"By the Saints..." The young cleric’s voice trembled as he retreated, his holy symbol shaking between unsteady fingers.
"Purify her!" one of the knights shouted.
The command snapped the others from their paralysis. A cleric immediately began chanting, golden light gathering around his hands as the familiar cadence of a holy prayer filled the clearing.
Seraphina looked at him.
His prayer stopped as his mouth remained open, but no sound escaped it. Then his shoulders buckled as invisible pressure crashed down upon him.
His knees struck the dirt.
Blood spilled from his nose as he desperately tried to continue his prayer, trembling fingers tightening around his holy symbol. The pressure intensified until his arms gave out and he collapsed face-first into the dirt.
He didn’t rise.
Disbelief washed away every trace of my exhaustion.
Seraphina hadn’t swung her sword. She hadn’t spoken an incantation or summoned the corrupted fire I’d already seen her wield.
She had simply looked at him.
’Holy fuck.’
Seraphina seemed almost as surprised as I was. Her eyes lingered on the body, lips parting slightly as uncertainty briefly broke through the hatred consuming her.
Then she looked at the remaining six.
They weren’t looking at her with disgust anymore. They were afraid, and Seraphina noticed.
The uncertainty disappeared as she studied the men wearing the same white and gold that had once represented absolute authority over her.
Her lips slowly curved upward.
"Kill the corrupted one!" a knight shouted, but panic fractured his voice as he ripped his blessed sword free and charged.
Seraphina’s smile widened.
She moved so violently that my eyes nearly lost her.
Her Aurelian longsword crashed against his blessed weapon in an eruption of black-gold sparks. The knight recoiled from the impact, shock flashing across his face when Seraphina remained perfectly planted.
She attacked again, as his defense broke.
Her blade carved through armor as black-gold fire followed.
The knight’s scream tore across the clearing as corrupted flame poured through the wound and raced across his body.
"Sanctuary!"
A cleric slammed his staff into the ground.
Golden light surged around him, forming a radiant barrier. Relief flashed across his face as the shield solidified.
Seraphina raised one hand.
Black-gold fire struck the barrier. Cracks exploded across its surface.
"No... that’s impossible!" The cleric poured more mana into the failing defense, panic rising in his voice as darkness spread through the gold.
Seraphina curled her fingers, and the barrier shattered in response.
Fire swallowed him.
His screams echoed through the clearing as he stumbled mindlessly through the flames, desperately clawing at robes that refused to stop burning.
Movement flashed at the edge of my vision.
I turned just as another cleric charged me, a heavy mace blazing with holy light above his shoulder. Fury twisted his face as he rushed towards me.
"Oh, fuck you."
Heretical Flame erupted around my hand.
My first instinct was to throw it.
Then I remembered the ribbon of flame I’d manipulated inside the Sepulcher.
This magic didn’t need to be thrown.
It obeyed me. So, I pulled my hand backward and concentrated.
Black-gold fire stretched between my fingers, lengthening several feet before twisting through the air like a burning cord.
’No fucking way.’
I snapped my wrist.
CRACK!
The fiery whip tore through the air and coiled around his throat.
His eyes bulged as it secured tightly around his Adam’s apple.
His feet vanished beneath him, and he slammed onto his back hard enough to blast the breath from his lungs. Both hands grabbed the burning coil around his neck, only for a strangled cry to escape him as the corrupted fire scorched his palms.
The whip tightened when I pulled again.
He clawed desperately at his throat while I dragged him across the dirt, boots kicking uselessly as the flame constricted around his neck and burned through whatever protection his robes provided.
A thrill rushed through me.
Not from hurting him, but from the control.
The flame responded to every movement of my wrist as though it had been waiting for me to figure out what it could do.
’Holy shit. That’s fucking useful.’
A scream ripped my attention away from him.
I looked up as a Dawn Knight flew across the clearing and crashed into a tree hard enough to fracture the trunk.
Seraphina followed at a leisurely walk.
Black-gold fire rolled along her sword while the shattered halo burned behind her, illuminating blonde hair drifting around her face in the rising heat. There was no hesitation left in her movements and no trace of the disabled woman I’d discovered beneath Ashfall.
She looked fucking magnificent.
Dangerous, powerful, and beautiful in precisely the morally questionable way that had made me invent the Fallen Saintess in the first place.
Heat stirred low in my stomach.
’Oh, come the fuck on.’
Seven people had invaded my dungeon, Seraphina was slaughtering them, and my stupid succubus body had chosen now to remind me exactly why I’d spent nearly two million words writing dangerously attractive villainesses.
The fallen knight dragged himself upright against the tree, pain twisting his face as he struggled to raise his sword.
"You fucking monster."
Seraphina paused.
Her gaze dropped toward the Sacred Dawn insignia across his battered armor.
"That’s what your Order decided."
She knocked his weapon aside and drove her sword through him.
That cooled me down.
Slightly.
"RETREAT!"
Two surviving members of the Sacred Dawn broke toward the forest.
Seraphina slowly pulled her sword free.
One had barely made several yards when she raised two fingers.
Her halo flared.
A lance of black-gold radiance crossed the clearing, and the fleeing man collapsed before he could reach the trees.
The other screamed when corrupted fire erupted beneath his feet. He stumbled forward before falling, rolling desperately across the ground while flames consumed his white-and-gold robes.
"Help me!"
Seraphina watched him burn.
The fury that had erupted when they’d called her corrupted was gone now. What remained was colder and far more dangerous.
By the time his movements stopped, only one member of the Sacred Dawn remained standing.
The man who had recognized her.
His sword slipped from his fingers and struck the ground.
"Seraphina."
She turned toward him.
Brother Cassian raised both empty hands, his face pale as his gaze moved across the bodies of his companions.
"We didn’t come here for you," he said, struggling to keep his voice steady as Seraphina began walking toward him. "We were investigating a missing adventuring party. That’s all. We didn’t know you were here."
She continued forward.
"Seraphina, please."
The black-gold fire along her sword intensified.
Cassian retreated until his back struck a tree. "I wasn’t there when the bishops condemned you. I didn’t know what they were planning."
Seraphina stopped several feet away.
"You knew they imprisoned me."
Cassian swallowed.
"You knew they called me corrupted."
"Seraphina, I—"
"You knew they took me away."
His eyes dropped.
"I thought they were transferring you."
Seraphina stared at him for several long seconds, and the hatred in her eyes gradually gave way to something more painful.
"Did you ask where?"
Cassian’s mouth opened, but no answer came.
The hurt disappeared from Seraphina’s face.
What replaced it was considerably worse.
"Seraphina."
Her eyes shifted toward me.
For one moment, I saw the woman I’d spent the last few days arguing with. The woman who’d kissed me despite insisting she hated me and thrown herself between me and the Guardian’s sword without knowing whether she’d survive the impact.
She heard me.
She knew exactly why I’d said her name.
Then she looked back at Cassian.
His face crumpled when he saw her decision.
"No. Seraphina, please." His voice broke as he pressed himself against the tree. "I should have asked. I should have done something. I know that now."
Black-gold fire erupted around her hand.
"Please!"
Seraphina’s eyes never left his.
The flames consumed him.
His screams tore through the clearing as he collapsed, clawing desperately at himself while corrupted holy fire spread across his robes.
Seraphina watched.
She could have ended it immediately, but she didn’t.
The realization settled heavily inside me as Cassian’s screams gradually weakened and finally disappeared beneath the crackle of flames.
Seraphina stood before the burning remains with her fractured halo blazing behind her. Black-gold embers drifted around her, catching in strands of blonde hair before dissolving.
Then she smiled.
Not the smug little smile she wore whenever she managed to embarrass me. Not the reluctant one I’d occasionally dragged from her with some stupid joke.
This smile was colder, crueler, and horrifyingly familiar.
A chill slid down my spine as memories surfaced of nights spent behind a screen, writing a woman who butchered priests, burned churches, and eventually became one of Roland’s greatest enemies.
I’d written that smile.
For the last few days, Seraphina had become something completely different in my head. She was the stubborn asshole who questioned every decision I made, insulted me whenever the opportunity presented itself, protected me when she didn’t have to, and somehow ended up tangled in my sheets.
I’d almost forgotten what she was supposed to become.
Standing among the burning remains of the Sacred Dawn, Seraphina reminded me.
The Fallen Saintess wasn’t some distant character waiting hundreds of Chapters in the future.
She was standing right fucking in front of me.