Seraphina did not ask who Kael was.
That was how I knew she was dangerous.
A foolish person would have panicked. A clever person would have pretended not to hear. Seraphina Seraphel did neither. She looked at my burned palm, then at the floor, then back at my face as if the name rising from stone had been placed between us like a blade neither of us could safely pick up.
"Your hand first," she said.
A worse mercy than interrogation.
"Saintess priorities are strange."
"Bleeding people do not get to rank my priorities."
"I am not bleeding."
Black fluid surfaced along the ring mark and slid toward my wrist.
Seraphina raised one eyebrow.
"Fine," I said. "I am artistically leaking."
"Sit."
Orders sounded different from her. Not noble. Not military. Not Valdrake. She spoke like someone who had spent years asking pain to obey while everyone called it holiness.
I sat.
