Seraphina's POV
I snatched the photograph from Vivienne's hand.
Same hallway. Same bag on my shoulder. My face turned slightly toward the stairs—caught in perfect, clear detail. The timestamp in the corner read eleven fifty-two. Six minutes ago.
"Who took this?" My voice came out steadier than I felt.
Vivienne just smiled wider. That smile she saved for moments when she knew she'd already won. "The people who invited you, sweetheart. They've been watching you for a while." She tilted her head. "They were very specific about wanting you. Funny, isn't it? Nobody's ever wanted you before."
The words hit exactly where she meant them to.
I dropped the photograph at her feet and walked down the stairs.
I heard her laugh behind me—quiet, satisfied—like she was watching a fish swim into a net and calling it freedom.
I kept walking.
The black car was already at the curb when I stepped outside.
No headlights. Engine running but completely silent. The kind of car that cost more money than most people made in a year, but there were no license plates. No company name. Nothing that would help anyone track where it was going.
The driver's window was up. Dark glass. I couldn't see a face.
Every single part of my brain screamed do not get in that car.
I got in.
The inside smelled strange—clean, like cold stone and something faintly sweet that I couldn't name. The seat was leather and perfectly smooth. A glass partition separated me from the driver. No handle on my side of the doors.
Locked in.
I pressed my palm flat against the door anyway, just to feel how solid it was. Very solid. No give at all.
The car moved before I even finished the thought.
"Excuse me," I said. "Where are we going?"
Silence.
"I'd like to know the name of the school. The address. Something."
Nothing. The driver didn't even shift in the seat.
I pressed my face to the window and watched my neighborhood slide past—streetlights, familiar corners, the bakery that had been there since I was small. I memorized everything I could, counting turns, trying to track direction.
By the time we hit the highway, I had already lost count. The roads weren't ones I recognized. We drove north, then what felt like east, then somewhere that had no name I could put to it—just dark fields giving way to darker hills giving way to mountains that rose up out of nowhere like walls.
My phone had no signal. It had stopped showing bars somewhere around the second hour.
I tried anyway. Typed a text to a number I barely remembered—my old friend Priya, from before Vivienne pulled me out of school. I'm in a car going north into mountains. No address. If you don't hear from me—
Not delivered.
I stared at the screen until it went dark, then tucked the phone into my jacket.
Somewhere in the fourth hour, I fell asleep against the window without meaning to.
I woke up because the car stopped.
Not gradually. It just—stopped. Like it hit an invisible wall.
I jolted upright, heart slamming, and looked out the window.
Forest. Thick, ancient-looking forest pressing in from both sides of the road, the trees so tall their tops disappeared into the dark. No stars showing through. No moon. Nothing but black trees and the car's headlights—which had turned on at some point while I slept—cutting a pale strip through all that dark.
And at the end of that strip: iron gates.
They were enormous. At least twenty feet tall, black metal twisted into shapes that took me a moment to recognize. Roses. Iron roses climbing the bars, curling around the hinges, wrapping the whole thing in something that looked beautiful and wrong at the same time.
No keypad. No intercom. No guard post.
The gates just opened.
By themselves. Slowly, smoothly, like someone on the other side had been expecting us and had already reached for the handle before we arrived.
The car rolled through.
"Wait—" I pressed both palms to the glass. "Wait, I need to see where—"
The gates swung shut behind us with a sound like a gunshot.
I spun around. Through the rear window, I watched the iron roses lock together with a heavy, permanent clank. The kind of sound that meant this doesn't open from the inside.
The car stopped again. The door clicked—unlocked.
Then the driver spoke. Two words, first and only time he'd made any sound at all during six hours of driving:
"Get out."
I grabbed my bag and stepped onto the gravel.
The car reversed immediately, spinning neatly on the narrow path, headlights sweeping the trees. I raised my hand—some stupid reflex, like I could wave it down—but it didn't slow. It rolled back toward the gates, which opened just wide enough to let it through, then sealed shut again.
I stood alone in the dark.
I turned around slowly.
The castle.
I'd been bracing myself. I'd imagined something ugly, threatening—something that matched how terrified I felt. But it wasn't ugly. That was the most frightening thing about it. It was beautiful in the way that something dangerous is beautiful—the way a storm looks right before it destroys everything.
Black stone that seemed to absorb the moonlight rather than reflect it. Towers that stretched so high they looked like they were trying to scratch the sky. Every window lit from the inside with warm amber glow, like hundreds of candles. And all around the base, climbing the walls, spilling across the courtyard—
Red roses.
Blood-red, exact same shade as the envelope. More roses than I'd ever seen in one place, so many they seemed to pulse slightly in the night breeze, like something alive.
Beautiful. Horrible. Mine, for however long I survived here.
I squared my shoulders, picked up my bag, and took one step forward.
Then I heard it.
Laughter. Coming from somewhere above—from one of those high windows, maybe the third floor, maybe higher. It was light and musical and completely at ease. Then it stopped. Then a second voice, low and male, said something in a language I didn't know.
Then silence.
But in that silence—right before it settled fully—I heard something else.
Something that erased every thought in my head and replaced it with pure, cold dread.
A third voice, barely more than a whisper, came from somewhere impossibly close. Right behind my left ear. So close I felt the temperature drop.
"She's here," the voice breathed. "And she smells exactly like they said she would."
I spun around.
Nobody was there.
Just the iron gates. Just the roses. Just the empty path.
But the roses nearest to me were swaying—slowly, deliberately—even though there was no wind.