Chapter 20: The Price of Surrender
The city moved outside his window, but inside the Fenix tower, time felt still.
Kian stood at the far end of his office, bathed in the glow of twilight filtering through floor-to-ceiling windows. The sun was setting behind the skyline, bleeding gold and bruised purple into the clouds. But he didn't see any of it. Not really. His reflection stared back at him in the glass—jaw tight, fingers twitching at his sides, like even his own body no longer knew what to do with the chaos uncoiling within him.
Her last message had come over an hour ago. Only one line.
You're still thinking about me.
It wasn't a question. She never asked. She knew. That was the difference. She never waited to be acknowledged—Seraphine existed like a fact. Like gravity. Undeniable and everywhere.
He turned from the window, unable to stay still. He needed something to ground him, to distract from the ache that curled around his ribs. But even the silence of the room conspired with her memory. The scent of her still clung to his shirt from two nights ago—subtle, but impossible to ignore. A ghost of jasmine and something darker. Something like rain on asphalt.
Kian walked to his desk and picked up his phone for the fifth time in as many minutes. No new messages.
The emptiness that followed the read screen was not new. It was becoming a pattern—her giving just enough, never too much. Always dancing just out of reach. But it wasn't rejection.
It was control. Beautiful, infuriating control. Not the kind he wielded with contracts and empires—but with glances, with silences, with the echo of her voice lodged in the corners of his thoughts.
He opened their conversation thread, thumb hovering above the keyboard before he typed, slowly.
Kian:What are you doing to me, Seraphine?
The message sat there, sent. Blue ticks. No response.
A minute passed. Then two.
He leaned back in his leather chair, the creak of it loud in the quiet room. He stared up at the ceiling as if her answer might be written in the plaster. His chest tightened. The kind of ache that didn't come from heartbreak—but from anticipation. From the knowledge that he'd already begun to fall, not off a cliff, but into her.
A soft buzz. A new message.
Seraphine:The same thing the moon does to the tide, Kian. I pull, you follow.
He laughed, but there was no humor in it. Only surrender. God, she didn't even have to try.
He didn't reply right away. He just sat there, fingers drumming against the wood of the desk, pulse loud in his ears. Every time her name was spoken, every time she texted—hell, even when someone mentioned a color that reminded him of her—his heart betrayed him. Always faster. Always louder.
He was a man who had won wars, broken alliances, and built his empire from fire and frost.
But he was losing to her. Willingly. Almost eagerly.
He pressed the phone to his lips, closed his eyes.
"You'll never need to raise your voice, Seraphine," he whispered, as if she could hear him through the glass, through the city, through the silence.
Seraphine:Your voice trembles when you say my name, doesn't it?
His breath caught. Was she watching him? No. But it felt like she was always there, curled up in the quietest corners of his being.
He didn't answer.
Instead, he rose again, this time not pacing but walking with purpose. Past the glass wall, through the hallway, into the hidden room no one entered without his permission. A private sanctuary. No suits, no guards, no empire.
Just her.
Or the illusion of her.
The sketch she left behind was still pinned on the wall. One of her designs—structured, elegant, fierce. Like her. Like armor and art fused together. A vision stitched in ink and defiance.
He touched the edge of the paper.
She had once stood in this room, looking at him like she knew every flaw he carried. Not judging them. Not pitying them. Just… seeing.
And that terrified him more than any threat ever could.
Another buzz.
Seraphine:Tell me, Kian. When did you last feel this helpless?
He stared at the screen.
Kian:I don't feel helpless.
A pause. A heartbeat.
Seraphine:Of course you do. That's why your hands won't stay still. That's why your breath falters when you read my name. That's why you haven't deleted these messages.
Because I've already entered you. Like a story you didn't choose, but one you now can't stop reading.
He exhaled, slow. Controlled. And yet every syllable of her words lodged themselves beneath his skin.
She didn't need his surrender.
She already had it.
And the worst part?
He wasn't even afraid.