Seraphina's POV
I was out of my chair before the thought fully finished.
Down the hall, through the doors, across the entrance hall—my footsteps loud and clumsy and human against the stone floors while everything else in this building moved like silence wearing skin. Out the front door, across the courtyard, thorns scraping my arm as I shoved past the rose beds, straight to the iron gates.
I grabbed the bars and pulled with everything I had.
Nothing.
I kicked them. Threw my shoulder against them. Pressed my face between the bars and looked down the empty path into the dark forest beyond.
"They won't open for you."
I spun around. Elara stood a few feet back, hands folded, watching me the way she'd watched me last night—calm, unsurprised, that same measuring look that made me feel like a problem she was already halfway through solving.
"Let me out," I said. "Right now. You need to let me out."
"I can't do that."
"You can, you're choosing not to—"
"The academy wards sealed when you crossed the threshold." Her voice was even. Not cruel, not apologetic—just factual, the way someone describes the weather. "No student may leave during term without authorization. That includes you."
"I'm not a student, I'm a prisoner!"
"You're both." She stepped forward. "Listen to me carefully, Seraphina. Inside these walls, you are protected. Academy law prohibits any student from feeding from another without explicit consent. No one here will touch you without your permission."
I stared at her. "Feeding. You just said feeding."
"Yes."
"You're all—"
"Yes."
I pressed my back against the gate and breathed. In. Out. The metal was cold through my jacket. I focused on that—the cold, the solid iron, things I could actually feel. Real things.
"Why am I here?" My voice came out quieter now. Dangerously quiet. "What do you actually want from me?"
Elara held my gaze. "That answer requires trust you haven't given me yet. And trust takes time." She gestured toward the castle. "For now—you have a class in twenty minutes. I suggest you attend."
Vampire Combat was held in a chamber so deep underground I lost count of the staircases going down. Stone walls, high ceilings, wooden floors worn smooth by what must have been centuries of use. Practice weapons on the walls. Training dummies in the corners.
And one massive vampire standing in the center of the room, watching the door as I walked in.
He was the most physically intimidating person I had ever seen. Not tall the way some people are tall and you just note it politely—tall in a way that made the room feel smaller. Broad, built like a wall, covered in silver scars that crossed his arms and disappeared under his sleeves. Dark hair cut close. Forest-green eyes that landed on me the moment I stepped through the door and didn't move.
The other students—all vampires, all regarding me with their standard issue looks of hungry curiosity—went very still.
"You're the human," he said.
Not a question. His voice was low and blunt like gravel shifting.
"Seraphina Ashford," I said.
"Professor Blackwell." He looked at me the way Theron in every war movie looks at the untrained recruit—not unkind exactly, but honest. Unflinchingly, painfully honest. "You're going to die in this class if you stay weak."
Something hot flared in my chest. I was terrified, yes. I was exhausted and trapped and surrounded by creatures that could drain me dry before I finished screaming. But weak was the one thing—the one single thing—I refused to let anyone call me again.
"Then I won't stay weak," I said.
Something shifted very slightly in his expression. Not a smile. Not yet. But something.
He pulled a wooden practice sword from the rack and threw it at me without warning.
I caught it. Barely—more reflex than skill, my fingers closing around the grip at the last possible second.
"Good reflexes," he said, already moving toward me. "Let's see what else you have."
He attacked.
No warm-up. No demonstration. No are you ready. He just moved—fast, terrifyingly fast—and suddenly I was backpedaling across the training floor with a wooden sword of his own coming straight for my ribs.
I blocked it by accident. The impact traveled all the way up my arms and rattled my teeth.
The vampire students watched in silence. No cheering. No sound at all.
Theron—Professor Blackwell—pressed forward, and I kept moving backward, blocking more by desperation than by anything resembling technique. Every hit I failed to dodge sent shockwaves through my bones. He was stronger than anything I'd ever encountered. Faster than my eyes could comfortably follow.
But he wasn't hitting me full force. I realized that after the fourth exchange. He could. He wasn't.
He was testing me.
I planted my feet and stopped retreating.
He swung again—and I didn't dodge. I twisted sideways and let the swing go past me, and then I shoved my elbow into the space he'd left open.
It connected.
It didn't hurt him. Not even slightly—I might as well have hit a wall. But he stopped.
He looked at my elbow. Looked at my face.
"Interesting," he said quietly.
Then, before I could feel anything like relieved—before I could take a single full breath—every light in the underground chamber went out at once.
Complete dark. Not dim—black, the kind where you genuinely cannot tell if your eyes are open or shut.
I heard movement. Soft, deliberate, circling.
Not one set of footsteps.
Several.
"Professor—" My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "Professor Blackwell, what is—"
"He left," said a voice from the dark. Female. Close.
Laughing quietly came from another direction. Then another.
"Class just got more interesting," the voice continued. "Without the professor watching, we can do whatever we want to the little human."
I gripped the practice sword. Spun slowly. Trying to track the sounds.
The footsteps kept circling.
I couldn't see a single thing.
But they could see me perfectly.