Happily Never After II

Five years after getting married, twenty-three-year-old Seraphine soon found her world slowly falling apart.

"Perhaps, I was right all along…" she muttered to no one in particular, voice sounding so brittle and grim.

"All of it were nothing but a dream."

Then again, everything was just too good to be true.

At one point, Seraphine had everything. Then, on the next, she ended up having nothing.

Benumbed all over, she is now sitting alone in the middle of an enormous yet empty room. Her numb state is not the only one that is keeping her in place, though – the chains around her ankles got her locked on that spot as well.

"These chains… How long had they been there again…? They're already getting rusty…"

With an unsmiling expression, clearly devoid of any emotion, she darts her cold, impassive gaze down to her feet and hugs her knees. She then fiddles with the chains and narrows her eyes at them. At first glance, she may appear like she has nothing better to do, but in reality, there is a lot to do at her current situation.

Right now, Seraphine should really be doing something more important than brooding for the millionth time.

"Burn the demon! Burn the demon! Burn the demon! Burn the demon!"

As the shouts of the crowd outside the mansion of the Grand Duchess get louder and louder, everything finally becomes clearer for her.

Piercing cries of abhorrence.

A palatial residence left in ruins.

Surrounding fire and ashes.

Seraphine is facing one hellish nightmare at that very moment.

The mansion where Skye has locked her up for four whole years is being burned down. It's an order from the temple – a decision that everyone out there has supported. That includes her very own husband, family, friends, and servants.

Most of the crowd are made up of people who didn't even know her. They were calling her a wicked existence even without seeing her first.

Whether they knew Seraphine or not, all of them only came for one thing.

And that was to bring an end to the woman they thought as a demoness.

"Burn in hell, you demoness!"

"How could we not have noticed such a despicable thing this whole time?!"

"That explains why she's able to fool many people into thinking she's some goddess!"

"Her beauty was all for show! A wolf in sheep's clothing!"

"Go to hell, you two-faced, lying hypocrite!"

Seraphine doesn't know what's worse – not being loved for eighteen long years in her previous life or hearing such cruel words from the very people she had come to love in her current one.

While the crowd keeps throwing disdainful remarks at her from the other side of the wall, the flames around her are getting closer and closer. At a rapid pace, the fire is devouring everything it crosses path with. It's going to engulf her soon enough,

Even then, Seraphine remains unmoving and silent.

"This is what I get for hoping too much. No, for trusting too much, rather…" she then began to weep bitterly while gripping her dirty, ripped clothing.

"I had trusted Skye. Yet all this time, he turned out to be cheating on me while he was keeping me locked up here for years. I was foolish to follow everything he said. I was so foolish… So, so foolish… So foolish that I… I…"

With that, she let her dam break.

She allowed herself to cry out in pain and misery.

All Seraphine ever wanted was to be loved and to love someone. That was why she let Skye do things to her – awful and cruel things. She also let other people dictate how she should act and behave. In the end, though, all she gained in return was feigned kindness, short-lived loyalty, and fleeting affection.

No one had ever loved her genuinely.

Not in her first life nor her second one.

"If this is just how it's going to end, why let me live a second life then?"

Perhaps, if Seraphine was not the demoness they claimed her to be, things would not happen this way. But then, the reason why she was able to compel people in the first place was because of this power. She was able to make Skye and everyone else love her because of this dark magic that worked like some sort of a love potion.

"A succubus, they say…"

Seraphine herself isn't sure how this power really works.

She didn't even know how she got it in the first place nor did she realize that she was wielding it this whole time. At this point, though, she will never get to know anything more about it.

The fire has already reached Seraphine.

It has encircled her, trapping her like how her wretched fate has kept her imprisoned. Yet again, she pays it no mind. She is as good as an empty vessel by now. Nothing will be worth the struggle if she is to save herself. Then again, nothing and no one can save her anymore.

'How warm… Extremely warm…' Seraphine thought as she shut her eyes closed and let the fire consume her whole.

Right then, she suddenly remembered the first time she got hugged by someone. She recalled her adoptive father and how he warmly embraced her during the first time they met. As she thought about it, more and more tears continued to fall down the sides of her face like a cascade.

Seraphine no longer thinks of that memory as something heartwarming, though. After all, Ferdinand's love that time is most probably not genuine too.

While Seraphine woke up to this second life to get greeted by that warm gesture, she was now dying at the burning embrace of the blazing flames.