Chapter 77: Seris’s Story [2]
Seris stayed quiet for a long moment.
The smile she usually kept ready had gone somewhere. Her hands rested in her lap and she looked at them like she was deciding something.
"I was the last child born into the Ravenveil family," she said finally. "The youngest. My mother died giving birth to me."
Alden’s mind went blank for a second.
’Her mother died giving birth to her?’
That wasn’t what he’d written. In his story, Seris’s mother was alive through every Chapter he’d finished. He’d kept her alive deliberately — she’d been meant to appear later. His fingers tightened against the fountain edge, but he pushed the thought down. Whatever had changed in this world’s version of events, right now wasn’t the moment for it.
"I’m sorry," he said.
Seris shook her head slightly. "You don’t have to be." Her eyes stayed on the ground. "After she died, my family treated me as though I was responsible. My siblings hated me. So did my father."
She said it the way someone says something they have said to themselves too many times, the words worn smooth like stones in water, yet still heavy underneath.
"I still remember what they used to say." Her voice didn’t waver.
Her siblings’ voices echoed inside her head.
"You shouldn’t have been born! Go away!"
"If you hadn’t existed, Mother would still be here."
"Don’t call yourself my sister!"
She had been small when it started. Too small to understand why the people who were supposed to love her looked at her the way they did. When her siblings gathered, she wasn’t allowed to stand with them. When they went somewhere, she was left behind. When they ate together, she sat apart. When they laughed she watched from a distance, and if she got close enough they simply turned away without acknowledging that she existed.
She was family by blood and a stranger by everything else.
"I thought if I became useful enough, they might eventually accept me," Seris continued. A faint smile appeared and disappeared again. "So I tried."
She remembered being that girl. Small, quiet, paying careful attention to everything her father preferred. What time he drank his tea. Which chair he sat in. What made him almost-smile. One day she’d used her own savings to buy him a new jacket — held it carefully in both hands, walked to him with something very close to hope.
"Here, Father."
He’d barely glanced at it. "No need for this. If anything, just stay out of my sight from now on."
She walked away clutching the jacket to her chest, hiding the tears until she found somewhere dark and quiet to break. She cried so much back then. There were nights her eyes burned so fiercely from weeping that sleep wouldn’t come at all, leaving her awake with the ache in her chest. So she tried everything. She tried to be smarter, stronger, more useful. She tried to erase every piece of who she was just to be worthy of them. But no matter how much of herself she destroyed, nothing ever reached their hearts.
Eventually something in her stopped asking.
"After enough years I stopped expecting anything," she said, looking at the moon. "I learned how to smile when I was hurting. Stay calm when I wanted to cry. Stand perfectly still and let nothing show." She looked down at her hands again. "People started calling me cold. Heartless, some of them." The faint smile came back, but it was a different kind. "I’ve grown accustomed to it. I no longer feel much about those words."
Alden hadn’t moved.
’Is this really the Seris I wrote?’
He had written a villain. Cold, calculating, and ruthless, she was someone who operated from behind thick layers of composure and never let anything slip. That part he recognized. But he’d always written it as something she simply was, not something that had been built out of years of people treating her like a mistake.
’She didn’t become cold because she was born that way.’
He stared at the fountain water. ’She became cold because warmth was never given to her.’
His chest tightened in a way he hadn’t expected. He’d created this backstory with a few lines of text and moved on. He hadn’t stayed with it. And what she was describing now — some of it he recognized, and some of it he didn’t, and the parts he didn’t recognize sat wrong in his stomach.
’What happened to my story.’
He swallowed quietly and kept listening.
"After many years," Seris said, "my father finally spoke to me. Really spoke to me. It was the first time he’d asked me to do anything." Her fingers pressed together slightly in her lap. "And for a little while I was happy. I thought maybe he had finally accepted me as his daughter."
She looked at the moon.
"He told me to cross into the Astern Empire — the human territory. To enter as a human student. Gather information on the academy, the kingdom’s military strength, the overall force structure." She paused. "But there was one person I was specifically ordered to get close to."
"Augustus," Alden said.
"Yes. The crown prince." She kept her eyes on the moon. "He had the highest authority among the students and considerable access to information. But entering as a vampire was impossible, so my father and the person who designed the operation built another identity for me." Her voice stayed even. "Seris Silverhart. A human girl from a respectable family. Clean history. Believable background."
She looked down at her hands.
"The engagement came next. My father arranged it as political cover — Seris Silverhart engaged to the crown prince, everything appearing normal and domestic and unremarkable from the outside." She was quiet for a second.
"I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to be engaged to Augustus. But it was the first time my father had ever asked me for something. The first time he needed me. And I thought that if I did this right, he might finally..." She didn’t finish that sentence. "So I came here. Lived among humans, gathering information. Stayed close to Augustus."
Alden’s mind was moving through everything she’d said, connecting pieces, finding the edges that didn’t fit the shape of what he’d written.
Then it landed on one thing.
"The person who designed the operation," he said. "You mentioned someone planned all of it — your identity, your enrollment, the engagement, your position here."
Seris looked at him.
"Everything," she confirmed. "All of it was designed by one person. My identity, how I’d be enrolled, how I’d get close to Augustus, the engagement, even my position on the Student Council. Every piece of it."
Alden turned toward her fully.
"Seris." His voice had gone serious in a specific, quiet way. "Who is the Planner?"