1. Naera #2
I stare at her—at the girl I once thought might have saved me, if the world were gentler. If the goddess we grew up praying to ever actually answered…
“What if it isn’t?” I ask, voice tight. “What if I was born for something else?”
She frowns. “You are moonborn. You glow, Naera. That means something.”
“Lira glowed too.”My voice cracks around her name.“And now she’s gone. Her light didn’t bring Selene back. It didn’t save anyone. It didn’t mean anything.”
Ria’s eyes flash.
“Stop." She pulls her hands back as if I burned her. “Don’t say things like that.”
“Why not?” I whisper. “Because it’s blasphemy? Or because you’re afraid I’m right?”
She stiffens.
“Selene chose you. You dishonor her by doubting that.”
“I’m not doubting her,” I say. “I’m doubting them . The ones who claim to speak for her. The ones who turned Lira’s blood into a sermon.”
“You’re starting to sound like a heretic.”
Her voice shakes—not with rage, but something colder. Fear. Or maybe disappointment.
She doesn’t look at me again. She stands and walks toward the arches, her steps too quick, too final. And then she’s gone—vanishing before I can say another word .
I remain kneeling. My hands fist in my lap, white-knuckled. My breath shudders out of me, shallow and uneven. Cold seeps deeper into me, but not from the wind.
It’s colder when someone you love stops looking back.
The ache swells in my chest, sharp and unspoken. I press a hand to my ribs like I can hold it in.
You were born for this.
That’s what they all say. But no one ever told me what it’s supposed to feel like when the people you love are the ones handing you over to the altar.
The moon climbs higher behind Selene’s head, haloing her in silver. Yet, the glow under my skin feels dimmer today. Not like divinity. Like a wick burning down.
I stare up at the moonstone face, so serene, so silent, and I whisper one last prayer. The only one that still fits inside my mouth:
“If I was born for more than dying… please send me a way out.”
***
That night, I dream of a woman.
Not Ria. Not any priestess.
This one moves through the dark like it belongs to her. No… like it follows her. Like the night itself rearranges around the swing of her hips and the glint of her blades. They flash at her sides like slivers of starlight captured mid-fall.
Her eyes gleam—cold, sharp, cruel—and her smile is the kind forged in fire and never cooled .
A woman who has never begged. Who has never asked for forgiveness and never will.
Her hair is pale gold—sunlight boiled down to metal, heavy in a single braid that swings behind her, neat and severe. It slices through the smoke like a blade of its own. Like it could cut through fate itself.
She walks toward me.
The world is fire and ash behind her—burning buildings, crumbling temple walls, torn silk banners, the sky streaked with eclipse-light. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look back.
She stops in front of me, expression unreadable. Eyes sharp enough to cut.
Then…
She holds out her hand. Palm up. An offering.
A way out.
I reach for her—
And the dream dissolves like smoke in darkness.
***
The woman comes every night now.
She never speaks.
She never touches me.
But she watches . She waits .
Each time, the world around her shifts—blurs, breaks, rebuilds. Sometimes The Garden is burning. Sometimes it’s blooming. Sometimes it’s nothing but dust and bones.
But she is always the same. Blades at her hips. Moonlight on her skin. Golden braid swaying like a countdown.
Last night, the dream was different .
She didn’t walk toward me.
She walked ahead.
I followed.
Her steps were silent as shadow, her boots trailing no sound across the grass of the inner sanctum. The temple loomed behind us—tall and cold and watchful—but she led me west, toward the grove wall.
The air grew quieter there. Softer. Less… guarded .
I didn’t see the wards, not exactly, but I could feel them—humming beneath my skin like bees under glass.
But near the western edge, the hum stuttered.
It dipped low. Almost silent.
She stopped there, just beyond the elder tree with its roots like twisted silver. She looked over her shoulder at me. Just once.
Then vanished.
I woke with my pulse in my throat.
Today, I walk the gardens with slow steps and downcast eyes.
But I glance west.
I always glance west now.
***
The grove wall looms taller up close.
It's the outermost boundary—The Garden of Selene is more like a sanctum nested within sanctums—but this wall is the last one before the real woods begin. The trees grow thicker out here. Wilder. The air feels different, like it belongs to itself.
I move slow. Careful.
Every step is a held breath, every glance over my shoulder a prayer I don’t say aloud.
I’m only supposed to be gathering herbs. A simple chore. One of the few I’m still allowed outside the inner sanctum to do.
But today, my path curves west.
Toward the elder tree.
Its roots sprawl like veins across the earth, silver-gray and gnarled, wrapped around old stones. There’s a silence here that doesn’t feel holy. It feels like waiting .
The dream led me here.
Last night, she stopped beneath this tree—the woman, or whatever version of her my mind keeps conjuring—and turned to me like she was waiting for me to catch up. She didn’t say anything. She never does. But her presence was a command all its own.
Today, I reach out and press my palm against the bark.
The wards still hum faintly beneath the surface. But here, they flicker—thin, like stretched silk. Not gone. Not broken. Just… weak.
My pulse hammers.
This is real.
This is real .
A sign from Selene.
I don’t stay long. I can’t afford to. But as I retreat, careful not to leave a single broken stem or footprint behind, my ribs buzz with something close to fear… and even closer to hope.
***
Each day now, I move a little more carelessly. Take another robe when no one’s looking. Bury stolen coin and a water-skin under the grove wall, beneath a flat stone masked with moss .
I haven’t yet sorted out how I’ll get blood—not in the wild, not with no willing donors with soft wrists and throats bared… It’s what I need most, and I don’t have a plan. But Selene led me this far. She will provide.
And at night, I return. Always to her.
The woman.
She has no name in the dream, but I recognize the shape of her.
Her braid is long and wild now, like it’s been undone and re-braided a hundred times by smoke and blood and wind.
Her eyes are cruel. Beautiful.
But each time I see her, I feel less afraid.
Each time, she feels more real .
***
The bells toll soft and distant—three notes to signal the ending of another night. Dawn approaches.
I stand with the others in the upper sanctum, hands folded tight, the echo of the hymn still clinging to the stone arches overhead. My voice is hoarse from the offering, lips dry from too many verses repeated too often.
“Selene above, our silver crown. Selene beneath, our steady grave.”
Ria doesn’t look at me during the final prayer. But as the incense is snuffed and the priestess dismisses us with a sharp clap of her hands, I feel it—that familiar brush of presence just over my shoulder. I glance back, and she nods once.
Tight. Formal. Like I’m already a ghost.
She doesn’t speak .
Neither do I.
There’s nothing left to say between us that wouldn’t unravel everything we used to be.
I bow with the rest, murmur the final lines, and slip quietly out of the sanctum.
The wind sings like a warning through the trees as I return to my chambers, too calm for how fast my heart is beating.
I close the door behind me and kneel beneath the narrow window where the moonlight spills across the stone floor.
And I close my eyes.
Not to pray.
Not to dream.
Tonight, I run.