The torchlight flickered faintly in the stone corridor, casting trembling shadows upon the cold, blood-stained walls. Seraphine Morigel, cloaked in silence and secrecy, moved with the cautious grace of a phantom, a small tin of food hidden beneath the folds of her garments. Her breath was steady, though her heart pounded. Each step toward the dungeon felt like a descent into guilt, into memory.
Kenneth Prince lay chained and broken, his body bruised and twisted beneath heavy irons, his mind frayed by torment and darkness. His once-vibrant eyes were clouded now, vision blurred, and each time the door creaked open, he thought he was dreaming.
"Mother..." he whispered, voice hoarse from screams swallowed in solitude. The sight of Seraphine, vague in his haze, drew tears down his cracked cheeks.
She knelt beside him quietly, placing the food down and pulling out a damp cloth. Her hands trembled as she reached for his face. "I'm here... I brought you something. Try to eat."
Kenneth blinked slowly, then smiled, weakly. "You always come in my dreams. I missed you, Mother. I'm tired... so tired. Can we go home now? Back to the gardens...?"
Her fingers froze against his skin. The ache in her chest expanded. She had thought she'd steeled herself against this. But nothing could prepare her for how broken he truly was.
Kenneth's hand, though chained, brushed weakly against hers. She took it. Tight. Tender. Familiar.
His warmth sparked something old inside her.
Memories drifted into her mind, soft and slow like petals descending on still water.
—
She was eight when they first met. A tiny thing with wide eyes, clinging to her father's leg as he stood guard at the palace garden gates. Kenneth, then barely ten, had been running through the palace grounds barefoot, a wooden sword in one hand and a laughing shout in the other.
"You there! Tiny girl! What's your name?"
"S-Seraphine," she whispered.
He grinned. "Seraphine! Like my mother. That's a beautiful name. I'm Kenneth. Wanna play?"
Her father had tried to object, but Seraphina—Kenneth's mother—had stepped in with a warm smile and a gentle nod. "Let them be. He needs someone to laugh with."
And they did laugh.
Every day.
Kenneth taught her how to climb trees, how to chase the castle cats without getting scratched, how to sneak pastries from the kitchen without alerting the chefs.
One afternoon, when she slipped and scraped her knee trying to follow him onto a high branch, Kenneth had carried her all the way to the infirmary, despite the small blood trickle making his vampire instincts flare.
"Don't cry," he whispered, wiping her tears with a sleeve. "You're my little sister, alright? And I'll protect you forever."
They'd always said that—"little sister"—but sometimes the way he looked at her, and the way she smiled back, held something deeper.
In quiet moments, they would sit by the reflecting pool. Kenneth would stare into the water and talk about the stars, about war, about peace. Things no child should worry about.
Seraphine would listen, hand tucked beneath his. Sometimes he'd hum lullabies his mother used to sing.
"Your mother is kind," Seraphine once said, curling up beside him under the magnolia tree. "I wish... I wish she were mine."
Kenneth looked at her, eyes soft. "She can be. She says family is who we love, not just who we're born to. She calls you her 'second little light.'"
Seraphine had cried then. Not from sadness, but from something warm and whole.
Later that night, Seraphina wrapped both children in a shawl and read to them from an old leather-bound book of vampire legends. Her voice was music, her presence radiant. A queen, yes—but more importantly, a mother.
She brushed Seraphine's hair as if it were her own daughter's. Kissed her forehead goodnight. Whispered, "You'll always have a place here."
—
Now, years later, in this cursed dungeon, Seraphine wept silently as she dabbed at Kenneth's wounds.
"Don't leave me again... please," Kenneth whispered.
"I won't," she said, voice cracking. "I promise, I won't."
He smiled, and for a second, she thought she saw the old him. The boy from the garden. The big brother with the wooden sword.
But he faded quickly, slipping back into unconsciousness.
Seraphine stayed longer than she dared. Just to hold his hand. Just to remember.
The chapter ended not in silence, but in the thudding ache of a heart that remembered too much and a soul desperate to heal what was broken.
In the dark, Kenneth slept.
And Seraphine wept.
Not as a knight.
Not as a servant.
But as a girl who once danced beneath moonlight with a boy who believed in peace.