My mother, a woman who bent like a willow in the wind, was suddenly a creature of stone and ice. She wrenched her arm from his grip.
"Our Seraphina has nothing to do with you Pendragons! I told you, she is another man's daughter! If you lay a single hand on her, even your name will not protect you!"
Her voice was shrill, laced with a desperation so raw it was terrifying. I couldn't understand. I looked from my mother's frantic face to the man who blocked my path, this monolith of grim authority.
Unlike me, he showed no surprise. His eyes, the colour of a frozen lake, watched my mother's hysteria with a chilling calm before they slid back to me. That crushing pressure returned, an invisible weight squeezing the air from my lungs, making my bones ache. This was his Aether, his raw power, pressing down on me.
What a cursed day. Jilted by my lover, and now accosted by a madman at my own door.
My mouth was dry. My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The harsh summer sun beat down, making my vision swim at the edges. I was so terrified I thought my knees would buckle. But I would not look away. I glared at the man, channeling every ounce of my fear into defiance. How dare he bring this violence to our home.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the pressure vanished. The corner of his hard mouth tilted up in a semblance of a smile. It was not a pleasant sight.
"If you truly wished to argue she wasn't mine, Hera," he said, his voice a low rumble, "you should have tried to make her look less like me."
My mother flinched as if he'd struck her, her body trembling. It was a bizarre, heartbreaking sight. What in the hells were they talking about?
"Her hair, her eyes, the very signature of her Aether… there is nothing to dispute."
"No! Seraphina is nothing like you! Nothing like a Pendragon—"
"Your denials are meaningless."
Pendragon? The Wardens of the North? The name was a legend, spoken in taverns and throne rooms with equal parts awe and fear. A house of ancient, potent blood that held the savage, monster-infested northern territories of the Wyrmfrost Peaks. Their knights, the dreaded Order of the Hydra, were said to be forged in blizzards and dragon fire. Their Duke, the Lord of Dragon's Tooth Citadel, was whispered to be more monster than man. A family given the right to be addressed as 'Your Grace,' a title reserved for royalty, because their power was a second throne within the kingdom.
Why was that name being spoken here, on my weed-choked lawn?
As I struggled to process it, to convince myself I'd misheard, the man stepped forward and clamped a hand on my shoulder. It wasn't rough, but the gesture was one of absolute ownership. What he said next shattered my world.
"Seraphina Fell is my daughter. I would know my own blood."
"What?"
Daughter? My daughter? My mind felt like it had been filled with boiling water, thoughts dissolving into steam. I turned, bewildered, to my mother.
Her face was the colour of ash. All the blood had drained from it, leaving only stark terror. In that moment, I knew. I knew that what this monster had said was not a lie.
This man… he was my father.
"No," I stammered, shaking my head. "No, wait. Just—wait."
It couldn't be. My creaking mind desperately tried to work, to piece it all together.
"Seraphina is nothing like you, nothing like a Pendragon—"
"Seraphina Fell is my daughter."
The crest on the war carriage flashed in my memory. The coiled, silver hydra. The sigil of House Pendragon.
"Then you… your house… you are…"
The man with the monocle, Valerius, stepped forward. "His Grace, Yuri Pendragon, Lord of the North. That is correct."
"Took you long enough," my father—Yuri—added, his tone laced with scorn.
The title didn't seem a lie. The sheer, predatory arrogance radiating from this man fit the legends perfectly. My heart plummeted into my stomach, but I forced a mask of calm onto my face.
"So you're the Duke Pendragon," I said, my voice surprisingly steady. "And you've come here with the delusion that you are my father?"
"It is not a delusion, girl. It is a fact."
"No," I said, finding strength in certainty. "You're mistaken. That's impossible." The story my mother had told me my entire life, the one I had clung to like a shield, came rushing back. I spat the words at him, the self-proclaimed King of the North. "My father was a feckless wastrel from a fallen line who couldn't decide between my mother and his former lover. A pathetic creature who, in a fit of jealousy, threw another man from a balcony for daring to speak to her."
Yuri's eyebrow twitched. "…What?"
"He was a parasite," I continued, the bitterness of years pouring out of me. "A piece of trash who threatened to abandon her if she didn't procure luxuries his own failing estate couldn't afford. The same scum who waited until the week of their betrothal to declare he had no intention of ever siring a child."
His face was becoming a thundercloud.
"He is the lowest form of filth, who, upon learning my mother was pregnant, demanded she rid herself of the child. When she refused, he abandoned her. She had to run, to hide, just to protect me from him." I was shouting now, past caring. Taking a ragged breath, I delivered the final, most important piece. "And besides all that, I was told he died years ago. A pitiful end in a debtor's prison."
I finished, panting, my chest heaving with emotion. Yuri Pendragon's face was utterly blank, the expression of a man who had just been verbally flayed by the daughter he'd come to claim after twenty years.
Then he spoke. "There's little in your tale I could honestly refute."
"Silence, Valerius," he snapped at his subordinate, who had choked on a laugh.
The Duke's icy eyes bore into me. "Though I can assure you, I am not dead." He cracked his knuckles. "There are many things to correct in that… colourful narrative. But first, an end to this denial." He looked at me, a cruel smirk twisting his lips. "Do you never look in a mirror, girl?"
With a snap of his fingers, Valerius produced a silver hand-mirror and offered it to me. I took it, numbly. My own reflection stared back.
A woman with hair the colour of spilled blood and eyes like chips of ice. A sharp, cold face that was still softened by the last vestiges of youth.
So? It was my face. What of it?
Then Yuri leaned into my field of vision, placing his face right beside my reflection.
Crimson hair, like his.
Icy, silver-blue eyes, like his.
The same sharp, high cheekbones, the same unforgiving set of the mouth.
A gasp escaped my lips. The resemblance was absolute. It was terrifying. It was a truth more powerful than any story, any denial.
"Mother," I whispered, turning to her. "This man… he's really…"
"No, Seraphina! Your father is dead! This is a trick, he's just a look-alike!"
Yuri laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "Are you truly treating your own daughter as a fool, Hera?"
"Yuri!" she screamed his name, a sound of pure agony.
"Ah, she finally says my name. We can reminisce later." He gestured, and the door of the black war carriage swung open. "The game of hide-and-seek is over. It is time to return home."
Before anyone could react, he swept my mother off her feet and carried her toward the carriage. I lunged forward to stop him, but a single glare from him froze me in place. It was not just a look; it was a command, woven with Aether, that rooted my feet to the ground. The paralysis only lifted after he had deposited my mother inside.
A red-haired knight, a woman with a face covered in ritual scars, approached me. She bowed stiffly. "My Lady. I am Commander Andorra. I am to escort you."
Her words were polite. Her tone was a threat. My mother was already their prisoner. I had no choice.
With a hardened expression, I allowed myself to be led to the second carriage. "Where are we going?"
"To Dragon's Tooth Citadel."
The heart of the North. Madness.
I opened my mouth to protest, but the door slammed shut, and with a lurch that threw me back against the seat, the carriage began to move at an impossible speed. The world outside the window blurred into a vortex of screaming colour and fractured reality. They were using a Conduit, a form of travel only the most powerful Aether-wielders could command.
What in the name of the gods was happening to my life?
"This has to be a dream."
I stood at the tall, narrow window of a stone chamber. Outside, the world was white. Jagged, black mountains clawed at a grey sky, their peaks shrouded in a perpetual blizzard. The ground was a blanket of ancient snow, and the trees were skeletal fingers of black ice. It was meant to be the height of summer. Here, it was eternal winter.
It had taken less than four hours to travel from the center of the kingdom to its northernmost edge. I was in Dragon's Tooth Citadel, the heart of House Pendragon. It felt less real than any nightmare.
One day. In one single day, I had been cast aside by my lover, found by a father I thought was a dead monster, and dragged along with my mother to this frozen hell. The only thing I had from my old life was the crumpled, tear-stained Ravenscroft handkerchief still clutched in my fist.
And that man—Yuri Pendragon, the most powerful and feared Duke in the kingdom—was my father. The story I'd heard upon arrival, a frantic, tearful confession from my mother, was even more insane than the lies she'd told me. A story of forbidden love, a terrible misunderstanding, and twenty years of hiding.
I sighed, and a plume of white mist puffed from my lips.
Suddenly, movement below caught my eye. A flash of familiar brown hair. My mother, running from the main keep, sobbing. And behind her, my father, stalking after her.
Instinct took over. I moved to throw open the window, to scream, to do something, before I remembered I was on the third floor of a tower with a sheer drop to the stone courtyard below. Cursing, I spun to run for the door, to find the stairs.
But I was too late. In the courtyard, Yuri caught up to my mother, grabbing her and spinning her around. He held her fast, his arms like iron bands.
I expected her to fight, to scream. But she didn't. Her momentum gone, she looked up at him, her face a mess of tears and fury. Then, she slapped him. A loud, sharp crack that echoed off the stone walls. And again. And again. She beat her fists against his chest, her cries turning from fear to pure, agonized rage.
Yuri didn't even flinch. He just took it, his crimson head bowed, letting her vent her twenty years of pain and fury onto him. He murmured something, his voice too low to hear. Gradually, her blows softened, her cries subsided into shuddering sobs. She sagged against him, her hands creeping up to cup his granite jaw.
Their faces drew closer.
"Ah…" I breathed, and quietly, I closed the window.
I pulled the heavy velvet curtains shut, plunging the room into shadow. My heart was pounding. I felt like an intruder, a witness to something ancient and raw and deeply private that I had no right to see.
That night, my suspicion became a horrifying reality. My mother, smiling with a shy, tear-stained radiance I hadn't seen in years, and Duke Yuri Pendragon, his icy eyes holding a flicker of something that might have been warmth, confirmed it all.
They were still in love. And I, Seraphina Fell, was no more.
My father found me later, staring into the cold fireplace. He stood behind me, his shadow swallowing me whole.
"Your mother cannot lie to her own blood, and neither can you," he said, his voice quiet but resonant with power. "Look at yourself. You are a Pendragon, through and through."
He moved to stand beside me, his gaze fixed on the empty hearth. "She raised you to be soft. A willow, meant to bend. That ends now."
His icy eyes turned to me, and they were filled with a terrifying, blacksmith's purpose.
"I will forge you into an heir. You will be made of iron and ice. Every weakness will be burned away until all that remains is a weapon worthy of my name. Our work begins at dawn."