Chapter 3: The Executioners' Garden
Seraphina stood up. She rose with a terrifying, skeletal grace, her emerald eyes fixed not on the flowers, but on the three people who stood like shadows in her father's home. Her face was a mask of absolute agony.
"I'm sorry," she began, her voice cracking with a hurtful, pained expression. "But I don't trust any of you. To me, you are nothing but a bunch of traitors."
She turned her gaze to Eveline, who was sobbing on the ground. "You were the bait, Eveline. You vanished right when I was Framed." She turned to Alaric, her voice a jagged sob. "And you, Aleric you promised to be my shield... Where were you?."
Finally, her gaze landed on Killian.
The air between them went deathly still. Seraphina stared at him for a long, agonizing minute. Her breath hitched, and she began to choke on her tears, her throat tightening until it physically hurt to speak.
"And you..." she whispered, her voice breaking. "I know you owe me nothing, Killian. I was just part of the sea of your admirers. Just another face in the crowd of girls who watched you from the edge of the ballroom. You probably don't even know the name of this pathetic girl who fell for you."
She let out a dry, broken sob, her eyes searching his face with a haunting clarity.
"The girl who saw you that afternoon in the sunflower field, years ago... before you ever became a knight. Before the blood and the armor. I loved you since that day, Killian. But when I saw your shadow beneath the Temple... when I felt you there in that blood-stained dark... I didn't think you were a savior. I saw you as some one who is there to finish the job."
She paused, a ghost of a smile—hollow and devastating—touching her lips.
"But do you want to know the most pathetic part? I was happy. I was happy that your face was the last thing I saw. I thought, at least the man I loved is the one to end it. But that girl died in the sunflower field, and the woman she became died in that dungeon. I can finally leave my first love behind in the past where he belongs."
Killian's expression shattered. With a heavy, metallic thud that echoed through the garden, the Empire's strongest man dropped to his knees. He knelt in the dirt at her feet, his head bowed, his voice a low, guttural rasp of pure, unadulterated pain.
"I knew your name before I ever knew my own title," Killian whispered, his hands trembling against the gravel. "I remember the sunflower field, Seraphina. For when you spoke to me that day made my resolve to earn a title and become a knight strenghten . I was a nameless soldier, a weapon who only knew how to hold a sword, and I thought if I gained a title—if I became a Commander—I could finally stand on the same level as you."
He let out a jagged breath, his head hanging low. "But the more I killed, the darker I became. I looked at my hands and saw only blood, while you were still the light of the sunflower field. I felt unworthy. I was afraid that if I touched you, I would only corrupt you with my darkness. I realized how far our social standing truly was—not because of our names, but because you were an angel and I was a monster. I thought my silence was your protection. I thought staying away would keep you clean."
He looked up at her, his crimson eyes bloodshot and filled with a desperate, terrifying devotion.
"I wasn't there to finish the job. I tore the Temple apart because I realized I would rather be a monster that saved you than a hero who let you die. I loved you, Seraphina. I have spent an entire lifetime of regret wishing I had just spoken to you."
Seraphina wavered. For a heartbeat, her rigid posture broke. Her hand flew to her chest, clutching at her dress as her heart hammered against her ribs. The words hit her like a physical wave of heat—it was everything she had ever wanted to hear. All those years of following him, of feeling like a pathetic admirer, hadn't been in vain. He had been fighting his own war just to reach her.
The validation was so sweet it made her head spin, and for a second, the coldness of her trauma almost thawed
.
But then, the phantom chill of the Temple dungeon crawled up her spine. The memory of the blood-stained straw snapped her back.
"You love me?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "You tell me this now? After I've already felt the weight of your silence? After I've already died waiting for a savior who was too afraid of his own shadow to reach out?"
She backed away, her face hardening into a mask of bitter iron.
"My father leaves at dawn," she said, her voice turning into a hollow whisper. "The ledger is in the study. If you truly love me... if you're the knight you claim you became for me... then save him. Because hearing those words now doesn't change the fact that I died alone. Save my father. Maybe then... I can look at you without seeing my own executioner."
She turned and fled toward the manor, leaving the three ghosts alone in the cold, darkening garden.