Maryna
The library felt different after Vasilios left.
The heat of his presence lingered like perfume in the stone—dark spice, iron, desire. I could still feel the place where his chest nearly brushed mine. Still taste the word choose as it had left his mouth.
And I had.
I'd chosen to stay behind.
Not because I wasn't afraid.
But because I was curious.
And that was worse.
I moved through the stacks with unsteady fingers, brushing dust from old spines, trying to find something that didn't tremble when I touched it. Most of the books here pulsed faintly beneath the skin—subtle, like a second heartbeat.
But one shelf was different.
Low to the ground. Almost hidden behind a carved column.
There was no book there.
Just a circular stone set into the floor beneath it, rimmed with gold and marked with a faded sigil.
A spiral.
Wrapped in thorns.
The same sigil from the front page of Seductio Tenebris.
I knelt slowly.
Ran my fingers across the grooves.
The spiral sparked beneath my touch.
And then the room tilted.
Heat bloomed beneath my palm.
Pain—sharp, hot, and immediate—flared up my wrist.
I gasped.
And the world cracked.
I wasn't in the library anymore.
I was inside something else.
A memory.
But not mine.
The air was thick with perfume and blood.
Candles burned black on golden chandeliers.
Velvet curtains hung low, trapping heat and scent.
At the center of the chamber, a woman knelt.
Not me.
But… close.
Her hair was longer.
Her skin slightly paler.
But the eyes—
The eyes were mine.
Or maybe my mother's.
Or someone older still.
She was dressed in a gown that shimmered like spilled ink, her chest rising and falling as if every breath hurt.
And standing before her—
Vasilios.
Younger.
Less shadowed.
But still him.
Still terrifying.
Still beautiful.
"Do you know what it means?" he asked her.
The woman said nothing.
He stepped closer.
"Your blood opened the House," he said. "It remembers you."
She trembled.
Not in fear.
In recognition.
His fingers brushed her collarbone.
"I could take you now," he whispered. "No one would stop me. You'd even let me."
Her breath hitched.
"But I won't," he said. "Not until you understand."
He turned and walked away.
Leaving her alone.
On her knees.
Crying.
And the floor beneath her burning with the sigil that now burned beneath my hand.
I jerked back.
Gasping.
The library rushed in around me like cold water.
My hands were shaking.
The stone still glowed beneath me, faint and fading.
But I had seen her.
I had felt her.
And whoever she was—
She had come before.
Marked.
Powerful.
Desired.
But not chosen.
Or maybe…
Not yet.
I stood slowly.
My legs unsteady.
Something had changed in me again.
A lock turned somewhere inside.
And now there were too many questions and not enough air.
I fled the library.
Not like prey.
But like someone who understood, finally, that she wasn't alone.
That she never had been.
That this had all happened before.
And was happening again.
And again.
And again.
Until one of us got it right.