SERAPHINA’S POV
One moment, Kieran’s body was braced over mine, muscles trembling, breath ragged against my shoulder. His teeth hovered at the curve of my neck, just above the pulse point where a mark would root itself deep and permanent.
The next, the world shifted.
Not a full vision. Not like the psychic dives I was learning to navigate. This was something else—an intrusion of sensation.
I wasn’t in my bedroom anymore. I wasn’t underneath Kieran anymore.
I was standing in a clearing I did not recognize, the air thick with smoke. The ground was scorched black, and ash coated my bare feet.
The sky overhead was bruised red, as if wounded.
And at the center of it—
Kieran. On his knees.
Blood from a wound I couldn't see poured from him in a steady spill, spreading fast and dark, soaking the blackened earth beneath him as if it were drinking him in.
His shoulders sagged with a heaviness I had never seen in him before, not in battle, not in grief, not in fury.
