The roses were white, like snow touched by guilt.
They had dressed me in silk before the funeral. Pale blue, the color of obedience. My hair was brushed to waves, lips painted soft pink, hands folded like I'd chosen to die. They laid me in a glass coffin, surrounded by petals. As if that could make it beautiful.
As if burying me alive would hurt less if I looked like a bride.
I heard them outside the glass. The nobles. The priests. My family. Every voice that had once praised my beauty now whispered about my shame.
"Such a waste of a pretty face," one murmured.
"She loved a stable boy," another said, voice thick with scorn. "He put dirt in her blood."
They said I cursed myself. They said I ruined my destiny—an arranged marriage to Lord Alaric, son of the Prime Chancellor, a future ruler of our realm. I was born to wear crowns and smile sweetly at things I hated.
But I chose Kael.
And that made me dangerous.
When the glass lid closed, I didn't scream. I had already done that for hours when they threw me in the tomb and shut the world away. I had screamed until my throat bled, until the silence was louder than my voice.
Now I waited.
Because somewhere, beneath the soft layers of soil and petals, something moved.
They buried me deep in the Temple of Vow—a place meant for sacred souls. My father thought it ironic. He said, "Let her rot beneath holiness." The irony is, that's where the curse lives too.
It stirred when my heart slowed.
It coiled around my body like ivy.
It whispered my name in the dark.
Seraphine… Seraphine… pretty thing, broken thing. Let me in.
At first, I thought it was madness. But madness doesn't offer bargains.
The curse didn't want blood. It wanted memory. Pain. Beauty.
And I had all three.
"I want to live," I whispered.
A pause. Then—
"Then let the dead rise in you."
My heart stopped for the second time.
But this time… I came back.
The lid of the coffin cracked, not from above, but from within. My fingers—blue and stiff—twitched. The roses browned. The silk around me curled at the edges. I pushed upward, and the glass shattered with a sound like thunder and weeping.
I rose from the grave in the dress they picked for my death.
My hair hung wet, my skin pale as wax. But my eyes—my eyes burned.
The air tasted like copper and secrets. The crypt walls pulsed with something ancient.
I wasn't alone.
A voice echoed from the shadows.
"You shouldn't be here," it said. Low, almost admiring.
I turned slowly. A figure emerged. Tall. Masked in silver. A stranger cloaked in black.
"Neither should you," I answered.
He tilted his head. "Seraphine Vale. Dead for two nights. Now breathing. What are you?"
I smiled. It cracked my lips.
"I'm pretty."
A pause.
"And very, very angry."