Seraphine's POV
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The dress is already on the bed when I wake up.
White. Plain. Folded neatly like something you'd lay out for a funeral.
I stare at it for a long time without moving. My mother never lays out my clothes. She barely knocks before entering my room. But this morning she came in quietly, set the dress down without a word, and left before I could see her face.
That's what scares me most. Not the dress. The fact that she wouldn't look at me.
Downstairs, voices drift up through the floorboards. Low and careful, the kind of voices adults use when the decision is already made and the talking is just performance. I can hear my father's steady rumble. My mother's shorter replies. And then a third voice - Darian's voice - and my stomach drops so fast I have to grab the bedpost.
Darian is here. At seven in the morning. The man I am supposed to marry in four months is sitting at my family's table before sunrise, speaking in that same careful, low tone.
I should go back to sleep. I should tell myself it's nothing. I am very good at telling myself things are nothing. I have been practicing that particular skill my entire life - every missed birthday, every dinner where the conversation flowed around me like water around a rock, every time I caught my parents looking at my younger sister Priya the way I always wanted them to look at me. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
But my hands are already reaching for the white dress.
-
The staircase has a step that creaks on the left side. I have known this since I was six. I step on the right side automatically, and I hear my father's voice clearly before I reach the bottom.
"She won't fight it," he says. "She never fights anything."
Something cold presses against the inside of my chest.
"She'll understand," my mother says. Her voice is doing something strange, cracking at the edges and then smoothing out again, like she keeps almost crying and stopping herself. "She's always been the sensible one."
Sensible. That is what my family calls me when they mean quiet. When they mean she won't cause a scene. When they mean she has learned, very efficiently, not to ask for too much.
"She'll understand," Darian says.
Just that. Three words. No emotion attached to them whatsoever, delivered like he is agreeing that the weather is expected to be mild.
I stop breathing.
I step into the kitchen doorway and all three of them turn at once. My father's jaw is set in the way it gets when something is already decided. My mother's eyes are red but her hands are folded neatly in her lap, which means she has finished the hard part of feeling guilty and moved into the easier part of accepting it. Darian is sitting straight in his chair with both hands flat on the table.
He looks at me. His eyes don't apologize. They explain.
That is the moment I understand everything.
"Sit down, Sera," my father says.
I don't sit down.
"The meteor agreement," my father begins, and his voice is so steady it makes me want to scream. "One willing person. Per household. Delivered to the dungeon entrance before sunrise tomorrow. The mutants have guaranteed the rest of us safety for one full year. The government confirmed it this morning."
He keeps talking. Words like necessary and collective survival and greater good fall out of his mouth one after the other, smooth as coins dropping into a jar. My mother is nodding slightly. Darian is still looking at his hands.
"We discussed every option," my father says.
"You discussed me," I say.
He pauses. "Yes."
"At this table." My voice is very calm. I am surprised by how calm it is. "While I was sleeping upstairs. You sat here and discussed which person in this family was worth the least."
My mother makes a small sound.
"Priya is fourteen," my father says, and he says it like it settles something.
"I am twenty-three," I say.
"You're strong, Sera. You've always been strong. You'll-"
"Did you vote?" I ask. I look at Darian when I say it.
He finally meets my eyes. His expression is full of something that might be guilt or might be relief, and I realize, with a clarity that feels like cold water, that I cannot actually tell the difference on his face. I have been in love with this man for two years and I cannot tell if he is sorry or if he is simply glad that it's over.
"Did you vote?" I ask him again. Quietly.
He doesn't answer.
That is its own answer.
-
They walk me to the dungeon entrance at dawn. My father's hand is on my shoulder the entire way, firm and guiding, like he is walking me somewhere honorable. My mother cries quietly behind us. Darian holds my hand until we reach the iron doors, and I let him because I am busy memorizing exactly how his fingers feel so that I can finish hating him properly later.
The doors are enormous. The air coming through the gap smells like nothing I can name.
Darian's hand releases mine. He lets go first. Of course he lets go first.
I look at my mother. She is still crying, which used to mean something to me. Right now it means nothing at all.
I look at my father. He nods once, like he is sending me off to something reasonable.
I look at Darian. He opens his mouth.
"Don't," I tell him.
I step through the doors.
The darkness swallows everything behind me and the iron seals shut with a sound like the whole world locking me out.
-
For exactly four seconds I stand completely still in the dark and think about nothing.
Then something happens inside my chest.
It doesn't hurt. It's worse than pain - it unfolds. Warm and slow and enormous, spreading outward from somewhere deep beneath my ribs into every space that neglect ever carved into me. Every missed birthday. Every invisible dinner. Every nothing, nothing, nothing.
Filled.
And then, before I can understand what is happening to me, I feel them.
Every creature in this dungeon. Their hunger, their frustration, the complex and alien weight of everything they want - pressing against my awareness like a hundred hands against glass all at once.
I can feel all of them.
But one of them - far below, deeper than the rest, vast and cold and ancient in a way that makes my knees want to buckle - one of them feels me back.
Deliberately.
And from somewhere in the deepest dark, something that is not a voice and not a sound forms into a single, clear message inside my skull.
I have been waiting for you.