OVERLOOKED ㅤkotlc

005. She's Just Fifteen

trigger warning!! violence, ptsd mentioning.

Gisela's gaze lifts from Keefe and flits to Seraph. "Don't kill him," she says. Her voice is gleeful. Why is she so happy? It's unsettling. "But please hurt him, dear."

Dear. That was said in a malicious kind of way, I think, and it sends goosebumps up my arms. "My pleasure," Seraph says, and I still hate her voice.

Before anyone can react, Seraph is gone, she's sunken through the floor, and Keefe's whirling around, and—a knife is at his throat. A knife is at his throat.

Seraph is there, and she's holding a knife at his throat.

Everything freezes again, and I hate the anticipation. I know what happens: Keefe gets hurt, and they escape to Paris, but—it's still scary. It's terrifying seeing my friends get hurt.

But he smirks. There's fear laced into it, but he still smirks. "You can't kill me," he taunts. "You need me alive, for your dumb legacy." He has the audacity to laugh.

Only Keefe Sencen would laugh at Death.

Seraph takes his arm and twists it behind him; I hear a snap, I hear a snap, and my breath is gone for a moment. He screams. I think he screams. Does he scream? Or was that someone else? It's an eerie sound either way.

The scream, echoing off the high ceilings, Gisela smiling. Tam's face, ashen, he just watches; he's frozen. But he keeps his composure.

It takes a moment, as Sophie's vision clouds with red, and as she forces it away, to realize there is no blood. But his arm hangs at the weirdest angle, and he's breathing hard.

But then he looks at Seraph and this idiot, this screwed idiot, smiles through tears. "Wow," he says, breathless. "That's the best you got? I'm defenseless, too, and all you can do is knock my arm around?"

I think I know what he's doing. You can't break me, he's saying. But now he's just getting hurt more, and it's painful to watch.

Sophie, Biana, Linh—they can't do anything, too. They're helpless. They're so helpless.

"I can do so much more than dislocate your arm." She murmurs it in his ear, voice quiet, but I can hear it. "I can cut your head off and feed it to a flock of crows."

Run, I'm thinking now. Run. Run. Run. She's—she's insane. Please run.

Even Gisela, even Gisela, is taken aback a little, and I'm—I'm so scared. I know he's alive, I've seen it, but in this moment, I truly believe that he is going to die.

Keefe just smirks. "You could. But you won't."

Seraph's lips curl up, into a soft smile, like birdsong before a storm. "Of course not," she says lightly as she stands. It looks like he's kneeling at her feet from this angle, and she knows it. "Why would I kill you? Suffering is so much worse."

She crouches down, and something flashes in the light. A knife. She has a knife. Keefe sees it, he tries to push her arm away, but his hand passes right through her.

Seraph points the knife towards him, and pushes it into him. He makes a terrible noise, almost like there's something liquid in his throat. "Keefe!" Sophie screams.

His murderer—no. He's alive. She's not his murderer, because he's alive. But Seraph—she takes the knife from him, and blood glistens on its tip. She wipes it against her cloak, and dusts red-brown flakes from her hands, before tilting her head at Gisela.

Gisela blinks for a moment, and even her face looks a little pale. "Good job," she says finally. "You've made quite the debut, Seraph."

But Alvar's shaking his head. "That was unnecessary, Ixor—Seraph. That wasn't—we don't say or do things like—"