The knock didn't belong to our street.
Not to this building. Not to this life I kept telling myself was safe.
Three soft beats—measured, practiced. Like someone tapping a code on the skin of the world.
Evelyn's teacup froze an inch from her lips, steam curling upward in quiet ribbons.Marcus muted the television mid-sentence, thumb rigid over the remote.
Another three knocks. Same spacing. Same certainty.
My pulse curled tight. "Expecting someone?"
Marcus shook his head once. Too clipped.
Evelyn set the cup down, and the glass trembled against the saucer. She smoothed her skirt with shaking fingers, as if that could iron out fear.
"Maybe—" I started.
But Marcus was already rising. "Stay here, Sera."
His voice held something I'd never heard in it. Not anger. Surrender.
He walked toward the door with the stillness of someone heading somewhere he can't turn back from. The frosted glass showed a silhouette—straight posture, hands still at his sides, no fidget, no shift. Waiting.
The kind of person who never wondered whether the door would open.
When Marcus finally pulled it back, the cold rushed in first. Then the man stepped inside.
Black suit. Black tie. No coat despite the November wind. His face was forgettable on purpose: clean features, dark hair, nothing to remember. But his presence made the room feel smaller, like the air itself stepped aside for him.
He carried a small black envelope sealed in red wax.
My stomach tightened.
That seal. Five tiny crests encircling a sharp slash. I'd brushed against it years ago—hidden in Marcus's desk drawer, brittle with age. He'd ripped it from my hands, shoved the drawer shut, told me never to touch it again.
Now it was here. New. Whole.
"Good evening, Mr. Quinn," the man said.
No name offered. His voice was smooth, professional, stripped of human warmth.
Marcus nodded stiffly. "You're early."
"I'm precisely on schedule."
His gaze drifted across the room—shelf, lamp, Evelyn, me. It didn't linger, yet somehow it reached under my skin.
"Seraphina Quinn," he said when his eyes landed on me.
"Sera," I murmured.
He gave the smallest nod. "You have prepared well."
Prepared for what?A chill ran up my spine.
Evelyn rose halfway to standing, then stopped. "We were told… more time."
The man didn't acknowledge her. His attention stayed on me.
"By directive of the Council," he said, "the Bloodbound Contract has reached maturity. I am here to deliver your summons."
The world dimmed at the edges.
"Summons," I echoed, because nothing else would leave my mouth.
"You will present yourself at the Selection Hall tomorrow at nineteen hundred hours. Transportation will arrive."
"For what?"
His head tilted slightly. "For the Selection."
Marcus exhaled as if struck.
"I don't know what that is," I said.
"You will," he replied. He lifted the envelope between us. "Take it."
I didn't move.
"Explain," I whispered.
His tone stayed level. "Your father entered a Bloodbound Contract with the Council twenty-one years ago. He pledged his first daughter as collateral. You."
Evelyn's hand went to her mouth.
Marcus closed his eyes.
The floor tilted under me. "No. No, that's—people can't pledge people."
"In your world," he agreed. "But the Council is not your world."
"I didn't agree to anything."
"Agreement was secured from the head of your line."
Heat pricked behind my eyes. "That's not agreement. That's ownership."
The man didn't blink. "Collateral."
The word sliced clean.
I turned to Marcus. "Tell me he's lying."
His shoulders crumpled a little. "We had no choice. We were drowning, Sera. They offered a way out. Protection. Resources. We didn't know if they'd ever call it in."
"You gambled with me," I breathed. "With my life."
His silence answered.
The man extended the envelope again. "There is no benefit in delay."
My hand lifted without my permission, drawn by the horrible gravity of inevitability. The envelope brushed my fingers—warm from his glove.
When I took it, that warmth felt like a verdict.
"The heirs will present their claims," he continued. "You will be evaluated. The Council will determine the most advantageous match."
My throat went dry. "Match."
"Binding," he corrected.
"And if I don't go?"
He didn't shift, didn't blink, didn't soften. "The Quinn family faces financial dismantlement, legal destruction, and corrective measures. Collateral must be delivered. That is the law."
"Your law," I whispered.
"It is the only law that matters here."
Evelyn's breath broke. "Please. She's not ready—"
"She is of age," he said. "And the heirs are expecting her."
Plural.Five strangers.
My skin crawled.
He straightened his stance, as if preparing for departure. "Observation begins tonight. For safety."
"Yours or mine?" I asked.
He didn't answer. Which was an answer.
The hallway light flickered. A shadow passed behind our window—too still, too deliberate. Someone watching from the street.
My grip on the envelope tightened.
"Tomorrow at nineteen hundred," he repeated. "Be ready."
"Ready for what?" The question fell out.
"To meet the heirs," he said, voice smooth as a blade. "And to be claimed."
He stepped back toward the door.
Marcus whispered, "Please. A moment. Anything—"
But the emissary ignored him.
At the threshold, he paused—not turning fully, just angling his head.
"Nothing that happens now should surprise you," he said softly. "Only the things you were not allowed to see before."
Then he left.
The door sealed shut with a sound too gentle for what it meant.
Silence expanded until it filled everything.
Marcus braced a hand on the wall. Evelyn sank onto the sofa, fingers trembling around a napkin she didn't remember picking up.
I stood alone in the center of it all, the envelope burning against my palm.
My name in sharp black print stared up at me:Seraphina Quinn — Summons to the Bloodbound Selection
I walked to the table and broke the seal before either of them could try to take it from me.
The wax cracked in a clean line. The sound made Evelyn flinch.
Inside:• a location• an hour• a formal dress requirement• a warning not to bring personal jewelry• a line stating that all communications would be monitored• and at the bottom—five crests
Each different.Each belonging to a power family I'd only ever seen on headlines and rumors:
One shaped like a serpent coiled around a scale.One like a gilded ballot box framed in laurel.One cold and geometric, like towers rising over currency sigils.One a split-shield marked with a sharp diagonal.One encircled in ivy around a key.
Five sectors.Five worlds.Five men raised inside this system.
I folded the letter slowly, carefully, though my hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"Sera," Evelyn said softly, "listen, we can still—"
"We can still what?" I asked. "Run? Hide? Pretend none of this is real?"
Neither answered.
Outside, a car door shut. Another shadow shifted under the streetlight. Watching.
Always watching.
Marcus finally spoke, voice scraped raw. "I'll go with you tomorrow. I'll stand with you."
"You'll hand me over," I corrected. "That's what standing with me means now."
He bowed his head.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "You have no idea how sorry—"
"No," I said. "I don't."
I took the envelope and walked to my room.
The door closed behind me, the sound dull, final.
For a moment, I simply leaned back against it, breathing through the tightness in my chest. The world outside my window looked the same—streetlamp glow, quiet sidewalks—but everything inside me had shifted.
Inheritance.Debt.Collateral.Heirs.
Tomorrow night, five men would see me not as a person but as the fulfillment of a promise Marcus made before I could walk.
Fear twisted low in my stomach.
But something else pushed up against it: a thin, sharp thread of anger. Not hot. Not wild.
Steady.
They expected someone trembling. Someone compliant. Someone shaped by a lifetime of preparation for a world she didn't know existed.
But I wasn't shaped by them.
I wasn't shaped at all.
Not yet.
Across the street, the watcher under the lamp lifted a phone to his ear, eyes never leaving our building.
I let the curtain fall back into place.
Tomorrow, I would walk into the Selection Hall.Not ready.Not trained.
But not broken.
And whoever the heirs were—whatever they believed they had the right to claim—they were about to meet someone they hadn't prepared for.
Me.