9. Naera
Naera
The ground shakes again.
No, not shakes—trembles. Like something massive is crawling just beneath the surface. The trees groan around us, frost breaking off in glinting shards as the roots twist and strain.
I freeze. Every instinct screaming.
Then they come.
Monsters. At least two, maybe more in the shadows, hulking shapes that drag the dark with them. Their skin gleams like wet bark and rotted bone, glistening with moss and old blood. Their mouths are too wide, stretching across where their faces should be. Rows of teeth. Too many eyes.
I can’t breathe.
One crashes into the clearing, and Selis is already moving—limping, but fast. Blade out. She drives it into the thing’s shoulder with a snarl, wrenching sideways even as it slams her into a tree hard enough to shake snow from the branches.
She crumples to one knee, coughing.
“Selis—!”
Another one surges toward her from the left.
I don’t think. I run.
I grab a fallen branch, thick and half-frozen, and swing it with everything I have. It cracks across the thing’s snout, not enough to wound, but enough to turn its attention .
Its head whips toward me, teeth dripping, body twitching like a struck animal.
I scramble back—
And Selis rises behind it, blood pouring from her ribs, face pale with fury. She plunges her knife into its spine.
The creature shrieks and crumbles.
Selis sways on her feet.
She’s losing too much blood. She won’t make it through another hit. She won’t make it unless I—
Unless you give, the voice murmurs.
Not mine. Selene's? The voice threads through my ribs like silk and shadow, blooming behind my eyes like moonlight splitting stone.
I drop the bloodied branch and I run, sliding through blood and half-melted frost. The smell of iron is thick, smothering. Her coat is soaked. Her breath shudders between her teeth. I grab her arm.
“Don’t touch me,” she growls, but it’s weak, breathless.
“Too late,” I snap, and press my glowing hand to the wide open wound in her side. Her blood is hot against my palm. My glow pulses—stronger than ever—and warmth floods out from my skin, seeping into her wound.
She jerks, tries to pull away. I hold her there.
The light spills brighter—hot and pulsing—blinding for a breath. I flinch but don’t pull away, my hand still pressed tight to her side. Selis gasps, body arching as her wound begins to seal—too fast. Too smooth. It glows beneath her skin like silver fire chasing out rot.
Then the air breaks.
A sound like bone snapping underfoot, a snarl cracking through the stillness—the last monster lunges for us .
"Selis—!" I scream, grabbing her arm.
She’s already moving. I feel it in the twist of her body, the snap of her muscles aligning. Her hand closes around her knife and we spin as one.
The blade flashes. It connects mid-leap—buries itself in the beast’s throat. But momentum doesn’t care about victory.
The thing crashes into us like a wave of rot and muscle. I hit the ground first, breath punched from my lungs. Selis grunts beside me—caught under one of its limbs, struggling.
It’s heavy. Reeking. Still twitching.
I choke on the stench of wet bark and old meat as panic sears through me. My hands scrabble through bark and gore, pushing at the slick carcass. A rib catches my shoulder, and I bite back a sob.
“Selis?” I gasp, throat raw.
“I’ve had better nights,” she growls somewhere under the thing.
Still alive. Still fighting. Thank Selene.
I claw my way free, fingers sinking into hide that peels and squelches. I drag myself out from beneath the bulk of it, blood and black ichor slicking my cloak, matting my hair.
Selis is next—half-pinned, swearing violently under her breath. I grab her hand.
“Move with me,” I say, voice shaking but firm.
We heave—together—and she slips free with a grunt, landing hard beside me in the dirt.
For a second, we just breathe. The one sound is my heart, hammering in my chest like it’s trying to outrun everything we just survived. We’re alive. Covered in blood. But alive.
I fall to my knees, trembling, my hands slick with her blood, the monster’s blood, maybe mine too .
She rolls onto her side, coughing, then glares at me like I’m the cause of it all.
“What the fuck was that?” she rasps.
Her voice is shredded—half smoke, half broken glass—and for a second, I don’t know what she’s talking about.
“The monster?” I ask, dazed.
I try to wipe blood from my face but all I do is smear it.
“No.” Her head tilts just enough to meet my eyes. Sharp. Accusing. Shaken. “ You. The glowing. The healing.” She gestures weakly toward her side, where new, pink skin gleams beneath the rent in her coat. “What the fuck was that?”
I sit back on my heels, heart still thudding unevenly. My hands are coated in gore—hers and the creature’s—and they still glow faintly, like the power hasn’t quite left me. Like it’s waiting to be called again.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. My voice is hoarse, unsteady. “It just… came over me.”
Selis narrows her eyes. Blood mats her braid, glistens against her jaw. She looks at me like I’ve just split the sky open. Like I’m something strange and untrustworthy—and maybe I am.
“What do you mean?”
I wrap my arms around myself, still kneeling in the dirt, still shaking. Hesitant. The memory is still vivid. Not a voice, not really, but something close . A pull from the place where my glow lives, ancient and insistent. A whisper from Selene, not in words, but in certainty.
I had to heal Selis.
And so I did.
And it worked.
“There was a feeling,” I say quietly. “A whisper. I didn’t know what it meant until I touched you. ”
Selis drags herself upright with a grunt, one hand braced against the tree behind her. She looks half-dead—mud-smeared, blood-streaked, trembling from loss and exhaustion. Her blade rests across her lap, limp and forgotten.
But her eyes are sharp. Still dangerous.
“Great,” she mutters. “So you’re a glowing miracle and a liar.”
“I didn’t lie,” I snap, sharper than I mean to. “I didn’t know. ”
She scoffs. “No?”
I lift my chin. “I didn’t know it would work,” I repeat, quieter this time. “I didn’t even know it could .”
Her gaze searches me for a long moment. Then she presses a hand gently to her side. The blood there has stopped. The skin is whole.
“And what did it feel like?” she asks. Her voice is calm, but there’s something beneath it. Something... almost afraid.
I open my mouth. Close it.
How do I explain something that felt like being opened from the inside out? Like being seen.
“Like fire,” I murmur. “But not burning. Just… right. Like something was meant to happen.”
Selis snorts, tipping her head back against the bark. Her eyes close for just a moment. Her breathing’s ragged. Not dying anymore—but not steady either.
The clearing stinks of blood and rot and smoke from old, burnt things. The creatures are still. The silence feels stolen.
I sit across from her in the frost-dusted dirt, legs trembling too badly to hold me upright.
Her gaze finds me. It’s not grateful. It’s furious.
“You should’ve run,” she says, low and hoarse.
I blink.
Her jaw clenches. She turns her face away, nostrils flaring like she’s trying to breathe through whatever’s clawing at her chest. Then she looks at me again, eyes sharp and dark and burning with something that doesn’t feel like anger, but isn’t kindness either.
“You could’ve gotten away. You had the cuffs off. You had a window.”
“Is that what you wanted?” I ask, heat rising in my throat. “For me to leave you to die?”
“I wouldn’t have blamed you.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
She doesn’t answer right away. Just stares at me like I’m something she doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to start.
“It’s what any sane person would’ve done,” she mutters finally. “Any smart person.”
“Then I guess I’m neither.”
My voice is too soft. Too steady. It makes something flicker in her eyes—just for a breath. Then she shoves herself upright with a grimace, wiping her bloody palm on the torn edge of her coat.
Selis laughs, sharp and bitter. “You’re a real piece of work.”
“And you’re still bleeding,” I shoot back, pointing to her leg. “I stopped the wound on your ribs, but you’re not invincible.”
She scoffs. “I never said I was.”
Something in the way she says it makes my chest ache.
For a second, just one, she doesn’t look like the monster that chained me. She looks like the woman from the dream—the girl in the mud, screaming for someone no one ever came to save.
“Well. I’m still here,” I murmur.
Selis meets my gaze again. This time she doesn’t look away.
“I noticed,” she says, quieter now. Less armor in her voice. “That’s what bothers me. ”
We sit in silence, broken only by the occasional rustle of wind through broken branches and the drip of melting frost from the trees.
She’s right. I could’ve run.
But something—fate, Selene, my own cursed heart—kept me here.
And I think, just for a moment, Selis doesn’t know whether to hate me for it or not.
Selis shifts against the tree with a wince, blood darkening the fabric at her leg, and a second gash on her torso.
“I need to try again,” I whisper.
She doesn’t stop me. Just watches with that unreadable, half-daring stare—like she’s not sure whether I’m going to help her or open her throat. I inch closer across the frost-covered ground, careful not to jostle her too hard. My fingers hover just above the wound.
“Let me,” I murmur.
A soft glow rises from my palms. Faint. Flickering. I press them gently to the gash, the same way I did before—but this time, nothing happens.
The light gutters out almost instantly. No warmth. No pull. No closing of flesh or knitting of muscle. Just pain. Just blood. Just the low hiss Selis exhales through her teeth.
I try again. And again.
Still nothing.
Frustration prickles behind my eyes. I lean closer, whispering, “Selene, please. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong…”
Then, quieter, in my head, I think, She’s hurt. Help me… The wind brushes my cheek like pity, but the power doesn’t come.