Chapter 491: Chapter 491 EDWARD’S PUPPET
SERAPHINA’S POV
My father.
The words echoed through my mind with the same disorienting force as a physical blow.
For several seconds, I simply stared at him.
I knew it wasn’t him.
The moment I looked into those empty eyes, I understood that whatever stood before me was not Edward Lockwood as he had once been.
My father was dead. I had mourned him, buried him, and spent far too long wrestling with everything he had left unresolved between us.
And yet knowing all of that did absolutely nothing to soften the impact of seeing his face again.
Because grief wasn’t rational.
Regret wasn’t rational.
The little girl who had spent years craving her father’s attention and love wasn’t rational either.
She still existed somewhere inside me no matter how much I had grown.
Edward’s puppet stood motionless near Catherine’s barrier, his posture calm and composed in a way that felt unnervingly familiar.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
The ritual chamber seemed strangely quiet despite the power saturating every inch of it. Blood continued flowing through the carved channels beneath the floor.
The eclipse overhead cast long shadows across the chamber.
Catherine remained safely behind her barrier, allowing the silence to stretch as long as she wanted.
She knew exactly what she was doing.
This wasn’t about combat.
It wasn’t even about Edward.
This was psychological warfare.
And she was very, very good at it.
"Seraphina, dear."
My breath caught.
Gods, even the voice was perfect.
For one horrifying second, I was no longer standing in Catherine’s ritual chamber.
I was thirteen again, standing awkwardly outside my father’s office.
Hoping he would notice me.
Hoping he would smile at me.
Hoping this would be one of the rare days he actually wanted to spend time with me.
The memory vanished as quickly as it came, but the damage had already been done.
I hated that my chest tightened.
I hated that hearing his voice still affected me.
Most of all, I hated that Catherine knew it would.
He took a small step forward, and my hand shot out.
"Don’t!" The word came out harsher than I intended.
Edward’s expression softened as he stopped.
The sight made my stomach twist.
I didn’t think I could remember if my real father ever looked at me with such tenderness in his eyes.
"I know you’re angry," he said softly.
The words were gentle. Patient. Fatherly.
Exactly the way he would have spoken if we had been having a private conversation, if he’d been the father I’d craved all my life.
"I know I’ve made mistakes, Sera, dear. Give me the chance to make it all up to you."
My jaw clenched.
The pressure in the chamber seemed to increase.
How many times had I wished for this?
How many nights had I spent imagining what it would feel like to hear those words?
To hear him acknowledge what happened?
To hear him admit that he had failed me?
Far too many.
Which was exactly why Catherine was using them now.
The puppet took another slow step forward.
"Stop," I choked out.
"I know I wasn’t a good father to you."
Pain stabbed my chest, and a terrible, ugly part of me wanted to believe that somehow my father was still in there, saying these words to me.
That somehow this wasn’t just another of Catherine’s manipulations.
"Seraphina." His voice gentled further. "I should have protected you."
My throat tightened.
Memories surfaced uninvited.
Standing alone at family gatherings while Ethan and Celeste received attention.
Watching my father praise them.
Watching him overlook me.
Convincing myself over and over that I didn’t care.
That his approval meant nothing.
All lies.
"You don’t get to say that." The words emerged as little more than a whisper, trembling on their way out.
Edward’s expression filled with apparent regret.
"I know. Which is why I want to make it up to you." He cocked his head and offered me a small smile. “Don’t you want that?”
Warmth rippled up my spine, and something immediately felt wrong.
My eyes shifted briefly toward Catherine.
She was smiling, her eyes gleaming as if she were watching her favorite theater performance.
The sight helped clear some of the fog clouding my thoughts.
Because my father had never spoken this way.
Edward Lockwood had been many things.
He had been proud, stubborn, and deeply flawed.
And he had never possessed this kind of perfect emotional insight.
He wouldn’t have known exactly what to say. How to be so soft and gentle.
The puppet continued speaking.
"If I could go back, princess, I would do things differently."
The words should have comforted me.
Instead, they made me angry.
Because they were too perfect.
Too convenient.
Too tailored to every regret I carried.
The puppet wasn’t speaking from memory—it didn’t have any. It was speaking from information. From weaknesses Catherine had carefully collected over the years.
"You deserve better."
The pressure in my chest intensified with each word.
"You deserved parents who protected you."
I looked at my mother lying unconscious across the chamber floor.
Then I looked back at the thing wearing my father’s face.
The contrast was enough to finally crack something loose inside my mind.
Margaret was real.
Things between us had been messy and painful and complicated.
But it had been real.
The dream conversations. The apologies. The regret.
The love.
None of it had been perfect.
None of it had been scripted.
Because real people weren’t perfect.
This was.
And that was the problem.
The puppet was giving me exactly what I wanted.
Not what my father would have said, but what I wanted him to say.
He took another step toward me, and his eyes seemed almost warm.
"Seraphina."
Almost.
"If there’s any part of me left—"
"No!"
Edward paused.
So did Catherine.
I slowly straightened.
The grief and pain were still there.
But clarity was rising above it all.
“Stay the fuck away from me.”
For the first time, the puppet’s expression faltered.
I took a step forward.
"If there was any part of my father left in there, he wouldn’t be standing beside Catherine."
Silence settled over the chamber.
The puppet remained motionless.
I continued before either of them could interrupt.
"My father wasn’t perfect. He failed me."
The admission hurt, but it was true.
"He overlooked me."
My voice strengthened.
"He believed lies."
I could feel old wounds reopening as I spoke. Could feel the little girl inside me listening.
But this time, I wasn’t speaking to Catherine.
Or the puppet.
I was speaking to myself.
"Yet when it mattered, he still died fighting against people like you."
My gaze locked onto Catherine.
"And if he could see what you’ve done to him now, he’d be disgusted."
Annoyance flashed through Catherine’s eyes, her smile dropping completely.
Finally.
The puppet tried again.
"Seraphina—"
"No."
I pointed directly at him.
"You are not my father."
The words echoed through the chamber.
"You wear his face."
Pain tightened my chest.
"You sound like him."
The next words hurt even more.
"But you’re not him. You will never be him."
For a brief moment, something strange happened.
The puppet froze as though the performance had been interrupted.
The warmth disappeared from its expression.
The regret and kindness disappeared.
And beneath all of it, I glimpsed something cold.
Something artificial.
Something that had never belonged to Edward Lockwood at all.
Catherine sighed dramatically.
"You and your mother are so incredibly disappointing."
I laughed. The sound came out sharper than intended, and with it, the pressure of standing before my father’s puppet eased.
"No." I rolled my shoulders. Silver power surged through my markings once more. "What’s disappointing is that after all the power you’ve amassed, this is still your best idea."
I was finished allowing Catherine to dictate the pace of this encounter.
My mother was lying unconscious on the floor.
Kieran was still fighting for his life somewhere above us.
Every second Catherine remained behind that barrier brought her closer to absorbing whatever she had stolen.
The puppet tried one last time. He took hurried steps towards me, arms stretched. “Sera, I—”
“I said stay the fuck away from me!”
My fist collided with his jaw before he could fully react.
The impact exploded through the chamber.
Edward flew backward across the stone floor, crashing through a crystal formation hard enough to reduce it to glittering fragments.
The sound echoed like thunder.
For a split second, satisfaction surged through me.
Then the puppet rose.
Slowly.
And he was...smiling.
Predatorily.
The last traces of his fatherly facade vanished.
His posture changed first.
Then his expression.
Then the pressure rolling off him intensified until the entire chamber seemed to darken.
"You really are stubborn."
The voice still sounded like my father, but now it carried something else beneath it.
Something monstrous and hungry.
Across the chamber, Catherine watched with renewed interest.
My eyes narrowed as I lowered my stance, silver gathering around me.
Edward’s smile widened one final time.
Then his body exploded into motion.
