Chapter 2

The Woman

Her name…, Seraphine, a cruel irony for a girl who fell into hell’s embrace.

She is mortal, but not ordinary. She walks through her days with shadows clinging, eyes a little too restless, lips a little too red.

People whisper that she is strange, that she does not sleep, that sometimes she speaks to herself in church pews when she thinks no one is watching. But the truth is worse: she dreams of him every night.

In those dreams, she always stands in front of the broken altar—the one she later dares to step into in the waking world. The demon appears as if he has always been waiting.

He does not kiss her mouth in those dreams, no, he parts her hair, tilts her head, and bites deep into the same hollow of her neck. The puncture burns, the blood drips, but instead of pain, it fills her with a shuddering, unbearable ecstasy. When she wakes, her neck tingles, sometimes bruised, as if the dream lingers in flesh.

Each time the bite returns, the mark grows darker, until she begins hiding it beneath scarves and high collars. She knows what it means, even before she admits it—he has claimed her. Her soul is a map, and he has already drawn the route.

By the time she stands before the altar in waking life, she is not just curious or desperate. She is obsessed. Half-devoured already. The kiss is only the final surrender, the last act to seal what was decided in her sleep.

Seraphine’s Story

Her father was a demon hunter, sworn to the blade, bound by sacred rites, a man of iron faith who carved his name into the underworld one kill at a time. Her mother… was no innocent.

A demoness, born of fire and shadow, who for one reckless span of nights tasted love instead of hunger. Their union was blasphemy, a fleeting flame, and yet from it came Seraphine.

But curses do not forgive. Her father was torn apart by the very thing he hunted—a demon greater than his strength. Her mother, hunted down by her father’s brethren, met her end beneath steel sanctified with holy water. Neither side claimed their daughter. She grew up among mortals, half-hidden, half-watched, carrying bloodlines that sang to one another like clashing swords.

She grew restless young, plagued with feverish dreams that began at her twelfth year. Always the altar. Always the crimson moon. Always him. The demon who lingered at the edge of her bed as she slept, his form perfect and terrible, whispering her name.

He never kissed her lips in those visions, never spoke of love. No. He would brush her hair aside, exposing the pale column of her neck, and then—sink his teeth into her.

The first bite made her scream awake, hands clawing at her throat. She thought it was a nightmare, until she saw the bruise forming in the mirror, dark like the press of lips, sharp like twin punctures.

Each night it returned. Each night the bite sank deeper. Each night she woke more hollowed out, more trembling with desire she couldn’t name.

Her classmates teased her about the scarves she wore even in summer. They didn’t know she wasn’t hiding acne or a love bite from some boy—they didn’t know her lover came from shadows, and his mark was darker than sin.

And with every dream, she felt herself slipping further. Sometimes, when she looked in the mirror, her pupils swelled wide, swallowing color, as if the demon’s fire lived in her. Sometimes her heartbeat stuttered and she wondered if her blood was still human at all.

By the time she walked to the ruined chapel, it wasn’t a choice anymore. It was compulsion, obsession, destiny. She wasn’t coming to meet him—she was coming to surrender what was already his.

The Demon

He is not the first demon her father hunted. He is not the demon who killed her father. He is something worse: patient. Ancient. A predator who understood that the sweetest meat is marinated in longing.

His horns are black obsidian, curving like crescents, his wings vast and leathery, unfurling like storm clouds. His voice is velvet on one word, thunder on the next. He smells of smoke and iron, of blood spilt on stone.

But his habits are intimate, cruelly tender. He loves to mark her, always in the same spot, the softest part of her throat where pulse betrays fear and desire. He does not kiss her mouth until she begs for it, because he knows anticipation is sharper than teeth.

He speaks in riddles, never lies outright, but always wraps truth in shadows until she doesn’t care what’s real, only that it’s his.

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