Chapter 112: Investment 112: The Witch of the North
In the days following the successful rescue operation, Adonite Academy settled into a fragile, cautious calm, the freed prisoners gradually recovering under the careful attention of Edith and the academy’s medical staff, while the headmaster and Cassandra coordinated with the capital garrison to determine long-term security arrangements for those, like Wren, who had nowhere else safe to return to.
Elliot found Seria one evening on the same eastern rooftop garden where they’d once discussed the old man’s warning about love and destruction, though tonight her expression carried a different, quieter weight entirely.
"You’ve been distant since we got back," he said gently, settling beside her.
She was quiet for a long moment, watching the stars emerge slowly overhead. "Wren reminded me of something," she said finally. "The way she looked at us, when we found her. Hollow. Defeated. Like she’d already given up hoping anyone would come."
"I remember that look," Elliot said quietly.
"I used to look like that," Seria admitted, voice barely above a whisper. "Before I met you. Before any of this."
Elliot said nothing, simply waiting, recognizing the particular quality of silence that meant she needed space to find her own way into whatever she wanted to share.
"I told you once about the playground," she continued eventually. "The children mocking me for being motherless. What I didn’t tell you was what happened afterward, once the nickname finally stuck."
"You don’t have to tell me now, if it’s too much," Elliot said gently.
"I want to," Seria said, surprising him with the firmness in her voice. "I’ve spent years carrying this alone, Seria the Ice Queen, untouchable and cold because it was easier than being vulnerable enough to be hurt again. I think it’s time I actually let someone in properly, instead of just performing devotion through grand, dramatic gestures."
Elliot reached for her hand, offering silent, steady support.
"After the playground incident, my father grew increasingly distant," she said. "He’d already struggled since my mother’s death, but watching me lose control so completely, so publicly, seemed to frighten him in a way he never quite recovered from. He sent me to study under increasingly strict tutors, each one more focused on control and restraint than the last, convinced that if I simply learned to suppress my emotions entirely, the danger my power represented would somehow disappear along with them."
"That sounds incredibly lonely," Elliot said softly.
"It was," Seria admitted. "I spent years believing that my own feelings were inherently dangerous. That loving anyone, wanting anyone, needing anyone, was simply an invitation for catastrophe. I built walls so thoroughly around myself that by the time I arrived at Adonite, I’d nearly convinced myself I preferred it that way."
"What changed?"
Seria turned to face him fully, something raw and unguarded finally settling into her crystal-blue eyes. "You did. That ridiculous, oblivious kindness you kept extending toward me, entirely undeterred by my reputation or my clear attempts to keep everyone at arm’s length. You just kept showing up, patient and warm, until I couldn’t remember anymore why I’d ever believed keeping people out was actually safer than letting them in."
Elliot felt something tighten in his chest, gratitude and tenderness tangling together as he studied her carefully.
"I’m glad I didn’t give up," he said quietly.
"So am I," Seria admitted. "Though I confess, sometimes I still worry that all this fierce devotion I’ve apparently unlocked since meeting you is simply the same dangerous intensity my father always feared, just redirected toward something considerably more socially acceptable than a playground meltdown."
"I don’t think that’s true," Elliot said carefully. "I think what your father saw as dangerous was actually just a child in pain, with nobody around to help her process that pain safely. What you’ve built since then—with me, with Deria and Edith, with everyone who’s actually taken the time to know you—that’s not the same thing at all. That’s healing, even when it still looks intense from the outside."
Seria studied him for a long moment, something in her expression finally, fully softening.
"I don’t think I ever properly grieved her," she admitted quietly. "My mother. I was too young to remember her clearly, and my father never spoke of her after she died, as though pretending she’d never existed at all might somehow make her absence hurt less."
"Would it help to talk about her?" Elliot asked gently. "Even if it’s just guessing, imagining who she might have been?"
Seria considered that, something tentative and hopeful flickering behind her earlier vulnerability. "I’d like that, actually. I don’t even know very much. Just that she had the same crystal-blue eyes I do, according to the one portrait my father kept, hidden away in a drawer I wasn’t supposed to know about."
"Then let’s start there," Elliot said softly, pulling her gently against his side as the stars overhead continued their slow, steady climb across the darkening sky. "Tell me everything you do know. I want to understand every part of you, Seria. Not just the fierce, protective parts. All of it."
Seria rested her head against his shoulder, and for the first time in longer than she could clearly remember, allowed herself to simply speak of her mother without flinching away from the grief that memory carried—Elliot’s steady, patient presence beside her transforming what had once been an unbearable weight into something considerably easier to finally, properly carry.
"She loved winter," Seria said softly, memory and imagination blurring together into something gentle and reconstructive. "That much I do know. My father once mentioned, in a rare unguarded moment, that she used to walk out into the first snowfall of every year barefoot, just to feel it properly."
"Sounds like you inherited more than just her eyes," Elliot said gently.
"Maybe," Seria allowed, a faint, genuine smile finally breaking through. "I like to think so, anyway. It’s easier to imagine her as someone who’d understand this part of me, rather than someone who might have feared it the way my father eventually did."
"I think she would have been proud of you," Elliot said quietly. "Whoever she was. I think anyone would be, watching the person you’ve become."
Seria’s breath caught slightly, unshed tears finally spilling free, though her expression carried more relief than sorrow now.
"Thank you," she whispered. "For asking. For actually wanting to know, instead of just accepting the parts of me that are easiest to love."
"There’s nothing about you that isn’t easy to love," Elliot said simply, and meant it entirely, holding her close as the night settled fully around them, quiet and healing in equal measure.