Chapter 502: Feelings That Could Not Be Understood
The group drifted toward the square ahead, their voices folding into the hum of the festival night.
Amon and Seraphina lagged a few steps behind, neither one in any hurry to close the distance.
The sight of the crowd ahead, the lanterns swaying overhead, the warmth pressed between his fingers and hers.
It all dragged Amon back to Lunaris Haven City.
Back to the night after their first semester practical exam, when the two of them had wandered through streets just like this one.
Back then, they had been cut off from the others entirely.
A wrong turn, a wrong street, and the group had vanished into the crowd ahead of them.
To keep from losing each other in that sea of strangers, they had laced their fingers together and refused to let go.
But tonight was different. The group hadn’t lost them. Their friends were right there, only a few paces ahead, easily within reach.
And yet here they were. Walking hand in hand anyway.
Amon’s jaw tightened. A voice in the back of his mind sneered at him, merciless and accusing.
’You bastard. You already have a girlfriend, and yet here you are, holding another girl’s hand. Let go of her. Right now.’
He turned his head toward Seraphina, half-expecting the thought to shame him into action.
Her face was tilted forward, calm and unreadable.
The lantern light traced the curve of her cheek, soft and fair, a few loose strands of golden hair drifting loose from the rest, framing her face like something deliberately placed there by an artist’s hand.
Her hair was gathered into a high ponytail that swayed gently with each step, catching the glow of the city lights until it seemed to shimmer on its own.
For a moment, Amon forgot to think. He simply looked at her.
His heartbeat nearly stop, just slightly, before catching its rhythm again.
As if she’d felt the weight of his stare settle on her, Seraphina turned. Her golden eyes caught the light and held it, glimmering like twin jewels carved for exactly this kind of night.
Her expression hadn’t changed, still composed, still touched with that faint coolness she wore like armor every day.
But to Amon, even that usual indifference looked cute.
"I–" Amon cleared his throat. "We’re, um... We’re still holding hands."
Seraphina glanced down at their joined fingers, then lifted her gaze back to his face. She didn’t answer right away.
The silence stretched just long enough to feel.
"So?" she said finally. "Does it bother you?"
The question struck him quiet too much.
Should he say yes? That would be a lie, and not a small one.
The truth was he didn’t mind at all.
If anything, he liked it far more than he was willing to admit out loud.
There had been a time, he’ll admit, when the idea of surrounding himself with more than one girl hadn’t seemed like the worst fate in the world.
He really wanted to have harem in past.
Was there a young man who hadn’t entertained that thought at least once?
Amd Amon would show you someone either lying or uninterested in girls altogether.
But that was before Scarlett become his lover.
Since being with her, that old daydream had quietly lost its appeal, fading into something he no longer reached for.
"No," he said at last. "I don’t mind it. I just... thought about how this is usually a thing couples do. Holding hands like this."
"Ah." Seraphina’s eyes widened slightly, as though something had just clicked into place.
She nodded, her expression barely shifting.
But Amon could tell. In the faint way her shoulders dropped, in the small flicker behind her composed eyes. That something in her had dimmed.
He pressed his lips together. Knowing she felt slightly dejected.
She began to pull her hand free. Before she could, Amon tightened his grip, holding on instead of letting go.
"Well..." He looked straight ahead, his free hand rising to rub awkwardly at the back of his neck.
"It’s fine, I guess. I don’t mind holding your hand like this. Actually... I like it."
Color rushed to Seraphina’s cheeks at once.
Her heart gave one hard, traitorous lurch.
What was this feeling? He was Amon, her closest friend, the person she trusted more than almost anyone.
He belonged to Scarlett. And yet here she was, holding his hand the way a lover might, and some small, stubborn part of her chest refused to let go of how right it felt.
She couldn’t make sense of her own heart.
"What the hell?"
The voice cut through whatever fragile bubble had formed around the two of them. Amon and Seraphina blinked back into the present and looked up to find Aisha staring at them.
Her crimson eyes wide with disbelief, fixed pointedly on their still-joined hands.
They let go at the same instant. But it was too late. Everyone had already seen.
"So it’s true after all." Marcus’s mouth curled into a knowing smirk. But he was not actually pleased by this sight.
Eliana’s grin turned positively wicked. "Oh, Amon, you player. Look at you, dragging our poor innocent Sera into your little web."
"You— you pervert," Aisha sputtered, pointing an accusing finger. "You actually want a harem, don’t you?"
"I have genuinely no words for you right now, Amon," Adelia said, shaking her head, not knowing how to react here.
"It’s not— it’s nothing like that!" Amon raised both hands, half in surrender, half as if he could physically push the accusations back where they came from.
"We just got separated from the group for a second, that’s all there was to it!"
"Separated, huh?" Eliana echoed, clearly enjoying every second of his floundering.
"Funny how that always seems to happen to you two."
"I’m serious!" Amon’s ears had gone red, and the heat was climbing fast toward his face. He shot a glance at Seraphina, half hoping she’d back him up, half terrified of what expression he’d find on her.
"Don’t go twisting this into something it’s not. Leave her alone, she didn’t do anything wrong."
That last part came out sharper than he’d intended. He decided to play a role where he tries to protect her. Which would be helpful for them.
Seraphina said nothing through any of it. She simply stood there with her face faintly pink.
Her eyes fixed somewhere on the cobblestones, refusing to look at anyone, Amon included.
Before the teasing could sharpen any further, a deep, resonant beat rolled across the square and swallowed every other sound whole.
Drums sounded.
Dozens of them, struck in unison, low and ceremonial, vibrating up through the stone underfoot.
A ring of braziers flared to life around the square’s center. Their flames burning an unnatural shade of violet. And out from the shadows beyond them emerged a line of dancers draped in dark.
Flowing cloth, faces hidden behind masks carved to resemble the old demon court.
Their chant rose with the drums, wordless and ancient, curling through the night air like smoke.
It was the cultural performance the festival had promised a retelling of the demon kingdom’s old rites, danced rather than spoken.
Each masked figure moved with unnerving precision, limbs bending at angles that looked almost wrong.
As if the dance itself remembered a body older than human bones.
The chant rose and fell with the drums, syllables in some half-forgotten tongue, and somewhere beneath the rhythm.
Amon thought he could feel the stone of the square itself answering back, a faint hum traveling up through the soles of his boots.
The crowd’s attention surged toward the spectacle as one, pulled in by the eerie pull of the chanting and the hypnotic sway of masked figures moving as a single, many-limbed thing.
Violet flame guttered and surged in time with the drumbeats, throwing long shadows that twisted and stretched across the cobblestones, and for a moment the whole square seemed to belong to some older, stranger world entirely.
Even Eliana and Marcus forgot their teasing, drawn forward with the rest of the group toward the spectacle.
Aisha lingered a moment longer, glancing back once between Amon and Seraphina.
With a look that promised this conversation was far from finished, before she too turned to follow the others.
Amon exhaled, long and slow, grateful for the rescue the universe had apparently decided to grant him.
Behind the group, still rooted in place, he and Seraphina stood a little apart from one another now.
Neither quite willing to close the gap again.
The drums kept pounding, steady as a second heartbeat, and the masked dancers spun their slow, ancient circle beneath the violet flame.
Neither of them said a word. Neither of them moved to follow the others just yet.
Amon stole a glance sideways.
Seraphina’s cheeks were still faintly pink, her gaze fixed somewhere on the dancers without really seeing them, lost in whatever thought she wasn’t ready to share.
He thought about saying something . An apology, maybe, or some clumsy joke to dissolve the tension still hanging between them.
But every version of it sounded wrong before it even reached his mouth.
So instead he said nothing at all, and let the drums fill the silence neither of them knew how to break.
