Seraphina Hayes POV:
Celeste stared at the dragon sigil in my hand, her face caught between confusion and alarm. "My lady, what is that?"
"It's our hope," I said quietly, my fist closing around the metal. Its sharp edges bit into my palm, and the sting of it kept me steady.
I thought of my mother in her last days—lying in bed, her bright eyes gone dim, holding my hand and telling me again and again to be a good Franks wife. To be tolerant. To be generous.
She had worn herself out arranging this marriage, believing a knightly family could be a sanctuary for me, her Dragonless, merchant-born daughter. She had sold off the last of the Winslow Guild's assets just to give me a dowry large enough to command my husband's family's respect.
She had misjudged them. The Franks family was no sanctuary. It was a swamp, and it had swallowed everything I had.
A wave of sadness rolled over me. I had not only failed my mother's dying wish—I had poured the fortune she bought with her life into the mouths of ungrateful wolves.
I shut my eyes and pushed the thought down. This was no time for weakness.
"Copy these ledgers," I told Celeste, opening my eyes. "Hide the originals. We leave at dawn."
Celeste hesitated. "My lady, where can we go? Lord Hayes..."
Lord Hayes was my stepfather. After my mother died he remarried quickly, and paid no mind to a stepdaughter who shared none of his blood. After my marriage, he never once wrote.
Going back to him would only heap on more shame. I shook my head. "We are not going to the Hayes' house."
Her worry deepened. "But a woman without family, alone in the capital..."
I understood her fear. In this world, a woman without a husband's or a father's protection was a boat in a storm, likely to capsize at any hour—especially a Dragonless woman like me, with no way to shield herself.
I met her eyes, my voice firm. "Celeste, I won't let us be cornered. Trust me."
Something in my calm seemed to steady her. She nodded hard. "Yes, my lady. I will always trust you."
I didn't sleep. I packed my mother's gold and my jewelry into a small satchel and left everything else. It had all been bought with my dowry, but I couldn't bring myself to care about trifles now.
Just as the sky began to lighten, a sharp knock rattled the door.
Celeste glanced at me, nervous. I nodded for her to open it.
Ethan's mother, Lady Virginia, stood outside, and behind her the true head of the Franks family—his grandmother, Lady Eleanor. Lady Virginia was dressed richly, her smile fixed and cool. Lady Eleanor leaned on a cane capped with dragon-glass, a stone that hummed faintly, as if a sliver of old Dragonfire still slept inside it.
Lady Eleanor spoke first, and there was no anger in her voice—only the careful tenderness of a woman who had spent a lifetime wrapping knives in silk.
"Seraphina, my dear." She gave a slow, sorrowful shake of her head. "Three years you have kept this house, and we have never once forgotten it. That is precisely why we are here—before you do something in anger that cannot be undone."
"I am not angry, my lady," I said calmly.
Virginia stepped forward and took my hand in both of hers, her eyes soft with what looked like genuine concern. "Oh, Seraphina. Think of yourself, child. You are Dragonless. Out there, without this family, what would become of you? We have always only wanted what is best for you."
Her thumbs pressed over my knuckles, warm and false.
Eleanor lowered herself into a chair and went on, her voice measured, almost maternal. "A man of Ethan's new standing must marry where the king commands. That is no slight against you, dear—it is simply the way of the world. Blanca is young, and foolish, and she will need a steady hand to guide her. You would remain the true mistress of this house. Nothing need change for you at all."
There it was, laid out so gently. They would dress my humiliation in fine words and call it kindness.
I eased my hand out of Virginia's grip.
"So long as I stay," I said, "and keep the books, and make it all look respectable."
Eleanor's smile didn't waver, but something behind it cooled. "You have always understood how a great house must be run, my dear. That is a gift, not a burden."
"And if I still choose to leave?"
The silence that followed was deliberate. Eleanor let it settle before she answered.
"Then we must speak plainly, and I will say it only out of care for you." She leaned forward a little, her cane tapping once against the floor. "Your dowry was long ago woven into the family's assets. There is nothing left to separate, nothing left to take. To walk away now, with empty hands and no name behind you—that is no freedom, child. It is a fall."
Virginia added, her voice soft as a lullaby, "We are only trying to spare you the pain of learning it the hard way."
I looked from one face to the other, and the last illusion I had held for this family went out like a snuffed candle.
They had not come to comfort me. They had come because they were afraid—afraid I would walk, and take with me the only thing keeping this house alive.
"Then let me be plain as well," I said, my voice steady. "You will not keep a single coin of my dowry. And I am leaving."
The room went still. Virginia's tender mask slipped, and beneath it I saw the flash of panic she could not quite hide. Eleanor stared at me for a long, unblinking moment, and for the first time the silk dropped from her voice.
"You have always been such a sensible girl," she said slowly. "I would hate to see you become... difficult."
"I am not being difficult, my lady." I lifted my chin. "I am being free."
I saw it land—the flicker of real alarm in her old eyes. They had come expecting to soothe me back into my cage with soft words. They had not expected the cage door to already be swinging shut behind me.
I turned to Celeste. "We leave now."
Celeste, eyes bright with a fierce kind of relief, took up the satchel.
Virginia's voice rose for the first time, thin and sharp. "You ungrateful—what are you without the Franks family—"
