Friday. 11:42 A.M. A day that tries to be Tuesday and fails glamorously.
The apartment still smelled like jasmine, burnt parchment, and vague disapproval her mother's scent profile, Seraphina was quickly realizing. Two days in and the flat had become more than just a hiding spot.it was a revelation in wallpaper and inherited trauma. It felt like home, even though she couldn't consciously remember ever living in it. Maybe she had. Maybe she hadn't. Maybe memory was like tea: too long steeped, and it just went bitter.
Either way, the apartment loved her. Which was unsettling. Walls shouldn't like you.
Neither should the floorboards shift to avoid your feet when you're carrying hot tea.
But they did. And frankly, she respected the courtesy.
She'd started digging. Not metaphorically. Literally. Under the bed, behind bookshelves, in closet compartments sealed with enchantments designed to mildly electrocute nosy landlords. And she found them: photos. Dozens. Hundreds.
And in one of them.a faded, embossed silver frame marked The Nightmare Court, Winter Gala 1990 were twenty-eight figures. Adults in regal black robes that looked stitched from midnight tantrums. Children dressed like tiny curses. And right at the front:
A little boy.
Black-grey hair, eyes like crushed sapphires glaring at the camera like it had personally offended him by existing.
She knew him.
She didn't remember why. But she knew him.
His name in the photo's caption was Caius Everen Grey.
But she remembered calling him "Hunt."
Her chest ached.
She flipped through the album. Every new page was a slap from a past she wasn't supposed to survive. 100-day celebration. Bone Court garden picnics. Unseelie Riding Trials. There was her father laughing. Her mother in full Iron Veil robes, regal and sharp-eyed. Her as a toddler, trying to eat a nightmare horse's mane while her cousin proudly offered her a striker puppy like it was a crown jewel.
Her family wasn't just magical.
They were Unseelie nobility.
And somehow, everyone was gone.
Vespera was lounging across the windowsill like royalty, basking in the London gloom. Her new custom heat pad.imported from a goblin-run supply depot in Knockturn Alley glowed beneath her like a smug halo.
Seraphina narrowed her eyes.
"You didn't think to tell me you're an Unseelie snake?"
Vespera tilted her violet-scaled head. "Technically, I didn't know until you found the pictures. So... plausible deniability?"
She flicked her tongue. "Though I did suspect, what with my unnatural size, speech capabilities, and fondness for existential threats."
Seraphina sighed dramatically. "Great. I'm raising a snarky python with ancestral trauma."
"You're welcome."
She found the library around noon.
Not a shelf. Not a row. A whole room. Behind a panelled wall that clicked open when she said "screw this" while looking for biscuits.
Books lined the walls in organized chaos. Black leather, silver spines, ink that shimmered like spilled blood. Titles included:
Unseelie Etiquette: When to Smile and When to Stab
Nightmare Court Legal Loopholes and Petty Grievances Vol. IX
Raising Your Gloom Without Losing Your Fingers
What To Expect When You're Expecting: A Nightmare Baby Bible
"Oh," Seraphina muttered, scanning the spines, "so this is a generational disease."
The themes were clear:
1. Be terrifying.
2. Be fabulous.
3. Do not apologize for either.
She sat on a velvet chaise long enough to register as pretentious and opened a tome marked The Courts of the Unseelie: A Primer for Ill-Prepared Inheritors.
The Nightmare Court, it said, was not a place.
It was a state of existence.
A domain built from fear, memory, prophecy, and shadow. It governed rumors, illusions, grief, and the power of childhood horrors. Its beasts were not tame but they were loyal. Not because they were trained, but because they chose to be.
"We do not command. We are obeyed because we are terrifying and worthy."
That made her feel better than therapy ever had.
The animals she'd seen in the photos? They weren't myth. They were hers.
Nightmares skeletal horses with fire eyes and too many teeth. Rideable only by those whose dreams bite back.
Strikers enormous wolf-dogs with antlered heads and loyalty issues.
Glooms felines the size of mini-vans, hunted with elegance, killed with purring menace.
Chatters crow-beasts with voices like opera singers and knives for talons.
Phantom Wings owls that flew silently and judged your soul as they did.
Serpents like Vespera. Elegant, intelligent, and capable of murder via passive-aggressive side-eyes.
She closed the book and stared into space.
"Of course I'm fae," she muttered. "I've been suspiciously pretty and emotionally damaged since infancy."
The paintings were next.
Two portraits dominated the fireplace: James and Lily, regal and ghost-touched, captured in motion. Their heads turned. Their eyes moved. They didn't speak magic too faded but their worry was visible.
Her mother paced within the frame, arms crossed, lips mouthing something unreadable. Her father frowned toward the doorway, like expecting someone to appear.
Then Lily turned.
Touched the painted locket around her neck.
Seraphina instinctively mirrored her, placing her hand over her real one.
A spark shot out silver-blue, ancient. It zipped into the painting, shimmered, ricocheted out again, and flew straight through the open window like a summoned falcon.
Seraphina blinked.
"What the hell was that? A magical beacon? An emotional cry for help? A nightmare carrier pigeon?"
Vespera hummed. "Let's hope it wasn't a magical death letter."
"Thanks. That helps."
She returned to the album.
Page after page memories someone had tried to rip away.
She found her parents' wedding certificate. James Potter Peverell and Liliana Lily Elaris of the Iron Veil Court.
Another court.
Another secret.
So her mother wasn't just fae.she was Iron Veil.
Emotionless. Logic-driven. Pactmakers of ancient power.
Great. That explained the terrifying sense of moral precision she inherited.
She exhaled.
Home wasn't supposed to be like this.
But here, among books about etiquette duels and family portraits that watched her like overprotective ghosts, Seraphina Potter-Peverell felt less like a tragedy and more like a warning.
She looked back at the photo of her cousin.
Caius. Hunt.
Still no idea where he was.
Still no idea if he was.
But if that locket-light was a beacon, and if anyone from her bloodline was still alive…
They'd know.
And they'd come.