The confrontation hasn't ended yet, but its shocks were still rippling through Serena's bones.
She stared at herself in the boutique's dressing room mirror long after everyone had gone. The glass reflected someone beautiful — poised, powerful, wrapped in soft silk and quiet cruelty.
But it wasn't her.
Not really.
Serena Cavanaugh, the girl who once cried when her cousin broke a necklace they shared as children — she was gone. Replaced by a woman who smiled as she leaked photos of a hotel room scandal. Who sat across from Clara with a glass of wine and daggers in her words. Who no longer even flinched when Evelyn stopped calling.
And yet… beneath the layers of power, beneath the perfect winged eyeliner and smile of steel — she felt hollow.
"I'm doing this for them," she whispered to the mirror. "For everything she took."
But her voice cracked.
The door creaked behind her, and she didn't turn. She knew who it was.
Ellion's reflection appeared beside hers in the glass, as though he had always been there. His presence didn't startle her anymore — it grounded her in a way nothing else could. In a world full of lies, he was the only constant that wasn't pretending to be human.
"You look like a goddess dressed in rage," he murmured. "But your eyes are screaming."
Serena closed her eyes. "What do you want now? Another poetic warning about fate?"
"No. Just wondering how long you plan to keep pretending that you're okay."
She opened her eyes, glare sharp. "I'm not pretending."
Ellion stepped closer, fingers brushing her wrist. His touch was cold — like rain after a fever.
"Liar."
Her breath caught.
"Tell me something," he said softly, circling her. "If you win this war… if you burn Clara to ash, humiliate Aaron, break every person who failed you — what then? What's left for Serena?"
"I'll have peace."
"No, love," Ellion said, voice like silk wrapped around a dagger. "You'll have silence. There's a difference."
Serena turned away, hands gripping the vanity table so tightly her knuckles turned white. "You don't understand, you never will! Because You weren't there!"
"I was!" he said behind her. "Bu-but you just didn't see me."
She froze.
"I watched you die," Ellion whispered. "Alone. Crying for a justice that never came. Begging the stars to let you do it over."
Her heart hammered. Slowly, she turned. "Why?"
"Because I fell in love… with a fire that refused to be snuffed out."
Serena stared at him.
Ellion didn't move. His eyes, those otherworldly eyes, watched her not like a man — but like a storm admiring the wreckage it once wept upon.
"And when you were given this second chance," he said, "I followed. Not to save you. But to see what you'd become."
She stepped forward, shaky.
"I don't even know what I've become."
Ellion raised a hand and gently touched her cheek. "Then let me show you."
Her breath hitched as he leaned in — not to kiss her, but to press his forehead to hers. Their connection crackled. In her chest, it felt like a star trying to break free.
"You are fury," he whispered. "You are beauty carved from betrayal. You are mine — not because I own you, but because no one else dares to love the fire like I do."
Serena's eyes filled with tears.
She hadn't cried since she came back.
But now, she wept — for the girl she used to be, for the ghost of herself she barely remembered, for the fear that maybe… maybe she was too far gone to come back.
Ellion held her.
She didn't push him away.
In the silence, the only sound was her breathing, shallow and unsure.
"Stay," she whispered.
"I'm not going anywhere."
That night, she didn't plot. She didn't leak anything. She didn't think about Clara or Aaron or revenge.
She lay beside a god wrapped in shadows and dreams — and for once, she slept without nightmares.
But the war wasn't over.
And in the morning, she would pick up the mask again.
Because love, no matter how deep, wasn't enough to erase what had been done.