Seraphina's POV
I followed Kieran Salvatore through the castle because my options were exactly two: him, or every other vampire who'd watched me bleed in the Grand Hall with red eyes and hungry expressions.
When you're choosing between bad and worse, bad wins. Every time.
He didn't speak as he walked. Didn't check if I was keeping up. Just moved through the corridors with that particular certainty that came from never once in his existence needing to wonder whether people would follow. They just did. Even the stone seemed to get out of his way.
We passed through a door I hadn't noticed before — set into the east wall behind a tapestry — and stepped into a separate building connected to the main castle by a covered bridge. The air changed immediately. Quieter. Colder. The sounds of three hundred vampires dispersing after assembly disappeared like someone had shut a lid.
Kieran stopped in the entrance hall and turned to face me for the first time since we'd left the Grand Hall.
"You'll stay here," he said. "The Salvatore estate. Your own room, your own key. You eat when you want, sleep when you want. The only rule is that you stay within this wing unless I'm with you."
I crossed my arms. "And if I'd rather take my chances in the main building?"
"Then you'll be dead before morning." No drama in his voice. Just fact, delivered clean. "Your blood is in the air now, Seraphina. Every vampire in that hall memorized your scent. The academy's rules protect you in theory. I protect you in practice." His ice-blue eyes held mine without blinking. "There's a difference."
I hated that he was right. I hated it with every part of me.
"Fine," I said. "Show me the room."
It was Adrian who actually showed me.
Kieran disappeared through a side door the moment a tall, warm-eyed vampire appeared from the upper level — Adrian Cross, who introduced himself with a handshake and a kind of easy, genuine smile that felt startlingly out of place in this castle.
"You handled yourself well tonight," he said, leading me up a staircase. "Most humans would've fainted when Morgessa drew blood. You didn't."
"I've had practice not showing fear," I said.
He glanced at me sideways. "That's either very impressive or very sad."
"Can't it be both?"
He laughed — actually laughed, warm and real. "I think I'm going to like you."
The room he showed me was more space and comfort than I'd had in four years. I didn't let myself react to it. I'd learned not to get attached to good things. Good things had a way of being taken back.
Adrian leaned against the doorframe as I set my bag down.
"Can I ask you something honestly?" I said.
"You can ask. I'll decide if I answer honestly."
Fair enough. "Why did Kieran actually claim me? The real reason. Not the version he said in front of everyone."
Adrian was quiet for a moment — measuring something, deciding something. Then: "He smelled your blood and something in him broke. I've known Kieran for a hundred and sixty years, and I have never seen him move that fast toward anything." He paused. "He told you about the girl he lost. Isabella."
"He mentioned her."
"Then you know he's been punishing himself for two centuries. No attachments. No humans. No risk." Adrian looked at me steadily. "And then you walked into that hall, and apparently your blood smells enough like hers that every wall he built in two hundred years cracked at once." He pushed off the doorframe. "Whether that's good news for you or not — I genuinely don't know yet."
He left me alone with that.
I didn't sleep.
I lay on top of the covers fully dressed, staring at the ceiling, cataloguing everything I knew about my situation, which was a very short list with very bad items on it.
Somewhere around what I guessed was two in the morning, I heard footsteps stop outside my door.
Then a knock. Two short, deliberate taps.
"I'm awake," I said.
The door opened. Kieran stood in the doorway — jacket gone, sleeves rolled, looking fractionally less armored than he had in the Grand Hall. Fractionally.
He didn't come in. Just stood at the threshold like there was a line he'd decided not to cross.
"I wanted to check that you were settled," he said.
"I'm not settled. I'm trapped in a vampire castle." I sat up. "But I'm alive, which I understand is a meaningful distinction here."
He almost smiled. I wasn't sure — it was gone too fast to confirm.
"I don't trust you," I said. Directly. The way Vivienne's house had taught me to say hard things before someone else could use them against me. "I want you to know that."
Something crossed his face. Fast and complicated — pain, maybe, or something that lived next to pain. Then it was gone, locked back behind that composed, immovable expression.
"Good," he said quietly. "Don't trust any vampire."
"Including you."
"Especially me."
I studied him. The shadows under his eyes that never fully disappeared. The way he held himself — controlled, always controlled, like he was physically restraining something that wanted out. "Then why help me? If I shouldn't trust you, why are you doing this?"
The silence stretched long enough that I thought, again, he wouldn't answer.
"Because you smell like someone I failed to protect." His voice was very low. "And I have spent two hundred and twenty-six years wishing I could go back and stand between her and what was coming." He met my eyes. "I can't go back. But you're here. And I won't fail again."
He closed the door before I could respond.
I sat in the dark for a long time after that, turning his words over. The grief in them was real — I knew real grief, knew what it sounded like when someone had been carrying something heavy for so long they didn't know what it felt like to put it down.
But grief wasn't the same as goodness. And guilt wasn't the same as safety.
I'm not her, I thought. I'm not Isabella. And if he's protecting me because of her, then the moment I stop reminding him of her—
A sound cut through the thought. From outside my window.
I crossed the room and looked out into the rose garden below.
Two figures. Standing very still in the shadows between the hedgerows — too still for casual conversation, too close together for coincidence. One of them I didn't recognize.
The other one was Elara.
Moonveil's headmaster. Who had told me I was protected. Who had told me the academy's rules kept me safe. Who had looked me in the eyes and said trust takes time like she genuinely intended to earn it.
She was passing something to the figure in the shadows. Small. Rectangular.
Even from three floors up, in the dark, I could see what it was.
A photograph.
My blood went cold from the inside out.
Because the last person I'd seen holding a photograph of me without my knowledge had been Vivienne, smiling in a dark hallway, telling me to have a safe trip.
And Elara was holding one that looked exactly the same size.
Same shape.
Same crimson-red backing.