6. Selis
Selis
She glows.
Even now—dirty, cuffed, curled on the frozen ground like a stray—she glows faintly under the broken spill of moonlight. Pale light clings to her skin like frost that never melts, subtle but unmistakable. It makes her look unearthly. Untouchable. Marked.
I sit on my blanket sharpening my blade, slow and deliberate, the rasp of whetstone against steel cutting clean through the silence between us.
Daggers. Always preferred them. Not just for the intimacy of the kill, but for how easy they are to hide. How fast they make a point. I keep mine honed like habits—cruel and reliable.
But my gaze keeps flicking back to her all the same.
That soft silver shimmer bleeding off her skin. That quiet, traitorous beauty .
It sets my teeth on edge.
It’s like caging a star.
And not in any kind way.
Stars are meant to burn themselves out at a distance, to be wished on by fools and then forgotten.
Not dragged down. Not chained. Not breathing five feet from where I sharpen my knives.
I shift the dagger in my hand, angling the blade so it catches the morning light. A glint. A threat.
"You're a terrible fugitive, you know," I say conversationally. "Leaving a trail a blind man could follow. Glowing like a damned lantern."
She doesn't answer.
She’s already slipping under—body unwinding into something boneless with sleep, breath slowing. Her hands twitch faintly against the cuffs, the chain rattling like breath caught in a throat.
Exhaustion drags her down too fast to fight.
I don’t trust people who sleep easy. But she’s not people. She’s a bounty. A task with a heartbeat. A problem dressed in false prophecy.
I let time pass like smoke — silent and slow. We sleep through most of the day, hidden beneath the overgrowth, the sky thick with overcast and the trees heavy with silence.
I don’t sleep much.
I never do for long. Not unless I’ve picked the locks on every exit and paid the silence to keep watch.
Nocturnal life suits me. Fewer questions. More monsters. Easier to deliver bodies in the dark without the moral fuss of daylight.
I pass the blade over the stone again, pressure just right, familiar and rhythmic. The sound masks most things.
Most.
But not the broken little noise she makes in her sleep.
Not that.
It slips through the hush—raw and fragile—and lands in the space between us like a dropped secret.
My blade stills mid-stroke .
Naera jerks slightly, brow furrowing, breath catching.
Then—a whisper.
Soft. Raw. Torn from some place deeper than pain or fear.
"Selis..."
My name. Shaped like a wound. Bleeding out of her like a prayer she doesn’t know she’s making.
It lands somewhere behind my ribs, sharp and silent, before I can crush it down to ashes.
She shudders—a full-body flinch, like she’s been touched by something cold and cruel.
Then she gasps awake, spine bowing, hands scrambling. The chain rattles loud in the hush of the clearing. Her eyes find me immediately. Wide. Glassy. Brimming with the tail-end of whatever she saw behind her eyelids.
I'm already watching her.
Of course I am.
I don't move. Don't blink. Just let her see that I'm still here—still real—still the thing the gods sent to hunt her down.
"Bad dream?" I ask, voice low, dark amusement curling in my throat.
She swallows, blinking hard. Her voice is a cracked whisper: "You were in it."
I grin—slow, sharp, unapologetic.
“Flattered,” I say, slipping the dagger back into its sheath with a satisfying click. “Hope I looked good while ruining your life.”
She doesn’t rise to it. Just draws the torn edges of her cloak tighter, knuckles white, glare sharp as shattered glass.
She wants to spit something venomous—I can see it brewing—but all she does is sit there, breathing hard, like she’s trying not to collapse into whatever abyss that dream left behind.
Her silence isn’t surrender. It’s survival.
I study her a second longer, then tilt my head up.
The sky’s already bleeding blue into black. The trees above us shiver with wind, their bare fingers scraping clouds that move too fast.
Sun’s gone. Shadows thickening. Night rolling in like it has teeth.
Good.
Dark’s always been better to me than light.
Time to move.
I get to my feet, stretching until my spine cracks loud in the quiet. Then I glance down at her—still on the ground, too proud to ask for help, too stubborn to break. There’s something almost noble in it.
Almost.
I stoop just long enough to grab a nearby stick. Smirking, I jab her lightly in the side with the end.
"Up, starlight," I drawl. "Don't want to miss your sacrificial appointment."
She flinches, not from pain, but from recognition. The words hit where I aim them: deep. Personal.
She looks up at me with murder in her eyes.
Good.
Let her hate me. Let her spit fury instead of sobs. Anger keeps things interesting. Anger keeps her from breaking too soon.
I step away, crouching by the tree where I anchored her chain. It gives easily as I unlock it. The chain rattles as I haul it in, the sound bright and metallic and cruel.
I don’t wait for her to find her feet.
I just tug—one quick jerk—and start walking.
The woods stretch ahead of us, cold and hushed and indifferent .
The Garden waits at the end of it.
A temple of stone and blood and lies, waiting to take her back.
I’m just the thing dragging her there.
And if the gods don’t like how I do it?
They can come down and stop me.
***
The woods stretch endless ahead, brittle and cold.
I set a brutal pace just to be cruel, the chain tugging sharp every time she lags.
Behind me, Naera stumbles. I hear the slap of her boots against ice and the drag of her ruined cloak catching frost and mud.
She's shivering hard now—I can hear it in the hitch of her breath, see it in the way her shadow shakes on the snow.
But she doesn’t beg.
Not yet.
“Keep up,” I call over my shoulder, voice light, idle. Almost bored. “Or I’ll haul you like a sack of potatoes. Might be an improvement, honestly.”
She says nothing.
The chain rattles between us, a music of ownership.
After a while, her breathing turns ragged, thin clouds puffing into the morning air.
I adjust my grip on it like it’s a leash.
“Y’know,” I add, smirking, “if you really wanted to make this easier, you could crawl. Saves your feet. Saves my patience. Win-win.”
“You talk too much,” she snaps.
A flash of heat in her voice. Fury bubbling up through the exhaustion. Her first real bite since I caught her.
“There she is,” I say, glancing back just long enough to catch the flush blooming high across her cheeks. “Knew you had teeth buried somewhere under all that trembling.”
She glares at me, eyes like ice cracked under pressure. Beautiful, even in anger. Especially in anger.
"You think cruelty makes you clever?" she bites out.
I shrug, unbothered. "No. But it keeps me rich. And breathing."
Naera stumbles again on a patch of black ice. I slow just enough to keep the chain from yanking her off her feet entirely—not out of mercy, but because dragging an unconscious body would slow me down in reality.
But she notices.
Of course she does. I see it in the way her mouth flattens. In the way her spine straightens like she's trying to grow claws just from willpower alone.
“You want me afraid of you,” she says quietly. Not a question. Not quite a dare. “It would make it easier for you to hate me.”
I arch a brow, intrigued despite myself.
"And here I thought you were just slow," I say, voice dripping with mockery. "Turns out you're also a philosopher."
Her lip curls, almost a snarl.
"It matters, doesn't it?" she presses, voice tight. "If you fear me, you can pretend you're doing the right thing. That you're putting down a beast."
I grin—wide, slow, savoring the taste of this little argument like good whiskey. I turn to walk backward just to face her, keeping perfect balance even on the uneven frostbitten trail.
“Sweetheart,” I purr, “I don’t need to fear you to chain you up and march you straight to your pretty little execution. ”
I pause, tilt my head, enjoying the flicker of unease that tightens her jaw.
“Do you have any idea how many people I’ve killed?” I ask, all honey-venom. “Come on. Ask me. You’re wondering now, aren’t you?”
She does. I see the wariness in her eyes, the calculation, the morbid curiosity fighting her better instincts.
“How many?” she asks, softly.
I flash a grin like a blade. “Only psychopaths keep a body count.”
The words are light. Easy. Like smoke drifting off a blade. I don’t tell her the truth. Seventy-three. Seventy-three kills. Not all clean. Not all earned. But all mine.
Silence spills in like blood from a deep cut. Thick. Final.
“You think I’m the monster.”
“I know you are,” she says—and she doesn’t even flinch.
But there’s something in her voice. Not fear. Not hatred. Just… sadness.
“Good,” I whisper, almost fond. “We’re starting honest.”
She trips again but catches herself, refusing to fall, stumbling forward with that stubborn pride I’m starting to find addictive.
"You fear something," she says through clenched teeth. "Maybe not me. But something."
I laugh—a sharp, genuine bark of sound that startles a few crows from a nearby tree. They scatter, black feathers blending into the dark sky above.
"Fear is for men who think they have things to lose," I say.
Naera stares at me. Not blinking. Like she’s trying to peel me apart with nothing but those too-knowing eyes. Like she can see what’s buried underneath the bone and steel.
She can't .
No one can.
Not anymore.
Still… that look—defiant, unrelenting—it makes something inside me twitch. My grin thins, sharpens. Gets dangerous.
“Save your breath, little star,” I say, jerking the chain just hard enough to make her stumble again. “Or you won’t have enough left to scream when they cut your pretty throat.”
Her chin lifts, defiant despite the tremble in her limbs.
"If I scream," she says, voice steady, "it won't be for them."