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Chapter 31 (Dorian)
publish date:
2026-05-24 15:32:35
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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 27 (Sera)
"I have not agreed to a marriage," I say. He smiles and opens his mouth to respond and then someone walks directly into my back. I turn. A young man with olive skin and dark hair looks at me with a sheepish smile, green eyes moving across my face with an expression I cannot immediately name. Somet
Venom & Vows Chapter 26 (Sera)
"Answer the question," I say. "Were the gifts a joke, or are you simply a dick."His mouth opens. Then it closes. He looks at me the way people look when they are searching for the right response and have not found it yet, except the thing about Maksim Orlov is that his expression does not do what t
Venom & Vows Chapter 25 (Sera)
"So." Erik Lund clasps his hands together with the cheerful energy of a man who has already decided this is going well. "You live in New York, yes?""Yes," I say."Good, good." He nods, accent rolling warmly over every syllable in a way that sits completely at odds with the ink covering every visibl
Venom & Vows Chapter 24 (Sera)
"Do you remember," I say quietly to Katya, watching Leander across the room with his hand at the small of her back, "how they actually got together?"She follows my gaze. "He told me he defended her at a bar.""He did. Some man would not leave her alone and Leander stepped in." I take a sip of champ
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