A Curse Bright and Breathing (Her Fangs in My Heart #2)

1. Naera

Naera

The sacred gardens smell like milk fruit and ash.

The ash is older. It clings beneath the leaves, curls into the corners of stone steps, and coats the bones of this place in dust no prayer has ever quite swept clean.

They don't scrub it away. They say it's holy.

They say it's from when the last daughter turned to smoke, when her glow burned so brightly it seared her clean through and left her soul in the sky, cradled by Selene herself.

They say this with reverence and pride.

The sanctum looms behind me, its domes and spires catching the moonlight like polished ivory. The sacred gardens encircle the temple grounds in a hush of old trees, their silver-veined leaves whispering secrets only the priests understand.

I kneel in the garden beds, bare fingers deep in the rich, dark earth. Dirt stains the tips of my nails and the scent of crushed moon lilies clings to my wrists. My breath clouds faintly in the evening cold, rising like incense.

This is my duty. Tending the sacred gardens. Feeding the soil. Culling the faded petals. Whispering thanks to Selene with every buried root.

A few other girls work nearby—quiet, careful. Eyes down. We’re not supposed to speak. It is considered disrespectful to disrupt the sanctity of the garden with our voices .

But Ria glances at me over her shoulder when no one’s looking.

And I…

I look back.

Her hands are strong and stained from work, her mouth soft and serious. She never glowed, so she serves. Quietly. Obediently. There’s a sharpness to her devotion, but sometimes—when her fingers brush mine beneath the leaves—there’s softness, too. Something she never says aloud.

We’re not supposed to talk.

So we don’t.

But I steal glances when I can. And I dream more than I should.

My name is next on the scroll. They haven’t told me outright. They don’t have to.

The last holy daughter—Lira, with her easy laugh and eyes like polished silver—was taken three nights ago. I watched her glow brighten then fade from the dormitory windows as the moon rose to its zenith.

She was like a sister to me.

I held her hand the night before. She said nothing. Just pressed her forehead to mine.

Now there are others still in the dormitory, but they are younger. Smaller. Unripe , the priest said once, like fruit not ready to be picked.

But I am ready. I am the brightest. I am the eldest.

Nineteen winters. Old enough to bruise if left too long on the vine.

They dressed me in white today.

White means readiness .

White means soon .

The silks are too thin for the nighttime chill. The wind kisses my bare shoulders like it wants to taste what will be taken next.

They say we were born without mothers. That the glowing daughters of Selene are not born, but bloomed —dropped like silver fruit from the Moonmother's light. No blood. No womb. Only prophecy. I used to love that story. I used to believe it meant I was special.

Lately, it just makes me feel hollow. Alone.

I finish tending the lowest bed of moon lilies, brushing frost from their petals with the edge of my sleeve. The gardens are quiet. Too quiet. Frost glitters like tears in the slanting light—beautiful, but cold.

No one speaks to me anymore. Not the younger girls. Not even Callen, who used to braid my hair in the mornings. It’s like I’ve already begun to fade.

That’s what happens when you’re next.

They say it’s reverence. That I’m becoming sacred. But sacred things are already halfway dead.

It happened with Lira, too. Right before her Offering. One night she was curled up beside us in the dormitory, grinning with blood on her lips, teasing Imara about sneaking sips from the acolytes, the next—silence. Distance. Like we were all afraid of catching what was coming for her.

And now they don’t want to catch my fate either. The younger girls flinch when I pass. The older ones won’t meet my eyes.

I stare down at the moon lilies, their pale faces turned skyward. Waiting. Always waiting.

Just like me.

I shake soil from my hands and move toward the washing station at the edge of the sacred garden. The water in the basin is glacial, but I scrub anyway—palms, wrists, neck. My fingers are numb by the time I finish. I let the white sleeves fall back over my skin, useless against the cold.

Behind me, I hear the soft scuff of footsteps on stone.

I glance over my shoulder.

Ria.

She isn’t supposed to be here. Not after first duties. Not with me. But she lingers alongside me, pretending to rinse her hands, though they’re already clean.

I say nothing, only meet her pale gray eyes for a beat too long.

Then I turn toward the main garden shrine.

She follows.

***

The great archway opens into the heart of the temple gardens. Stone walls overgrown with silver vines curve around the sacred courtyard, and at the center, Selene waits—taller than any of us.

The statue rises in polished moonstone, her face serene and sightless, one hand raised in benediction, the other resting on the hilt of a ceremonial blade.

I kneel before her.

My breath curls up like smoke. The air smells of ash and jasmine here.

“Moonmother. Watcher of the night. Keeper of the last light. Receive me. Use me…” The words spill from me like someone else put them there. Then, some of my own, “... Please don’t forget me.”

Footsteps echo behind me again.

I turn my head, already knowing.

Ria steps from the shadows.

She’s still in her work robes—gray and modest—but the way she moves feels reverent. Hesitant.

She used to smile when she looked at me.

She doesn’t now.

She stops just behind me, her arms folded across her stomach like she’s afraid she might do something unholy if she reaches for me again.

“Rialeth,” I say quietly, my voice barely above the hush of the wind.

She doesn’t answer right away. Just watches me. Her eyes are pale and unreadable, like winter water.

She used to touch my cheek when we were alone, used to press her forehead to mine and whisper, under her breath, what it would be like once our goddess, Selene, was resurrected again.

How the skies would darken in devotion. How the light we offered would bring her back.

How the whole world would know her name once more.

Now she keeps her distance.

But only for a breath, then she steps forward and crouches beside me—not touching, but close enough that I feel the heat of her through the thin silk I’ve been draped in.

Her hand brushes mine. A whisper of contact. It makes something twist behind my ribs.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I murmur. “They’ll see.”

“I wanted to,” she says.

Her voice is quiet, careful. She glances over her shoulder, but we’re alone. It’s only us and Selene. We sit in the shadow of the goddess for a moment, both of us staring up at the pale stone face that has never once looked down.

“They added a new verse to the Hymn of Offering this morning,” Ria says after a pause.

Her tone is dry, but I hear the tension beneath it.

Ria is always the first to know these things.

She is absolutely devoted to her studies.

“It’s two stanzas longer now… though, it took them five minutes to say the same thing they always do. ”

I huff a breath, not quite a laugh.

“Do you remember,” I whisper, “when we used to sneak into the lower sanctum and steal candied rose petals from the altar bowls?”

She bites the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. Her eyes flick to the entrance behind us, but no one comes.

“I still think those were meant for the goddess.”

“She never complained.”

“Well, she’s very patient.”

“Unlike the High Priest,” I quip.

That almost earns me a laugh, but it dies too fast.

The moment slips. Gravity pulls everything back down. The cold. The silence. The statue above us. Then, I whisper the truth.

“I don’t want to die.”

The wind tries to snatch the words. But Ria hears them anyway. She flinches—like I struck her, but not with my hands. Can the truth be something sharp?

For a moment, she doesn’t speak. Her lips part, then close again. Her throat works around something unsaid.

“Naera,” she says finally, softer than I expect, almost pleading. “Don’t say things like that. Everything dies.”

She looks away, toward the towering silhouette of Selene. Her profile is all shadows and silence, but I see it—the way her fingers twitch like she wants to reach for me.

And the way she doesn’t.

So I do it instead .

I reach for her. My hand finds hers, hesitant at first, then holding on. Not just for comfort. For something older. Deeper. A thread I’ve always followed without question.

Rialeth is only a few years older than me, but I’ve always looked up to her. Always… loved her, in that quiet way you love someone who seems untouchable.

She looks down, then laces our fingers together.

“You’ve always been brave,” she says. “You were never afraid of the blade before.”

I blink. “That was before it was aimed at me.”

She draws in a breath, slow and trembling, like she’s bracing herself.

“You don’t get to be afraid,” she says, and this time her voice hardens. “Not when you’re chosen by the goddess.”

My stomach knots. I feel the ground tilt beneath me, the moment slipping between us like spilled water.

“Ria—”

“Don’t be selfish,” she adds, sharper now. “You were born under Selene’s favor. You don’t get to pretend that doesn’t mean something.”

The word— selfish —hits harder than it should. It shouldn’t feel like betrayal.

But it does.

I look at her. Really look.

At the girl who used to press her forehead to mine. Who used to sneak candied petals into my hands like they were offerings only I was allowed to taste.

“Selfish?”

“You’re moonborn.” Her voice tightens, brittle. “You can’t run from what you are. You can’t turn your back on Selene now. ”

She turns toward me fully now, closer than she should be. Her breath ghosts across my jaw. I can smell the oil on her skin, the iron-sweet trace of blood she fed on at moonrise.

Still, I clutch her hand.

“This is what you were born for.”