THE NIGHT MY MATE BURNED ME ALIVE
“Neither do I.”
The original Seraphina stared at us for a long, heavy moment. For the first time since I had met her, the hard shell cracked, and she smiled—not with triumphant confidence, but with the hollow grief of someone watching the world end.
“Then go,” she whispered.
The darkness below us dilated, opening wider like a swallowed throat.
“But remember this,” she added, her voice dropping into a solemn, shattering stillness as the rest of the world faded away. “The man waiting at the bottom of these stairs isn’t Aurelian.”