Seraphine didn't flinch at his words, didn't even blink like they had landed anywhere close to where they were meant to hurt.
If anything, she looked almost untouched by them, like she had already measured the weight of harsher judgments long before this moment and decided none of them would ever define her.
Should she hand out chances just because someone admired her, or just because they claimed to care? That wasn't how she saw the world.
Attraction came easily, naturally, like nectar drawing in bees without effort, but what came after that, depended entirely on the one receiving it, on how they chose to process it, shape it, turn it into something real or leave it as nothing more than a fleeting pull.
"If being heartless means I'm honest with you," she said calmly, her voice steady but edged with something sharper beneath the surface, "then yeah, I guess I am."
