#: reply

tw: mentions of sexual abuse, violence, scarring, nudity

She didn’t answer him, just remained in place and watched. Her eyes traced him slowly—like a spell being drawn, studying him. The slope of his shoulders. The faint tension that never left his stance, even now. The way his legs spread when he sat, like he was still bracing for an impact that didn’t come.

Her expression didn’t falter, but something behind it tensed. A sense of recognition, sudden and unwelcome. Her hand dropped, brushing lightly against her own hip as she took a step back, her body was all contrast here—sharp shoulders under a soaked coat, the soft curve of her waist showing where the fabric clung, damp from the long hours in the greenhouse. A thin trail of water traced down her collarbone and into the low cut of her shirt beneath the fabrics.

She blinked, once—slowly. Just enough for silver lashes to catch the amber light that filtered through the broken glass above. Then, quiet and deliberate, crossed the space between them with the same slow certainty she used when handling a blade or something fragile. Her boots didn’t make a sound over the moss-choked tiles.

Each step brought her closer into the heat of him. Her breath was steady, but deeper now, controlled. The kind that stirred just beneath the skin. She stopped in front of him, closer than courtesy allowed, and tilted her head just enough for the bruised twilight of her iris to meet the fused bronze in his. She was close enough that the scent of her reached him. Smoke and wet leaves. Bloodroot. Rosewater. Her skirt whispered as she moved, hips shifting under dark, weather-dampened fabric. She tilted her chin just a little, and her braid slid forward over one shoulder, catching the light in its silvered length. Her mouth didn’t move.

Then something slipped and uncoiled again.

A flicker—not from her body, but through the bond. A rush, quiet and sudden, like breath against the nape of the neck. A vision not deliberate, not controlled.

She was showing him.

Half-formed images passing between them: his hands, rough and certain, ghosting along the curve of her waist; the heat of her body pressed to his chest, her breath caught between a gasp and something lower. It was a pulse, slow and warm—then sharper, brighter. Not even a full picture. Skin against skin. Heat under her palms. Her mouth near his ear, breath hitting the shell of it before teeth grazed the edge. His name, unspoken, hummed in her throat like a thread pulled too tight. The sensation of her body wanting—her thighs parting under his hands, the tension in her stomach, the softness of her chest pressed flush against muscle. A rhythm beginning. The wet heat of her mouth just before a kiss, real and sharp as steel in sunlight.

A half beat under her ribcage and she pulled back cutting the thread.

Serenei had long unlearned the lie that wanting made her weak. She didn’t flinch from her own hunger, didn’t hide behind feign innocence—she was a woman who knew the pull of desire in her marrow and let it bloom hot beneath her skin without shame. Yet that was entirely different; why would one ever take what was not freely given? Take and devour and indulge from one shackled, even loosely. Not when she herself knew too well the silence that followed a stolen act—the hollow that opened inside when the body was claimed without the soul. The Bhaalyn had taught her what power and control looked like, sanctified under the guise of devotion.

She didn't utter a single word. Then, without breaking the gaze, hands moved slowly undoing the ties of her blouse without ceremony, her fingers moving with a kind of grim resolve. Practical. As if she were revealing something medical, not intimate.

The fabric parted enough to expose the damage underneath. Scars over the breastbone; jagged, ugly things, some faded into pale ridges, others still a mottled red as if they’d only just healed. Long cuts where blades had been dragged too slow. There were bite marks too and burns, like brands, in circular patterns down the sides of her breasts, her stomach, her hips. Symbols carved into skin without consent, meant to wake whatever power they believed slept inside her. None of it random. Every wound had been placed with a purpose by the cleric who said her magic needed opening. Pain would bring her closer to divinity. Father would be proud, she would be ready.

Her voice, when it came, was low but steady. “He thought pain would make the power come faster.” No embellishment. No tearful story. Just the shape of a memory, flattened into a statement.

He'd use her body like a ritual book in those salt-iron caverns, carving, hurting, forcing himself on her—then said it would make her more potent as the weight pressed against her frame. At the time she didn’t even know what that meant, not really. But he kept going. Praying while he did it. She’d fix her gaze on the ceiling of the chantry’s sanctum—on the stone stalactites that hung like crooked teeth above the altar—and count them in silence. One. Two. Three. A hundred times over. Some days she imagined them falling, sharp and fast, cleaving through the man’s skull mid-prayer. Other days she just let herself drift, dull and distant, until even the burning between her legs felt like it belonged to someone else.

Serenei reached for the open edges of the fabric with the same care one might use to close the lid of a reliquary. Her fingers moved with practiced precision, looping the ties one by one. The linen, still damp, clung faintly to her skin as she pulled it snug across her chest, brushing over old scar tissue now half-exposed to the air. The movement wasn’t rushed, but there was a subtle tension in her jaw, like she was reminding herself to breathe through it. Her collarbone rose with each breath, steady now, and when the last knot was secured, she smoothed the front flat with her palm — not to hide, but to contain. Like something sealed shut after being witnessed.

The vows reach their crescendo —a tremor of certainty and rehearsed forever— and something in her vision shifts. It is not sight in the ordinary sense yet it is not imagination either. The red cast through the stained glass deepens, thickens and for a pulse too long, it stains the groom’s collar like arterial spray. The bride’s gold pales into the waxen hue of a fevered brow. Serenei blinks once. She has learned not to react to what only she can see. The colors settle but not entirely and the metallic scent beneath the lilies sharpens. She sees it the way she sees most things; distant, final. Some moons from now, the city quieter than it should be, doors marked in chalk, smoke rising not from hearths but from pyres outside the walls. The young groom is thinner, hollowed. A bed dragged closer to a window for air that will not help. His hand wrapped around hers, uselessly warm against skin already cooling. The flux maybe, or the sweat, who knows saving the Gods themselves. Her jaw tightens almost imperceptibly, and the vision thins like mist burned off by sun. The couple remain at the altar, bright and trembling and alive.

Serenei’s gaze remains forward. “For now,” she answers, voice even. “And for a while, it’ll be enough.” A small pause settles between them, thin as dust in the light. “They will be happy,” she continues, voice lowered and unsoftened. “While it is still simple and unchallenging to be.” The organ hums beneath the priest’s blessing. Enjoying each other is soft and easy on the heart before the air turns. The priest asks for the rings. The bride laughs, nervous and bright. Applause trembles at the edges of the pews. “They should enjoy this,” she adds, watching the couple as they beam at a future already thinning at the edges. “It’s the only part they’ll get to keep uncomplicated.”

Bells. Laughter. Tears of joy and praying words invoking Lathander's guiding light upon the newlyweds.

“Before the plague reaches them.”

She tilted her head, the smoke trailing from her lips like a sigh. The haze blurred the edges of the room, smearing the line between reality and substance. Her heartbeat felt distant, slow. Honey-drenched. Shadows pooled in the corners, indistinct and oily, pressing against the walls, stretching and curling as if the room itself were breathing in rhythm with her. Long pale fingers traced the brass rim with a distracted rhythm. She let her gaze drift to the faint outline of the Phase Spider curled at Rinnill’s side, its chitinous form unnervingly still, yet alive in that quiet, observing way that only creatures born in shadow seemed to possess.

🩸

Fair eyebrow raised, eyeing the mess with a dry sort of amusement. She hooks a finger under the edge of Katya’s sleeve, the fabric clinging with a sickening squelch.

"Glued? Gods, Katya, that's half a battlefield." From the looks of it, probably some poor farmer had left their children unattended again. Wide-eyed little things, soft-bellied, slow. Easy prey.

Serenei looked at him, eyes narrowing just slightly, the dim light catching the faint red flecks in her irises. Connor’s skeletal grin didn’t change, and part of her wanted to roll her eyes—but part of her… didn’t. Slender hands moved over the mortar and pestle, crushing fleshwort and cassil with steady, deliberate presses. The scrape of stone against stone was almost conversational, keeping rhythm with her words.

By the time they reached the inn, the night had settled thick and quiet, the kind that swallowed up sound except for the hush of their footsteps and the occasional sigh of the wind. The place Bram had chosen was modest, a timber-framed building with its shutters drawn, smelling faintly of smoke and rain-wet stone. The innkeeper barely looked up when they entered, only waved Bram toward the narrow staircase after taking his coin. The corridor creaked beneath their weight, walls papered with faded floral prints, the scent of dried lavender lingering faintly in the still air.

Inside, warmth pressed against Serenei's skin all at once. The faint scent of firewood and old ale wrapped the small room, muffled the sound of the wind outside. One bed, wide enough for two if they didn’t mind brushing against each other, and a single window where the moon leaned in, pale and curious.

Bram had insisted she take the first turn at the wash basin. She stripped down to the shirt he’d given her earlier, smelled faintly of pine resin, worn leather, and something warmer—him. Steam from the water curled up around her wrists as she washed, the heat drawing a flush to her skin. She could still feel the ghost of his hands from earlier, lifting her from the forest floor, steady and unyielding. Carrying her like she weighed nothing.

When she stepped out, he was seated on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, head bent as if caught in thought. The candlelight brushed the slope of his jaw, caught the shimmer of his hair where it fell into his face.

She crossed the small space between them, the floorboards cool under her bare feet, and let the shirt shift loose around her thighs. She didn’t stop until she was beside him, the mattress dipping under her weight. For a moment, she simply sat there, her knee brushing his. Without asking, she let her head rest lightly on his shoulder. The warmth of him sank into her. He'd been carrying her all night—he's earned a little less distance.

She turned her face slightly so she could look at him, gossamer-silver hair falling forward against his arm. Her voice was low, almost conspiratorial. “Do you know what you look like right now? Like you’ve been cut from the moon.” As if moonlight refracted by millions of ice crystals suspended in the room's atmosphere, outstretched and swirling over him. Bright enough to pull the tide in her chest.

The thick perfume of carnations and burning resin pressed close, cloying. Beneath it, she swore she could still smell the copper ghost of blood on her skin, whether real or memory’s trick, she no longer trusted herself to know. Haarlep’s gaze fastened onto her like a blade pressing against the bare of her small neck. The lazy curl of his lips made her bones itch. Devils did not smile unless they had already won something.