Seina is standing near the column where Rowan guided her after the bowing—half-shadow, half-light, the ballroom moving again in careful imitation of normal around her. Music resumes. Laughter returns in controlled, measured bursts. Glasses lift. Conversations pick up as if nothing has changed.
But something in the room… tilts.
Like a balance has been disturbed and everyone is pretending it hasn’t.
Rowan is speaking quietly beside her—something about positioning, about who’s watching too closely, about how long they should stay in one place—but Seina isn’t listening anymore.
Because there—
A flicker.
Movement where there shouldn’t be.
Not in the center of the floor. Not under the chandeliers where everything is meant to be seen. At the edge of the room instead, near one of the side exits partially hidden by a marble column and a stretch of dark curtain.
Seina’s breath stops.
Faylan stands there.
Not framed by light.
Not presented.
Just… there.
As if she belongs in the space between the ballroom and whatever comes after it.
For a second, Seina doesn’t move.
She just looks.
Faylan’s hair is the first thing that hits her—dark brown, brighter than Seina remembers, pulled back cleanly from her face in a way that makes her look older somehow. Sharper. More defined. It catches the low light from the wall lights and holds it differently, less soft, more deliberate.
Her dress is dark—black threaded through with deep crimson that doesn’t shine so much as absorb the light around it. The cut is structured, almost severe at the shoulders before falling into clean lines down her body, nothing flowing or loose or uncertain. It isn’t a gown meant to be admired.
It’s a gown meant to stand in a room full of predators and not be mistaken for prey.
Her posture is wrong.
That’s what really breaks something in Seina’s chest.
Faylan has always stood like she was bracing for the next thing, even when she tried not to show it. Even when she laughed. Even when she pretended everything was fine. There had always been a tension in her shoulders, a readiness to move, to react, to protect.
That tension is gone.
Not replaced with softness.
Replaced with control.
She stands still in a way Seina has never seen before, weight balanced evenly, shoulders relaxed but not loose, hands resting at her sides like she has taught them not to fidget. Like she has trained herself out of small human habits that used to give everything away.
She looks—
Seina doesn’t have a word for it.
Not safe.
Not trapped.
Something in between.
Cassius stands beside her.
Not in front.
Not looming.
Beside.
He’s dressed in Sanguis black and deep red, the cut of his coat sharp and precise, the faint gleam of the crimson chalice at his chest catching the light when he shifts. His posture mirrors Faylan’s in a way that makes Seina’s stomach twist—calm, controlled, completely aware of the room without reacting to it.
They look—
Aligned.
The realization hits too fast.
Seina doesn’t breathe.
Then Faylan looks up.
Their eyes meet.
Everything else disappears.
The ballroom, the music, the watching crowd, the weight of the Houses—gone. Reduced to nothing more than distant noise behind the sudden, violent clarity of recognition.
Faylan’s composure cracks.
Just slightly.
A flicker—shock, relief, something that looks dangerously close to pain. It flashes across her face so quickly Seina almost thinks she imagined it.
But she didn’t.
Because for that single heartbeat—
That was her sister.
Then Cassius says something low, too quiet for Seina to hear.
His hand doesn’t grab Faylan. Doesn’t restrain her. It just brushes lightly against her wrist.
Faylan stills.
The flicker vanishes.
Her face settles back into that controlled, careful calm, like she has taken everything that rose in her and locked it down before it could escape.
Seina’s chest tightens so hard it almost feels like something inside her is trying to break open.
No.
No, no, no—
Faylan turns.
Not abruptly.
Not like she’s fleeing.
She just… steps away from the ballroom.
Through the side exit.
Like leaving is a decision she has already made.
Seina moves before she thinks.
Her hand slips from Rowan’s arm without warning, the fabric of his sleeve dragging against her gloves as she pulls away.
“Seina—”
She doesn’t stop.
The ballroom blurs as she crosses it, the polished floor sliding under her heels faster than it should, people shifting instinctively out of her path without realizing why. Someone says something behind her—Rowan again, sharper this time—but she doesn’t hear the words.
She only sees the doorway.
The dark stretch of hall beyond it.
And Faylan disappearing into it.
The music cuts off abruptly as the doors close behind her, swallowed by heavy wood and distance. The hallway is cooler, quieter, lined with tall windows and low-burning sconces that cast long shadows across pale stone floors. The air feels thinner here, stripped of the ballroom’s heavy perfume and layered voices.
Faylan is halfway down the hall.
She doesn’t turn back immediately.
That hurts more than anything.
Seina’s voice breaks before she can stop it.
“Don’t walk away from me.”
The words echo.
Too loud in the quiet.
Too sharp.
Faylan stops.
For one second, she doesn’t move.
Then she turns.
Slowly.
Facing her.
Cassius steps into the hallway a moment later, the door closing softly behind him as if the ballroom has sealed itself away. His presence fills the space without noise, positioning himself near Faylan without touching her.
Rowan appears behind Seina just as quickly, his footsteps controlled but fast enough that she knows he didn’t hesitate.
And somewhere in the shadow near the doorway, Caspian lingers, watching like this is exactly the kind of disaster he was hoping for.
But none of them matter.
Not really.
Because Seina is standing there in a dark silver dress she barely recognizes, breath shaking in a body that doesn’t need air, staring at her sister—
Alive.
Changed.
And too calm.
The silence stretches.
It feels like standing on the edge of something that is about to break.
Seina takes one step forward.
Then another.
Her voice comes out tighter now, thinner than she wants it to be.
“Where have you been.”
The question moves down the hallway like something thrown.
Faylan does not flinch.
That is the first thing Seina notices, and it hurts in a way she doesn’t know what to do with. Her sister doesn’t flinch, doesn’t rush forward, doesn’t break into the same panic clawing its way up Seina’s throat. She only stands there beneath the low amber light of the wall lights, dark brown hair pinned away from her face, black and crimson fabric falling around her like she was sewn into the shape of this place.
For one second, no one answers.
Faylan’s eyes stay on Seina.
They are still familiar. That might be the worst part. The same bright green, the same sharpness, the same way they seem to hold more feeling than her face is willing to show. But the rest of her is different. Not unfeeling. Not cold.
Controlled.
Built like a wall around every break.
“Safe,” Faylan says.
Seina stares at her.
The answer is so wrong, so small compared to the size of the question, that for a moment she can’t speak.
Then her mouth twists.
“Safe.”
Faylan’s jaw tightens faintly.
“Yes.”
Seina takes another step forward. Rowan shifts behind her, but he doesn’t stop her. Maybe he knows better. Maybe he can feel through whatever strange tether binds them that touching her right now would only make her angrier.
“That’s not what I asked,” Seina says, her voice sharper now. “I asked where you’ve been.”
Faylan holds her gaze, and for the first time, something like pain moves behind the calm. It is brief. Contained. But there.
“With Cassius,” she says.
Cassius’s name lands between them like a third sister neither of them wanted.
Seina’s eyes flick toward him for half a second. He stands just behind Faylan’s shoulder, not crowding her, not claiming the space in any obvious way, but present enough that every inch of him matters. House Sanguis sits on him like a crown no one can see. Black coat, red detail, that awful composed stillness. He does not look guilty. He does not look sorry.
He looks ready.
Seina hates him immediately for that.
Her gaze snaps back to Faylan.
“With Cassius,” she repeats, and there’s a laugh tangled in the words now, thin and ugly. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”
Faylan’s hands remain at her sides, but Seina notices the smallest movement of her fingers against the fabric of her dress. A twitch, stopped almost before it begins. The old Faylan would have reached for her by now. Would have crossed the hallway and grabbed her face and said something frantic and half-rude and too honest.
This Faylan stays where she is.
“I couldn’t come back the way you wanted me to,” Faylan says.
The sentence is careful.
Too careful.
Seina’s throat tightens.
“You don’t know what I wanted.”
Faylan’s expression shifts.
“I know you wanted me home.”
The softness in that almost breaks through. Almost. For one awful second, Seina sees her sister under all that control, the girl who used to roll her eyes too hard when she was scared, the girl who said too much when she was angry because silence felt like losing.
Then Faylan locks it down again.
And Seina’s anger comes back hot enough to burn through the ache.
“Then why weren’t you?” she asks. “Why didn’t you send a message? Why didn’t you tell Dad? Why did I have to chase rumors and bleed people in alleys just to find out if my own sister was still alive?”
Faylan’s eyes sharpen at that.
Not judgment.
Alarm.
“You what?”
Seina steps closer.
The sound of her heels against the stone is too clear in the hall. Every step feels like it belongs to someone else, someone colder and prettier and more dangerous than the girl who used to stand barefoot in the kitchen waiting for Faylan to come downstairs.
“You heard me.”
Rowan says her name softly behind her.
Not warning.
Not yet.
Seina ignores him.
Faylan’s gaze flicks past her, briefly, toward Rowan. Not accusing. Assessing. Like she’s seeing a new shape around her sister and trying to understand how much of it is danger, how much is choice, and how much is survival.
That look makes Seina want to scream.
“No,” she says, voice cracking on the single word. “Don’t look at him. Look at me.”
Faylan does.
Immediately.
The obedience of it hurts too. Not because Faylan owes it to her. Because for a second it proves her sister is still there.
Seina’s breath shudders in her chest by habit alone.
“I looked for you,” she says, and this time the anger has something wet under it, something harder to hold back. “I looked for you for two months.”
Faylan’s face tightens.
“I know.”
Seina freezes.
The hallway seems to narrow around those words.
“You know.”
Faylan swallows, and it is the first human thing about her body Seina has noticed since entering the hall. “Caspian told me you were asking questions.”
A cold laugh slips out of Seina before she can stop it.
“Caspian told you.” She turns her head just enough to see him in the edge of her vision. He remains near the doorway, elegant and quiet, his dark Nocturne clothing blending into the shadows as if he was born out of them. “Of course he did.”
Caspian’s mouth curves faintly.
He says nothing.
Smart.
Seina looks back at Faylan, and the laugh dies.
“You knew I was looking for you,” she says. “And you stayed here.”
Faylan’s eyes close for half a second.
When they open again, the wall is back.
“I didn’t stay because I didn’t care.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I can give you in this hallway.”
Seina stares at her sister like she’s looking at a stranger wearing someone beloved.
That is what finally makes Faylan’s composure falter again.
Not much.
Just enough for her voice to lower.
“There are things happening with me that aren’t simple,” Faylan says. “Things I barely understand myself.”
Seina gestures sharply toward Cassius. “But he does?”
Cassius does not move.
Faylan does.
Only slightly, but Seina sees it. Faylan shifts half a step, not in front of him exactly, but enough that the angle of her body changes between Seina’s anger and Cassius’s stillness.
Protective.
Seina goes cold.
The sight of it opens a new wound before she can brace for it.
“Oh,” she says softly.
Faylan catches it immediately. Her face changes. “Seina—”
“No.” Seina shakes her head once, quick and sharp. “No, that’s—wow.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“You don’t know what I think.”
“I know that look.”
That shuts Seina up for half a breath.
Because Faylan does.
Or she did.
Maybe that’s the part that hurts most, that even changed like this, even dressed in another House’s colors with another person standing beside her like gravity, Faylan can still read her.
Faylan takes one careful step forward.
Not enough to close the distance.
Enough to try.
“I’m not choosing him over you.”
The words come out quiet.
Seina wants to believe them so badly it makes her furious.
“Then why does it look like you are?”
Faylan stops.
There it is.
The question neither of them can soften.
The hall goes very still. Even Caspian’s expression loses some of its amusement, though not enough to be called regret. Rowan stands behind Seina like a quiet line of force, and Cassius remains beside Faylan like a wall made of patience and blood.
Faylan’s gaze drops for one second to the stone floor between them.
When she looks back up, her voice is controlled again.
Too controlled.
“Because sometimes staying alive looks ugly from the outside.”
The sentence lands directly in Seina’s chest.
For a moment, neither sister moves.
Then Seina’s face crumples—not fully, not into tears yet, but enough that the anger underneath it becomes visible.
“You should have told me,” she says. “You should have let me know you were alive.”
Faylan’s mouth parts.
No answer comes at first.
And that silence is worse than every answer she could have given.
Seina laughs once, broken and sharp, and looks away because if she keeps looking at Faylan, she might fold.
“Great,” she whispers. “So that’s the part you don’t have a reason for.”
Faylan’s control cracks then.
Just a little.
Her voice, when it comes, is lower and rougher.
“I have reasons. None of them are good enough.”
Seina looks back at her.
The hallway feels colder.
Faylan takes another step forward, and this time Cassius shifts behind her, not stopping her, only aware. Seina notices that too. She notices everything now. The way Faylan moves just a bit faster than a normal human should. The way her balance is unnervingly precise. The way her breathing remains calm even while her eyes look wounded.
Still human.
But not untouched by what she has survived.
“I wanted to come back,” Faylan says, each word chosen with visible effort. “I need you to hear that.”
Seina’s lips tremble once before she forces them still.
“But you didn’t.”
“No,” Faylan says.
She doesn’t defend it.
Doesn’t decorate it.
Just takes the blade and holds it.
“No,” she repeats. “I didn’t.”
Something in Seina gives way then, not loudly yet, not fully, but enough that her eyes burn and her hands curl into fists at her sides.
The ballroom music swells behind the doors, graceful and distant and cruelly untouched by any of this.
Seina looks at her sister—the one she found, the one who survived, the one standing in front of her with love locked behind a wall—and feels the first tear slip free before she can stop it.
“You don’t get to stand there and sound calm,” she says.
Faylan’s face tightens.
Seina’s voice rises, the grief finally catching fire.
“You don’t get to be calm about this.”
The words tear out of Seina so sharply they seem to split the hallway in two.
For one suspended moment, nothing moves.
Not Faylan.
Not Cassius.
Not Rowan.
Not even Caspian.
The music behind the doors continues, muffled and elegant, a cruel little reminder that the rest of the world is still dancing while Seina stands in the hallway with her whole life cracked open in front of her. The chandeliers inside the ballroom throw thin lines of gold beneath the door, and those lines stretch across the stone floor like bars between one world and another.
Faylan stands on the other side of them.
Alive.
Beautiful.
Wrong in the way only survival can make a person wrong.
Her dark brown hair is pinned back from her face, a few loose strands glowing pale against the dark line of her throat. The black and crimson dress she wears makes her look like she belongs to the House behind her—not owned by it, not swallowed by it, but shaped by it somehow. The structured shoulders, the clean fall of the fabric, the controlled way she holds herself, all of it makes Seina feel like she is looking at a version of her sister who learned how to become untouchable because touching anything hurt too much.
And that might be the worst part.
Because Seina wants to touch her.
She wants to grab her and shake her and hug her and scream into her shoulder and ask why and how and when did you stop coming home to me?
Instead, she cries.
She hates it immediately.
The first tear slips down her cheek without permission, hot against skin that feels too cold for it. She wipes it away with the heel of her gloved hand so fast it almost looks angry, because it is angry. Everything in her is angry. The hallway, the dress, the blood gem at her throat, the fact that Faylan is here and not in some locked room begging to be rescued. The fact that Faylan looks like she has had time to become someone else while Seina has spent two months trying not to fall apart in pieces sharp enough to cut anyone who came close.
Faylan’s face changes when she sees the tear.
Not much.
But Seina sees it.
A tiny fracture through the wall. A flash of grief so deep it makes her look younger for half a second, like the girl Seina remembers is still trapped somewhere behind all that control, pounding her fists against the inside of her ribs.
Then Faylan steadies herself.
Again.
Seina almost laughs from the pain of it.
“No,” she says, shaking her head once. Her voice is already breaking, and she hates that too. “Don’t do that.”
Faylan’s lips part. “Seina—”
“Don’t.” Seina’s voice rises. “Don’t say my name like that and then stand there like you’re fine.”
“I’m not fine.”
The answer comes quickly.
Too quickly.
And it should help.
It doesn’t.
Because Faylan says it like a fact, not a wound. Like she has learned to name pain without letting it show its teeth.
Seina takes one step forward, the silver fabric of her dress whispering around her legs. Her hands curl at her sides, black gloves creasing over her fingers, hiding the tremor but not stopping it.
“I died.”
The words come out quiet at first.
So quiet they barely belong to the hallway.
Faylan goes still.
Everything goes still.
Rowan’s presence changes behind Seina, a tightening in the air more than movement. Cassius’s attention sharpens at Faylan’s side. Even Caspian’s expression shifts, his amusement thinning into something harder to read.
Seina doesn’t care.
She looks only at Faylan.
“I died,” she says again, louder this time, and the second saying of it breaks something loose in her throat. “I was on the ground, and there was blood everywhere, and I couldn’t breathe. I remember trying to understand what happened, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t even think straight. Everything was wrong and loud and far away, and Rowan—”
Her voice snaps on his name.
Not because she means it to.
Because the memory is too close.
Rowan’s hands beneath her head. Rowan’s voice saying her name like the world had narrowed to that one sound. Rowan’s face above hers, stripped of every joke and every careful mask, terrified in a way she hadn’t understood until after waking without a heartbeat.
Seina presses the heel of her hand hard against her mouth for a second, trying to force the sob back down.
It doesn’t work.
It comes anyway, ugly and small and furious.
“I remember him saying my name,” she says, voice shaking now. “I remember him holding me like I was already gone. And I remember knowing that something was ending, Faylan. I knew. I could feel it. I could feel myself leaving.”
Faylan’s eyes shine.
Her mouth trembles once before she presses it into a line.
Seina sees it and cries harder.
“Don’t stand there and swallow it. Don’t you dare swallow it like that.” Her voice rises, raw now, no elegance left in it, nothing ball-worthy, nothing controlled. “I died, and you weren't there,”
Faylan flinches.
A real one this time.
Seina sees it hit and keeps going because she has held this inside too long, because if she stops now she will never get it out, because part of her wants to make Faylan hurt the way she hurt when she woke up and reached for a heartbeat that wasn’t there.
“I woke up in a room I didn’t know,” Seina says. “I woke up and everything was too loud. I could hear blood moving under people’s skin. I could smell it. I could smell Rowan, and Emerson, and my own blood, and I wanted it.”
Her voice breaks again, cracking around the shame of it.
“I wanted blood before I even understood what I was.”
Faylan’s expression crumples for half a second.
Seina points to her own chest, fingers pressing into the dark silver fabric.
“And then I put my hand here.”
She stops.
The hallway waits.
Her eyes burn so badly she can barely see Faylan through the blur.
“I put my hand here,” she whispers, “and there was nothing.”
The word falls hard.
Nothing.
No pulse. No beat. No small human proof that she still belonged to herself.
Seina presses harder against her chest, as if some desperate part of her still thinks she can force a heartbeat to answer if she just digs deep enough.
“There was nothing,” she repeats, and now the tears are falling freely, hot and furious and impossible to stop. “Do you know what that feels like? To wake up and reach for yourself and not find anything there?”
Faylan’s hand lifts slightly.
Not reaching all the way.
Just twitching, like instinct tried to move before her control caught it.
Seina sees that too.
It destroys her.
“I had to learn how to drink blood,” Seina says, louder again, rage rising to cover the grief before it drowns her. “I had to learn how not to hurt people when their heartbeats got too loud. I had to wear this—” She yanks lightly at the blood gem at her throat, the stone flashing dark red beneath the hallway light. “Because the stupid sun will burn me. I had to listen to people talk about me like I was a problem. A mystery. A weapon. A newborn. A hybrid. A mistake.”
“You are not a mistake,” Faylan says.
The words come fast.
Fierce.
Too fierce to be calm.
Seina freezes for half a second.
Because there she is.
Faylan.
Not the wall. Not the House-shaped version. Her sister.
Then Faylan inhales slowly, visibly pulling herself back.
And Seina’s hope twists into anger again.
“Then why did I feel like one?” she asks.
Faylan’s face twists with pain.
Seina steps closer, voice rising again, shaking with every word.
“I looked for you. I looked for you when I should have been learning how to survive, because I thought if I found you, everything would make sense. I thought you were trapped somewhere. I thought someone had you. I thought you were hurt.”
Her laugh is broken and bitter.
“I thought maybe you needed me.”
Faylan closes her eyes.
That is the wrong thing to do.
Seina’s voice cracks louder.
“No, look at me.”
Faylan opens her eyes.
Immediately.
And Seina hates how much that still matters.
“I needed you,” Seina says, and the words come out smaller now, more wounded than angry. “I needed you, and you were here. You were in his house, standing beside him, and I was out there chasing whispers like a ghost no one wanted to tell the truth to.”
Faylan’s breathing changes. A tiny hitch. A small human betrayal.
“I wanted to tell you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t.”
“You keep saying that,” Seina snaps. “Everyone keeps saying that. Couldn’t. Had to. Survived. Bond. House. Blood. It’s all just words for the same thing.”
Faylan’s voice is quiet. “What thing?”
Seina points toward Cassius, toward the red and black of House Sanguis, toward the ballroom doors, toward the whole glittering vampire world waiting on the other side.
“You chose this.”
The words hit Faylan hard enough that her face goes pale beneath the hallway light.
Cassius shifts.
Not much.
Enough.
Rowan steps slightly closer behind Seina at the same time, the air tightening between him and Cassius before either of them speaks. Seina doesn’t turn around, but she feels it—the two of them becoming sharper at the edges, both ready to protect, both waiting to see if the other becomes the reason.
Faylan sees the movement too.
Her eyes flick briefly toward Cassius.
Too brief.
Too telling.
Seina catches it.
A fresh wave of hurt rises so fast she nearly chokes on it.
“Oh my God,” she whispers.
Faylan looks back at her. “Seina—”
“No.” The word comes out ragged. “No, don’t. Don’t look at him like that and then tell me you didn’t choose this.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
“Then make it simple!” Seina cry-yells, the sound tearing through the hall so loudly that someone behind the ballroom doors must hear, but she doesn’t care. “For once, just say something that doesn’t sound like you learned it from them.”
Faylan’s jaw tightens.
Not in anger.
In restraint.
That restraint is killing her. Seina can see it now. Faylan is holding herself together with both hands inside her own body, and the effort is carving lines into her that weren’t there before.
Still, she doesn’t break.
“I’m trying to keep you safe,” Faylan says.
Seina’s laugh comes out wet and furious.
“I’m already dead.”
Faylan recoils.
Seina regrets it instantly.
Then doesn’t.
Then does again.
That is the worst part—how many feelings can exist in the same wound.
“You don’t get to decide what keeps me safe anymore,” Seina says. “You weren’t there.”
The words are cruel.
True.
Cruel because they are true.
Faylan lowers her gaze for half a second, and this time when she looks up again, there is a tear caught along her lower lashes. It does not fall yet. It just stays there, trembling, and somehow that is worse.
“I know,” Faylan whispers.
Seina shakes her head quickly, tears spilling again.
“No. Stop. Stop saying you know like that fixes anything.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then stop saying it.”
Faylan nods once, too small, too controlled.
That makes Seina sob again.
Because Faylan is agreeing like she deserves it.
And maybe she does.
And maybe she doesn’t.
And Seina hates that she doesn’t know anymore.
The hallway feels too long. Too cold. Too full of men who are not family standing close enough to hear a wound that should have belonged only to sisters.
Seina wipes at her cheeks again, smearing tears across her gloves.
“And Dad,” she says, voice breaking in a new place.
Faylan’s expression changes before the sentence is even finished.
Seina sees the fear there.
Good.
Let her be afraid of this part.
“Dad looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks,” Seina says. “He looks down the street like one of us might just show up if he waits long enough. I saw him, Faylan. I saw him and I couldn’t even cross the street.”
Faylan’s tear finally falls.
It slides down her cheek silently, cutting through all that careful composure like proof.
Seina’s voice drops, trembling.
“I stood there and watched him talk to someone and act normal. He was trying so hard. And I didn’t go to him because Rowan said I wasn’t ready to come home yet, and the worst part is I think he was right.”
Rowan is painfully still behind her.
Faylan’s gaze flicks past Seina for a fraction of a second, not angry at him, not grateful either. Understanding, maybe. Or pain looking for somewhere else to land.
Seina steps closer again.
“Dad thinks we’re both gone,” she says. “Maybe not dead. Maybe not exactly. But gone. And you were here with them.”
Faylan’s voice shakes. “I never wanted him to hurt.”
“But he does.”
“I know.”
Seina’s expression crumples.
Faylan catches herself too late.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry. I know you hate when I say it, but I do. I know he’s hurting. I know you’re hurting.”
“No, you don’t.” Seina’s voice rises again, tears thick in every word. “You don’t get to know from here. You don’t get to know from a ballroom full of vampires and a hallway with him standing beside you like he’s—”
She cuts herself off.
Too late.
Faylan hears it.
Cassius hears it.
Everyone does.
Faylan’s face goes very still.
“Like he’s what?” she asks softly.
Seina’s mouth trembles.
She hates the next words before she says them.
But they come anyway.
“Like he’s family now.”
The silence after that is brutal.
Faylan’s face breaks.
Not fully.
But enough that the wall splinters and the girl behind it looks out, devastated.
Seina is crying too hard now to stop herself.
“I’m your family, Faylan.” Her voice cracks open on the name. “Me. Dad. Emerson. Rowan. We’re your family. Not these people. Not House Sanguis. Not him.”
Faylan’s hand presses flat against her own stomach, fingers curling into the fabric of her crimson-black dress.
“Don’t,” she whispers.
The plea is so small that it almost doesn’t belong to her.
Seina’s face twists.
“Don’t what? Don’t remind you?”
Faylan’s breathing shakes once.
“Don’t make it sound like I forgot.”
“Then why does it feel like you did?”
That question empties the hall.
Faylan looks at her, and for the first time tonight, the control doesn’t come back fast enough to hide everything. Seina sees it all—guilt, exhaustion, love, fear, the terrible loneliness of having survived something no one else in her family can understand yet.
“I didn’t forget,” Faylan says, and now her voice is trembling too. “I remembered too much.”
Seina goes still.
Faylan takes one step forward.
Cassius does not stop her.
“I remembered home until I couldn’t breathe,” Faylan says. “I remembered Dad making breakfast and pretending not to listen when we argued. I remembered your voice from the hallway. I remembered Emerson before he came back, and then after, and all the things I hadn’t gotten to say to him yet. I remembered everything.”
Her tear slips again, another one following it.
But she keeps her voice controlled by force.
Not because she isn’t breaking.
Because if she breaks completely, she may never stop.
“I had to put it away,” Faylan says. “Not because I didn’t love you. Because I did. Because if I let myself think about home for too long, I would have run back before my body could survive it.”
Seina shakes her head, but there is less force in it now.
“You should have run back.”
“I would have died.”
The words come out hard.
Clear.
Ugly.
Seina freezes.
Faylan’s face is pale, her eyes wet, her mouth trembling around the truth she clearly did not want to say like this.
“I would have died,” Faylan repeats, softer now. “Maybe not that night. Maybe not the next. But soon. Something in my blood was already breaking me open, and Cassius—”
Her gaze flicks toward him again.
This time, Seina is too gutted to be angry about it.
“Cassius what,” she whispers.
Faylan looks back at her.
“He gave it somewhere to go.”
The answer is not enough.
But it is the first one that sounds like truth stripped bare.
Seina’s tears slow, not because she is finished crying, but because the shape of the hurt has changed.
“He’s keeping you alive,” she says.
Faylan nods once.
“Yes.”
“And you couldn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t know how to tell you without making it sound like I chose him over you.”
Seina laughs once, broken and quiet.
“Well.”
Faylan flinches.
For a moment, neither sister speaks. The hallway holds them there, close enough now that Seina can see the places Faylan’s makeup has begun to give way at the edges of her eyes, the small uneven tremor in her lower lip, the way one hand remains pressed against her own body like she is keeping herself from physically reaching.
“I needed you,” Seina says again.
This time it isn’t a weapon.
It is a child’s truth.
Faylan makes a small sound.
Not a sob.
Something she stops before it can become one.
“I know,” she says, and the words are different now. Not distant. Not controlled. Just ruined. “I know, Seina.”
Seina’s mouth twists.
“I woke up and I needed you to tell me I was still me.”
Faylan’s face collapses.
All the careful lines break for one breath, and she looks so young, so sorry, so Faylan, that Seina nearly reaches for her.
“I would have,” Faylan whispers. “If I had been there, I would have held your face and told you until you believed me.”
That does it.
Seina sobs.
Not gracefully. Not softly. Not in a way that belongs in a hallway outside a vampire ball. It comes from somewhere deep and ugly, from the part of her that has been trying to act like surviving was enough.
Faylan moves then.
No more stopping herself.
No more calculated distance.
She crosses the last space between them and reaches for Seina’s face with both hands.
Seina stiffens at first.
Not because she doesn’t want it.
Because wanting it hurts.
Faylan’s hands are warm.
Human-warm.
Warm in a way Seina has not been since the night she died.
That single fact undoes her more violently than anything else.
Faylan’s thumbs brush beneath her eyes, wiping tears that keep coming anyway, and her own tears fall silently now, slipping down her cheeks while she tries to hold Seina together with hands that tremble despite every wall she built.
“You are still you,” Faylan says.
Seina shakes her head, crying too hard to believe it.
“You are,” Faylan insists, voice breaking at last. “You are still my sister. You are still Seina. I don’t care what your heart does or doesn’t do. I don’t care what they call you. I don’t care what changed. I know you.”
Seina grips Faylan’s wrists.
Not to pull her away.
To hold her there.
Faylan’s pulse beats beneath her fingers.
Warm.
Alive.
Human.
Seina feels it and sobs harder, because there was a time when that sound would have been ordinary.
Now it is temptation.
Now it is grief.
Now it is proof that Faylan is alive in a way Seina is not.
Faylan feels the shift in her grip.
She doesn’t pull away.
That makes Seina’s face twist with horror.
“Don’t,” Seina chokes out.
Faylan’s brow furrows through tears.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t trust me that much.”
The words break both of them.
Faylan’s hands tighten gently on her face.
“I trust you because you are my family.”
Seina lets out another broken sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
“You’re not allowed to use my line against me.”
“I learned from you.”
For one tiny, fragile second, something almost like their old rhythm flickers between them.
Almost.
Then it hurts again.
Because it cannot stay.
Because the hallway is still full of vampires and House politics and bonds and men who have become necessary to their survival in ways neither sister knows how to forgive yet.
Faylan lowers her forehead until it nearly touches Seina’s, stopping just short.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I am so sorry I wasn’t there.”
Seina closes her eyes.
For one breath, she lets herself lean into her sister’s hands.
Just one.
It feels like coming home and realizing the house burned while you were away.
Then Caspian’s voice slips through the hallway.
“Alive is such a flexible word lately.”
The moment shatters so completely Seina almost feels it in her bones.
Faylan’s hands fall from her face.
Cassius turns toward Caspian with terrifying stillness, no visible anger, only the kind of attention that makes anger look childish.
Rowan steps forward, putting himself closer to Seina without touching her, his voice low enough to make the sconces seem colder.
“Speak again,” he says, “and I’ll remove your tongue before anyone has time to call it rude.”
Caspian’s smile remains faint, but his eyes are not amused now.
Not fully.
“Careful,” he says. “Everyone is very attached to what they think they own tonight.”
Cassius moves one step.
Only one.
Caspian’s attention slides to him, and the air between them darkens in a way that feels more like shadow than mood.
“Enough,” Faylan says.
Her voice is not loud.
It does not need to be.
Everyone stops.
Even Caspian.
Seina looks at her sister.
The wall is coming back.
She sees it happen in real time—the tears still on Faylan’s face, the pain still there, but the structure returning around it. Shoulders steadying. Breath smoothing. Eyes clearing not because the feeling is gone, but because Faylan has decided it has to wait.
That may be the cruelest thing Seina has seen all night.
Faylan wipes once beneath her own eyes with careful fingers, then looks at Seina with so much love contained behind so much control that it hurts to be the person receiving it.
“This isn’t the place,” Faylan says softly.
Seina laughs, broken and exhausted.
“Apparently nowhere is.”
Faylan’s expression tightens.
She doesn’t deny it.
That silence says enough.
For one fragile second, Seina thinks Faylan might reach for her again anyway.
She doesn’t.
Maybe she can’t.
Maybe both of them have already used up all the closeness this hallway will allow before the world comes to collect them again.
The ballroom music swells behind the doors, elegant and untouched.
Faylan stands in front of her, alive and warm and changed, and Seina realizes with a fresh, quiet devastation that finding her sister did not bring her back.
Not all the way.
Maybe not even close.