“Would you like to watch while I make you move? While I make you sing again?” He smirked at me, looking down at where his fingers worked me. I so desperately wanted to let it go. To accept the pleasure that hewouldwring from me once more. I wanted to ignore this nagging feeling, that I didn’t understandwhat he had said. Because I was sure that there was only one time I had danced in a red costume, with blood red lips to match.
“Ciaran.” I gasped as he pushed down on my clit, sending jolts of pleasure through me. I was closer than I had realized. But I moved his arm away from me anyway. “What did you mean? When you watched me dance?”
I pulled the sheets up around myself, realization dawning. If what he said meant… no… it couldn’t.
“I…”
I watched his face blanche. Watched in real time as he caught what he had admitted in this vulnerable moment, with his defences down. Watched him as the wheels in his head turned, trying to figure a way out of this. “Seraphina.”
“Because… the only time I danced in red was the rehearsal for the gala. The same rehearsal when that beam fell on Carlotta. And if you were there… did you?”
Ciaran looked like he might be sick. I thought I would be too. I pushed away from him, fumbling to remain covered—this person, whoever he was, was not the person I thought I’d just shared my body with.
“Did you do it?” I fumbled for my clothes. They were strewn haphazardly around the bright room, that brightness so incongruous with the darkness that swirled in my mind now. I pulled them on without thinking. “Was it you? Did you drop that beam on Carlotta?”
I needed him to say it. That rehearsal had changedeverything.If Carlotta hadn’t been injured, I never would have sang. I never would have been on Scion’s radar. I wouldn’t have been accused of witchcraft—of murder. That one singular moment had set off a domino effect that had effectively ended life as I knew it. AndCiaranhad been responsible. I had gone through the past several months thinking it was an accident. Thinking that Ciaran was helping me put the pieces of my lifeback together. Buthehad been the one to shatter it in the first place.
“Seraphina… I didn’t… it wasn’t like that.” He was scrambling as well, trying to find his clothes. He made no attempt to cover himself up as he did. “After that night on the rooftop… I knew you were more than just a chorus dancer. I wanted to see you again. To watch you. But when I saw you from the rafters of the stage, I didn’t even think about the consequences. You had the ability to do the aria. To do it better than her. I just gave the situation a little nudge. I didn’t knowshewas your friend. And she wasn’t seriously hurt anyway.” I remembered that day as he spoke. The creeping sensation that had followed me the entire rehearsal. That someone was watching me. It had beenhim. Watching like a predator, waiting to pounce.
Something else wiggled its way forward in my subconscious—a memory that I had filed away for later. Something I hadn’t yet put together. Until now.
“The rose.” It came crashing back to my conscious mind. The rose that had been left in my dressing room, Carlotta’s dressing room, the night of the gala. The ribbon had those curious markings that I didn’t understand at the time. I now recognized them to be magical runes, made to channel raw magic through them. He’d ensured that I received that too. “You set me up? You made sure I had that ribbon to channel my magic when I sang. You set this whole thing up?”
Ciaran was as pale as a ghost. “No. I didn’t know you would take it on stage with you.” He didn’t bother to deny it. “I just wanted to… wish you luck. The ribbon, it’s just a spell for good luck. Your magic… I’m not sure if it leapt out of you because of the runes or because you are just so powerful. Regardless, it was… a mistake. It’s why I worked so hard to save you afterward. The guilt I would have felt if they had caught you because ofme…” His eyes were so sincere that I almost caved. I almost dropped to my knees and forgave him. But I just couldn’t.
“You should havetold me,” I hissed. I had gotten the buttons on my shirt done up. Ciaran was nearly dressed. “You should have told me before you… before we…”
And then true horror sank in. Because if the beam and the magic I had exhibited on stage at the gala had both been Ciaran’s doing, then there was only one logical conclusion to make. He had been manipulating me the whole time. And the final piece of the puzzle? The final manipulation that got me trapped down here with him?
“No.” Tears stung my eyes, from anger and betrayal, from this man that I had come to care for so deeply. This man I had come to love. And as that word, the one that had been flashing in my mind for weeks, finally clanged through me, I wailed. “No, no, no, no.”
“Seraphina?” He was wide-eyed, acting confused. Had Seff been right all along? Was Ciaran really the villain of this story?
“The chandelier?” I spat. “That was you too, wasn’t it?”
“No.” He stepped toward me, his arms extended as if he could hold together the pieces of me that were falling apart. The pieces of me thathehad fractured apart. “No. That was not me, Seraphina, please believe me. I told you the truth about the other things. I would not lie to you about this.”
And it was true. He’d admitted to the other things. But he had been lying for so long. The entire time I had known him. So I couldn’t believe it. Not when all evidence pointed to the contrary.
“Why should I believe you?” The room shook as my magic poured out of the hole he’d made in my heart. The ground quaked from the power of my rage, the raw elemental magic within me searching for a way out. “You have done nothing but lie to me since I arrived here.”
“I have never once lied to you. You never asked about the beam. You never asked about the gala. I would not have lied if you asked?—”
“That’s fucking semantics, Ciaran, and you know it. You were only too willing to let me believe that those were both accidental. Only too willing to let me give you everything. My body. My heart. My soul.” My hands tore at the shirt at my chest in emphasis. “And all you have done is lie.” The ground rumbled. It felt like an earthquake as my power flowed out of me. My hair whipped around overhead. Tears streamed down my face and snot poured from my nose. Ciaran didn’t dare step closer.
“I swear to you. I had nothing to do with the chandelier. I was here, Beneath, that night. You know I was. You found me yourself.” He held up his hands in surrender.
“And can anyone confirm that?” I shook violently.
He stood stock still. It was a no, then. No one could confirm his whereabouts that night, before I arrived, and he knew it.
“I don’t believe you,” I bellowed. It sounded unholy, my voice deeper, primal. Ciaran looked truly afraid. I glanced down at my hands and found them completely covered in inky black veins, spiderwebbing up my arms.Holy fuck.
Minutes ago, Ciaran had been moving inside me, kissing me, showing me pleasure I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams. I had fallen in love with him. With who I thought he was, at least. And now? My heart was breaking. I swear I could hear it crack. Or perhaps that was the stone in the walls around us. I looked to the bed we had just vacated, still rumpled from our joining there, and let out a sob.
Ciaran started toward me, like he was going to try to convince me to stay. “Do not come near me.” I swiped a hand through the air and he was tossed backward, effortlessly, into the wall, his head cracking against the rock as he slid down. I was finallyaccessing that magic that simmered inside me. It felt heady. Dizzying. The sheer power of it crackled in the air around me.
“Don’t even think about it. You’re a liar. I don’t want to see you ever again.” Part of me was screaming at that declaration. No. Wehaveto see him again. And it might have been an overreaction. If my magic wasn’t roiling in me, clouding my rational brain, maybe we could have talked through this. Maybe, if he had brought it up weeks ago, explained that he had caused the accident with the beam. Explained why he had done what he’d done…
