Page 126 of Sold to the Dark Vampire Prince

“Sera,” he said softly. “It’s okay. You aren’t going to hurt me.”

Tears filled her eyes.

“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “If I accidentally touch you, I could—”

Before she could finish the sentence, he’d stepped into her space, sliding a hand to cup her cheek. Sera gasped at the contact, trembling so hard she thought she might faint. Finneas gently traced her tears away with the pad of his thumb until her eyes lifted to his.

“No,” he said softly. “You can’t. And I think we both know why.”

She sniffled, unable to do anything but silently cry as he traced her tears away. How long had it been since she’d let anyone touch her without her gloves?

“You don’t scare me, Sera.”

She drew a shaky breath. “Maybe I should.”

“Please take my coat. I can’t stand to see you out here freezing.”

Heart pounding so hard her chest was starting to hurt, she allowed him to slip her good arm into it. He was unexpectedly gentle as he draped it over her shoulder. The coat was too large for her, of course, but it had a woodsy scent of pine and something else she couldn’t quite name. She caught herself inhaling the scent, his scent, from the fabric, and quickly straightened, cheeks heating.

He turned back to the railing, and after a minute, she did, too, this time not standing quite so far away.

“How’s your shoulder?”

“It’s… better.”

She refused to tell him that at least once a day, she forgot she couldn’t properly lift her arm, and the pain brought her to tears. They’d told her she could stop using the sling, that the scans showed the break and tearing were healed.

There was nothing, from a medical perspective, that explained her lingering pain. Maybe it was the remembered trauma of the bone snapping. Maybe it was the worry that she could no longer tell real pain from that which lived in her head, but part of her feared she might never be able to use her arm as she once could.

And that same part of her worried, deep down, that maybe she deserved it.

“You aren’t afraid, standing so close to the edge where they can see you?” she asked after a moment.

“Don’t trust my wards?” There was a wry note in his voice. “You wound me, Serafina.”

“You know what I mean.”

He nodded down at the crowd. “You’re perfectly safe here in the castle. Though, I can’t imagine you’ve been doing well, all the same.”

“I assume you saw the video?” She toyed with the cuff of his jacket. “They think I’m a monster.”

“Perhaps to them, you are.” Finneas smiled, showing very sharp teeth. “The fae, however, are very old and very powerful. There are far more dangerous magic users among our ranks than a woman who risked her own safety storming a castle to save her brother and the lives of thirty-seven hostages.”

And for the first time in weeks, that terrible, unspeakable thing in her stomach began to unknot.

“You could have chosen to do anything, and you became a healer,” he continued softly. “You’ve worn gloves every day since your power manifested, for fear you might accidentally touch someone. That doesn’t sound particularly monstrous to me.”

Sera looked away, terrified if she allowed the walls she’d kept in place for weeks to crack, she might cry. “Yes, well, you didn’t watch your father die.”

You didn’t kill him.

She couldn’t allow herself to examine that moment too closely. Alex believed she’d been fighting so hard to shield that her control had slipped. She’d overheard Evan telling everyone at breakfast that even if she had snapped due to the intense pain of having her shoulder dislocated and her arm broken, Judas Visconti had killed how many thousands of people, and she’d done the sector a fucking favor, and everyone should just shut up about it. Gods, she loved Evan.

But the terrible truth was that in the rare moments she could bear to look at her own reflection in the mirror, she wondered if her father had once been at a similar crossroads, back when his power had first emerged.

Had there ever been a point where he could have made a different choice, chosen a different path?

Was there any chance she could still be saved, or had her fate been cast years ago, the moment she nearly killed the patient in her hospital rotation?