He crosses the room in measured, purposeful steps, stopping in front of me as he leans down to press a respectful kiss to my cheek.
“Good morning, Seraphina.” Stunned for a moment, I shake my head and smile softly.
“Good morning.”
Then, just as quickly, he shifts.
The room shifts with him.
“Everyone,” Chace says, already moving toward the large TV mounted along the wall, his tone clean and commanding as it cuts through the space, “we have a problem.”
The screen flickers to life.
My breath catches so sharply it burns.
Gideon fills the screen, dressed in ceremonial robes of deep, oppressive black, the fabric heavy and ornate with subtle gold embroidery that glints under the controlled lighting around him. His hair is slicked back to perfection, his expression calm in a way that feels deliberate, constructed, his composure so precise it borders on unnatural.
Controlled.
Always controlled.
To anyone else, he might look composed, authoritative, even holy.
To me, he looks insidious.
Like something rotting beneath something sacred.
“My beloved,” he begins, his voice smooth and measured, carrying that familiar cadence that once wrapped itself around my thoughts like scripture, “it is with a heavy heart that I come before you today, burdened by a truth I can no longer shield you from.”
My fingers tighten around the cup in my hands.
I feel Trey’s arm tense around my waist.
“Seraphina,” Gideon continues, my name spoken like something both revered and condemned, “a vessel once chosen, once pure, has fallen.”
The words slice through me with surgical precision.
The screen shifts.
Images flood in—me and Trey, moments stolen and stripped of context, of truth—his hands on me, my head tipped back in something that is unmistakable.
“A corruption,” Gideon says softly, almost sorrowfully, “does not always arrive as something monstrous. It comes as temptation, as desire, as something that feels like salvation when in truth it is ruin.”
Another image.
Trey’s hand at my throat.
My body arching into his.
My stomach twists.
“Trey Baker,” Gideon continues, his voice never rising, never breaking, “is not a savior. He is not a protector. He is a destroyer—a man who takes what is sacred and reshapes it into something unrecognizable, something unclean.”
The air in the room tightens.
I feel Trey go completely still beside me.
“He has taken what was promised to God,” Gideon says, “and claimed it for himself.”
