Venom & Vows Chapter 32 (Dorian)
"Stay away from me."Sera's voice carries down the hallway before I have fully registered the approaching footsteps. I turn. Maksim Orlov is moving toward us with Leander two steps behind him, radiating the particular controlled fury of a man who has spent the last twenty minutes being publicly hum
Venom & Vows Chapter 31 (Dorian)
"Valenti," Caspian says.My steps stop.I nod at him. One brief, controlled acknowledgment. Then I spare the most minimal glance toward the woman beside him, who has gone quiet, and she turns around.I do a double-take.It is not her features that stop me, though they do. It is not the champagne so
Venom & Vows Chapter 30 (Dorian)
"Dorian." The man beside me at the bar raises his glass. "Your father. How is he managing? Since the funeral.""As well as can be expected," I say. I have said this exact sentence four times tonight to four different people, delivered with the same measured warmth, the same careful openness that co
Venom & Vows Chapter 29 (Dorian)
"I get front," Dante announces, and shoves his brother sideways hard enough to win it.Enzo does not go to the back seat. He wedges himself into the gap between the front seats instead, both elbows finding surfaces they were not designed to occupy, his shoulder pressing against my arm before I have
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