Chapter 108
Chapter 108
Serafine POV
I surface slowly from the dream, the world around me is thick and burning like I’ve been dragged from the center of the sun. My breath catches as something firm and steady shakes shoulder.
my
A voice, low and urgent, breaks through, calling my
my name.
“Serafine.” It’s Xander, his tone is tight with concern.
Blinking againsst the haze that clings to my vision, I try to force myself to wake. My body is soaked in sweat, and my skin is clinging to the twisted sheets beneath me. The air is stifling, it’s too warm and heavy, and honestly, it feels like I’m inhaling smoke right
now.
Opening my eyes, I find Xander crouched beside the bed, his face is drawn tight with worry, and his hands are still braced on my shoulders.
“Good,” he murmurs with a breath that sounds relieved. “You’re awake.”
My heart lurches instantly, and I push myself upright. The room becomes dizzy and disoriented, and the panic rushes in before, I can stop it. “Is Eryx okay?” The question claws its way out of my throat. He’s worried, and I feel like something bad has happened. I try to move, to throw the blankets off and rise, but his hands stop me.
“Eryx is fine,” he says. His gaze locks on mine. “It’s you that I’m worried about right now.”
His words shock me and disorient me more than the heat in this room.
“Me?” I whisper, staring at him as I kick off the sheets, desperate to cool the heat that is beneath my skin. My nightdress clings to my damp body, and the room still feels like it’s burning around the edges.
Nodding, Xander’s jaw tightens, his eyes are dark with something that is more than concern. It’s something that looks like fear. Why is he scared? He’s never scared. “The heat in this room, it’s coming from you, Serafine,” he says.
I blink, feeling like I misheard him, because he said it’s coming from me. “Me?” I repeat, my voice cracking with disbelief. “How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know how,” he says, as he moves to sit on the edge of the bed. His voice is low and edged with tension, “but I do know what I saw. when I came in, the air was thick with magic. It was pouring off you, it was surrounding you like a storm looking for somewhere to strike. I could see it, actually see it outside of your body.”
A cold chill creeps beneath the heat on my skin. His words cause a thread of fear to slither beneath my ribs. “Magic?” I echo, breathless. “But I didn’t do anything… I was just asleep.”
“Exactly,” he says, his gaze unwavering. “That’s what makes it dangerous, that’s where the problem is, Serafine. You don’t even know when you’re doing it. Magic that moves without the host’s awareness and magic that can act on its own… It’s outlawed, Serafine. You understand what that means, don’t you?” He looks at me and waits. What does it mean? I don’t know.
I open my mouth, but no words come. I don’t understand, and and I can’t. He’s talking like I’m something unnatural, like there’s some monster sleeping under my skin that I don’t know how to wake or, worse, that wakes on its own. That’s not possible, the books would have warned me surely they would
have warned me?
When I finally manage to speak, my voice is brittle.“What are you saying?”
Xander sighs, scrubbing a hand through his hair before meeting my gaze again. “I’m saying that if anyone else saw what I did, if they walked in and felt the air warping around you, saw the candles melting, and the heat radiating from your body, they wouldn’t ask questions. They’d order an execution.”
Is he serious? Why is he always finding a reason for my death? I thought things had changed, but we’re back on the topic. First, I was a traitor, his enemy, someone he didn’t care about. Now he’s talking about me being executed.
A bitter laugh rips from my chest before I can stop it. “Of course they would,” I snap, my voice rising with the heat around me. “You want me dead again? Then do it, Xander. If that’s what this is, just say it. Why do you fear me so much that you instantly begin to find ways that I’m the enemy?”
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Chapter 108
“No,” he growls, and reaching out and gripping my face between his hands, forcing me to look at him. “Don’t ever say that again
His voice is rough, ragged, and burning with something fierce and unyielding. It makes me freeze, makes me pause and stare at him.
“I won’t let anyone touch you,” he says. “I won’t let anyone find out. But if I’m going to protect you, Serafine, you need to learn how to control You need to stop pretending this magic doesn’t belong to you.”
Shaking my head, my breath hitches as my hands tremble against my lap. “How am I supposed to control something I didn’t even know I had?” My voice is thin and cracking beneath the weight of rising panic inside of me. “I don’t feel it, and I don’t understand it. There’s nothing to control, how can there be?”
“Yes, there is,” he says quietly, his tone more gentle now. “You just don’t want to let yourself feel it, and that’s the issue. I don’t know why, and I don’t know what’s blocking you, but it’s there. I can feel it every time I touch you, Serafine, which proves it’s there. That power hums under your skin like lightning waiting for a target. You just aren’t accepting it, you’re fighting it for some reason.”
I stare at him, stunned, the words sinking in hard.
“I’m not fighting anything,” I whisper, my voice barely audible now. “I’m not hiding from it. I just… I can’t feel it. How can I control something that can’t
see or feel?”
He reaches for my hands, his own are warm and grounding around mine. “You are fighting it even if you don’t mean to,” he says, holding my gaze. “Your body knows what it is. That dream you had the other night that you mentioned, the one that keeps on repeating, it wasn’t just a dream. Your power
reacted to it. It filled the room This time, if I hadn’t come when I did…”
He trails off, his jaw tightening, and I know what he doesn’t say.
If he hadn’t come, the magic might’ve reached further. Might’ve burned. Others might have noticed or seen. The dream is one I’ve had before. I told him about it, and he told me it’s my magic asking to be free.
“The moment you stop trying to ignore it and the moment you accept that it’s part of you,” he says, “that’s when we’ll figure out how to control it. We will do it together.”
an
I want to believe him. I really do want to believe that this thing inside of me isn’t some curse, and that I’m not something to be hidden or hunted. Right now, though, all I feel is fear.
I’m fearing that I will hurt Eryx, that I’ll hurt Xander. I fear that the fire inside of me… It’s not waiting to be tamed, but it’s spreading like a disease and wanting to destroy everything it touches.
“I don’t know how,” I whisper. “Xander… I don’t know where to begin.”
His hands tighten around mine, steady and sure.
“Look, we begin here,” he says softly. “We begin with you feeling it not fighting it. We begin with you not burying it anymore. Just being still with it will help. Right now, you don’t need to shape it, you just need to stop pretending it’s not there.”
He shifts closer on the bed, his forehead lowering until it touches mine, our breath mingling in the heavy air. “Try, for Eryx Close your eyes,” he murmurs, “and listen to your heartbeat. I’ll be right here.”
Som ‘
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