Chapter 4: Mine to Break

Chapter 4: Mine to Break

The days following the first trial were a private, exquisite torture for Seraphina. The memory of the power surge was a phantom limb, an ache for a part of herself she never knew she possessed until it was ripped away. It haunted her waking moments and dominated her dreams. The world, once a kingdom she ruled with absolute authority, now seemed grey and muted. The familiar, immense power of her own Aura felt… inadequate. A pale imitation of that one, glorious, cataclysmic moment.

Her desire had become a singular, obsessive focus: recreating that surge.

This obsession manifested as a constant, predatory surveillance of Kaelen Thorne. She watched him from the shadowed alcoves of the library, her violet eyes tracking his every move as he repaired some archaic piece of pre-Auric technology. She watched him in the dining hall, noting the way he ate with a deliberate, unhurried pace, utterly unfazed by the scornful glares sent his way. She watched him during lectures, her attention drifting from Professor Valerius’s words to the steady, infuriating calm of the Null in the highest tier.

She needed to touch him again. The thought was a constant, gnawing hunger. But how? To approach him, to engineer contact, would be an admission of… something. A need. And Seraphina Vaduva needed nothing and no one. The internal conflict was a grinding of tectonic plates within her soul. Her pride, the bedrock of her identity, was at war with a craving so profound it bordered on madness.

Her inner circle was not blind to this change. The Vaduva Queen, who moved with the certainty of a hurricane, was now hesitant, her cruelty less performative and more distracted. Her gaze was always drifting, always seeking out the one person in the academy who should have been beneath her notice.

It was in a secluded stone courtyard, dappled with the weak afternoon sun, that her followers’ patience finally snapped. Gaius, his face still a mask of simmering resentment from Professor Valerius’s public rebuke, slammed a fist into his palm. A small burst of flame erupted and died, a testament to his frustration.

“I don’t understand it, Sera,” he grumbled, his heavy brow furrowed. “You’re letting him get away with it. Ever since that trial, you just… watch him. It’s like you’ve been bewitched. The entire student body is whispering. They think the Null has gotten into your head.”

A svelte girl named Lyra, whose Aura shimmered like heat haze, added, “It makes you look weak, Seraphina. As if he holds some power over you. He needs to be put back in his place. A sharp, brutal reminder of what he is.”

Seraphina’s gaze remained fixed on the archway across the courtyard, where she’d last seen Kaelen heading. “I will deal with Thorne in my own way, and on my own time,” she said, her voice a low warning.

“With respect,” Gaius pushed, his patience gone, “your way isn’t working. He’s a stain, and you’re letting it spread. Don’t worry. We’ll handle it for you. We’ll fix this.”

Before she could form a reply, he and two of his brutish companions stormed off, their intent as subtle as a club to the face. Seraphina watched them go, a cold dread mixing with her fury. They were going to hurt him. They were going to break her new, fascinating, infuriating toy. And a sudden, violent possessiveness she didn’t know she was capable of flared to life within her.

She found them in a narrow, cobbled alley between the armoury and the alchemy labs. It was a place devoid of sunlight and prying eyes. Gaius had Kaelen shoved against the cold stone wall, Lyra and the other boy flanking him, cutting off any escape. Kaelen’s bag was on the ground, its contents—gears, wires, and old-world schematics—spilled across the grimy cobblestones.

“Think you’re special now, Null?” Gaius sneered, his fist crackling with embers. “Think because you got paired with Lady Vaduva, you’re suddenly one of us? Let me correct that impression.”

Kaelen didn’t struggle. He didn’t plead. He just looked at Gaius, his grey eyes holding that same unblinking calm. It was a look that promised nothing and conceded nothing. It was the look that drove Seraphina mad, and it was having the same effect on Gaius.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you, you worthless piece of—"

Gaius’s fist drew back, wreathed in flame.

“Get your hands off him.”

The voice was ice and venom. It cut through the alley, colder than the stone. All four of them froze. Seraphina stood at the mouth of the alley, a silhouette of terrible grace. The air around her was visibly distorting, the shadows of the eaves twisting and writhing like agitated serpents. Her face was a mask of glacial fury, her violet eyes glowing with a terrifying light.

Gaius’s bravado evaporated, replaced by stammering confusion. “Sera… we were just… teaching him a lesson for you. We were defending your honour.”

“My honour?” she repeated, taking a slow, deliberate step forward. The shadows swirled around her feet. “Did you think I was incapable of defending my own honour? Did you think I needed you to do my dirty work?”

She was in front of Gaius in a flash, her movement too fast to track. Her hand shot out, not wreathed in shadow, but a simple, physical strike. She didn’t slap him. She punched him. Her knuckles, protected by a whisper-thin layer of hardened shadow, connected with his jaw with a sickening crack.

Gaius stumbled back, crashing into the opposite wall, his face a canvas of shock and pain. Lyra and the other boy stared, mouths agape, their own Auras flickering with fear.

Seraphina turned her incandescent gaze on them. “Did I give you permission to touch him?”

They shook their heads, speechless.

“He is my partner for the Trials. His success is my success. His failure is my failure,” she hissed, her voice dangerously low, each word a shard of glass. She looked at Kaelen, still pressed against the wall, his expression unreadable. Then she looked back at her terrified followers.

A cruel, possessive smirk, more terrifying than any rage, spread across her face. “Let me make this perfectly clear. He doesn't belong to you. He isn't yours to punish. He isn't yours to touch.”

She paused, letting the silence stretch, letting the terror sink in.

“He is mine. Mine to study. Mine to use. And if he is to be broken,” she finished, her voice a predatory purr, “then I will be the one to break him.”

The declaration hung in the air, an unbreakable edict. It was a claim of ownership, absolute and final. Gaius, clutching his jaw, simply stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. This wasn't their queen protecting her honour. This was a dragon guarding its hoard. Shaken and terrified, he and the others scrambled to their feet and fled the alley, leaving Seraphina and Kaelen alone in the sudden, echoing silence.

The adrenaline of the fight left her breathless, a familiar high that was already fading. Her right hand throbbed, the thin layer of shadow having done little to protect her knuckles from the impact. A trickle of blood welled up, crimson against her pale skin.

She turned to face Kaelen, ready to unleash a torrent of scorn, to reinforce her claim of ownership with a verbal lashing. But before she could speak, he moved.

He pushed himself off the wall and took a step towards her. His gaze wasn't on her face, but on her injured hand. Gently, without a trace of fear or hesitation, he reached out and took her hand in his. His fingers were surprisingly warm, his touch careful as he turned her hand over to examine the bleeding knuckles.

Seraphina braced for the surge. Her heart hammered in anticipation, her entire being coiling in readiness for that explosive, intoxicating rush of power.

But it didn't come.

Instead of a cataclysm, there was… quiet.

The moment his skin touched hers, the raging storm inside her simply ceased. The constant, grinding pressure of her family's expectations, the roaring chaos of her own volatile Aura, the desperate craving for the power surge, the fury, the pride—it all just… stopped. It was like stepping from a hurricane into a soundproof room. For the first time in her memory, her mind was silent. Peaceful. The tranquility was so profound, so absolute, it was more shocking than the surge had been.

It was a deeper, purer addiction. A terrifying vulnerability she had never imagined. Raw power she understood. This… this was something else entirely. This was a quiet she could drown in.

With a gasp, she snatched her hand back as if she’d been burned, the sudden return of her own inner noise a jarring cacophony. She stared at him, her eyes wide with a new kind of fear. He looked back, his expression still calm, but for the first time, she saw a flicker of something else in his grey eyes. Confusion. And maybe, just maybe, curiosity.

Without another word, she turned and fled, leaving him standing alone amidst the scattered contents of his bag. She ran not from him, but from the terrifying peace he had offered her. The Vaduva heir, the Queen of Aethelgard, was addicted not to the feeling of absolute power, but to the one thing she'd never known: a moment of quiet in her own soul. And the Null was her only source.