Because this time, she will answer.
The cave fills with the sound of struggle—muffled groans echo off the walls like a chorus of pain. And Seren revels in it.
Her depthless eyes spin to Lara, fixing on her. She stalks toward her, slow as an approaching storm.
“Ask it again,” Seren whispers, but not softly. No, this is lethal. And it doesn’t need to be loud to be understood.
Lara is not afraid. She does not flinch, she does not move. Her posture remains relaxed—the posture of a person who has known violence and threat, and has made a home there.
A small, terrifying smile breaks free on Lara’s beautiful face. A beguiling, seductive thing. She closes the gap between them, and hooks her too-long nail under Seren’s chin. She tilts it up, exposing Seren’s throat. “What would you sacrifice to stand among us, little witch?”
Seren does not falter. She bares her teeth. “Nothing that costs me my loyalty.”
Lara grunts something indiscernible.
Seren keeps going. “You want my loyalty by asking me to betray the people who made me? Never.” Her breaths rush in—too fast, too shallow. “But I won’t let them hurt my blood, either. I’ll cast my friends to the Waters. I’ll cast this coven to the seas. But I will not be disloyal to prove my submission to a coven who has offered me nothing.”
She knows it’s bold. Knows it’s a risk to talk with such recklessness to the High Witch. But she refuses to belong if it means leaving herself behind.
Lara doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, but her eyes train on Seren in assessment.
Seren fights the urge to swallow the thick lump in her throat. But she steadies her breath, holds her hands steady despite the tremor that begins in her fingers.
Do not show signs of weakness.
But Lara breaks the silence. “You played by the rules.”
Not a question. An observation.
Her voice is smooth, transfixing. “Bent them to your will.”
Another analysis.
The strained, rasping groans of the coven rent the air, but Lara ignores it. Or perhaps she doesn’t even hear it. Regardless, she certainly doesn’tcare.
“I leveraged the holes in the rules to serve my own will, yes,” Seren agrees, a confidence sliding into her tone. “I proved my loyalty. But not to you. Not to the coven. To the ones who have already earnedmyloyalty. And if that disqualifies me, then I was never meant to belong here. That’s what you want, isn’t it? For me to show my loyalty?” Her words come out a challenge, but her voice falters under the strain of holding the bindings.
Seren’s voice drops into something born of the wild. “Well, here it is. My loyalty.”
Lara takes another half-step forward, eyes never leaving Seren, head titling in curious calculation. “What you showed, little witch, is your cunning. The Widow approves. She devoursthe weak in her Waters and returns them to us to hang at the mouth like splintered teeth,” she says, her tone merciless.
Seren can’t help it, she swallows the lump in her throat. A single thread of fear braiding itself around her spine.
“Return the figures to her Waters. Release the coven. The Widow accepts your answer,” Lara announces, waving a dismissive hand in an almost bored gesture.
Seren releases the bindings. The figures crash into the Waters like a rolling wave, and the coven crumple to the cave’s floor, all sprawling limbs and pained groans.
“Which answer did The Widow accept exactly?” Seren questions, her bravado faltering for a heartbeat.
“That you possess the cunning of The Dreaded and you’ll sacrifice nothing worth keeping,” Lara says, her voice lowering like a storm gathering.
Surprise flares in Seren’s chest, Lara’s words seeming oddlyfair. And strangely, Seren feelsunderstood.
A foreign flicker sparks in her chest. Not belonging, exactly… but maybe acceptance.
Lara notices, her mouth twitching in amusement, and then she answers the question so plainly written on Seren’s face. “I do not argue with The Widow, and I do not deny the facts of what I see. But Seren?”
Despite herself, warmth floods her, and Seren internally admonishes herself for feeling… whateverthisis.
