The cell closed around me like a coffin.
The clang of the iron door still echoed when the silence fell. Heavy, crushing, absolute. No voices. No chains rattling from neighbors. No sound of boots on stone. Just the dark. Just me.
And the shadows.
The Court called it solitary confinement. But I knew better. This wasn't punishment. It was a test. Marcus had placed me in a box and stripped everything away — Liam, light, sound, the chaos of the Court. And what remained?
Me. And what lived inside me.
The walls were slick with moisture, stone pressing close as though the cell had been carved from the belly of the mountain. A slit of a window let in no light, only a thin draft that smelled of iron. Chains hung from the wall but were unused — they didn't need them.
The silver collar still burned at my throat, its weight a cruel reminder.
I curled against the wall at first, my breath fogging in the cold air, and tried to listen for something, anything. But there was only my own heartbeat.
And then, slowly, the whispers began.
Not from outside. From within.
At first they were faint. A scrape of sound beneath thought. A susurrus of breath curling along my ribs. Words I couldn't quite catch.
I pressed my palms over my ears. Useless. The voices weren't coming from the cell. They were coming from the shadows curling beneath my skin.
We are here.
The words brushed my mind like fingertips over glass.
"No," I whispered. My voice cracked against the stone. "You're not real."
We are real enough. You called us. You bled us. You stepped with us through the dark. Did you think we would stay silent?
I pressed my forehead to the wall, grinding against the cold stone as if I could scrape the sound out of my head.
The whispers shifted, curling lower, closer, until they sounded like my own voice overlapping itself. You will break. Alone. Forgotten. Only we will remain.
I shook, clenching my fists until nails carved crescents into skin. "I won't break."
But the silence that followed was worse.
I lost track of time.
There was no day, no night. Only cold stone and hunger gnawing at me until my stomach cramped like it wanted to devour itself. No food came. No water. Only the stale dampness of the air.
Sometimes I thought I heard footsteps beyond the wall, but they never came closer. Sometimes I swore I saw movement in the corner — a figure crouched low, watching. But when I turned, there was nothing.
Only the shadows.
Always the shadows.
They began to take form more vividly. Not just whispers. Shapes. A claw against the wall. A figure hunched at the foot of my cot, black and long-limbed. Eyes opening in the corners, lidless, gleaming pale.
When I blinked, they were gone. When I breathed, they returned.
Why do you fight us? the whispers asked. We are you. We are your blood. We are what Marcus fears, what Kaylan hates, what Lucian wants. Why deny what is yours?
I curled tighter. My throat burned. "Because if I give in… you'll take everything."
No, the shadows purred. We will give everything. Power. Freedom. You need only let go of the leash.
The collar seemed to burn hotter at those words, as if Marcus himself were listening.
I dragged trembling fingers across the silver band, hissing at the sting. "Even if I wanted to… this keeps you chained."
The shadows hissed laughter, rippling across the stone. Chains rust. Locks break. You know this. You said it to him yourself.
I froze. The memory slammed back — my words to Marcus during the trial. Chains don't last forever. Sooner or later… they break.
The shadows remembered.
They had listened.
The hunger twisted deeper. My lips cracked, my body weak. Sometimes I thought I heard Liam's voice in the silence. Whispering my name. Urging me to hold on. But when I answered, there was nothing. Only the echoes of my own desperation.
Kaylan had made sure.
No word from him. No glimpse. No hope but the one I made for myself.
The shadows swarmed tighter in the void his absence left. Curling around me like smoke. Stroking my hair. Cradling me in whispers. He cannot reach you. He is caged. Forgotten. But we are here. We will never leave.
I wanted to scream at them. Push them away. But the truth was cruel: they were all I had.
And slowly… I stopped resisting.
I let them coil around my hands, my shoulders, my chest. Let them whisper my name in a hundred voices. Let them bleed into my veins until I couldn't tell where I ended and they began.
The cell dissolved into blackness.
And in that dark, I saw things.
Visions.
A throne shattered in fire. A woman with eyes like burning silver, her voice wrapping the world in chains. Liam drenched in blood, his eyes no longer human. Kaylan broken at my feet, her storm-gray gaze wide in shock. Marcus — laughing, as the shadows devoured him whole.
And behind it all, a name hissed through the dark:
Seraphina.
The whisper rattled my bones.
I jerked awake on the stone, sweat slicking my skin. My nails had cut my palms raw. My body trembled.
But the shadows inside me no longer whispered faintly.
They were awake.
And they were waiting.