18. Selis
Selis
I don’t sleep.
I lie there with my back to what’s left of the fire, jaw tight, eyes closed, and Naera’s voice lodged in my spine like a thorn I can’t dig out.
“I think I was sent to save you.”
It’s absurd.
Naive.
Pathetic.
I don’t need saving.
I’m the one with the blade. The one who doesn’t flinch when the screaming starts. The one who’s walked away from burning things more times than I can count.
If anyone here is breaking, it’s her—fragile and glowing and shackled to something divine and stupid. And somehow still looking at me like I’m the myth she’s been whispering prayers to in the dark.
And yet…
… and yet …
Her voice won’t leave me.
It curls behind my ribs, slow and warm and wrong, like the memory of a fever. Something half-sweet, half-rotten .
I shift onto my back, blinking up through the canopy where the stars hang pale and sharp and distant. They look like nailheads hammered into a coffin lid.
“I think I was sent to save you.”
I want to laugh.
I want to spit.
I want her to stop looking at me like there’s something left under my skin worth unearthing.
Because the worst part?
The part I hate the most?
Is that—for a second. Just one damned second—I wanted her to be right.
I think I might’ve even believed it.
I must drift off, because I wake to the sound of hoofbeats. But they don’t sound like horses. They sound like something older. Heavier.
It’s the kind of sound that pulls you out of your body. I sit up slowly, hand already moving to the hilt of my knife. The fire’s out.
Behind me, Naera stirs, her breath catching. “What is that—”
“Quiet,” I whisper.
Then the mist rolls in.
No breeze. No warning. It pours between the trees like it’s alive, like it remembers how to slither. Too clean. Too cold. Too deliberate.
The hairs rise on the back of my neck.
And then I see it.
A carriage.
Pitch-black and gleaming like obsidian, its surface polished enough to reflect the stars—and the faces of those who should never see them. Its wheels make no sound as they move over frost and root. Above it, a banner flutters: deep black, stitched with the silver outline of a lantern.
The air is still. Dead still. But the flag moves anyway.
It flutters slow and steady atop the black carriage—the mark of the Black Lantern Guild. No wind. No movement in the trees. But the fabric ripples like it’s answering a summons.
I don’t blink, but I stand.
Naera rises with me. Quiet. Careful. She doesn’t speak, just presses closer—close enough that her glow brushes my back, faint as breath.
Like she’s trusting me to protect her.
Ridiculous.
Her voice is barely sound. “How is the flag—”
“It’s enchanted,” I mutter. “Always is.”
She turns to me, eyes wide. “You know them?”
Before I can answer, the carriage stops. Not in a way that suggests slowing. Just—stillness. All at once. As if it was never moving at all.
The door opens, and from the velvet-dark interior steps a woman in a long black coat, silver-fastened, her boots silent as sin on the ground.
She’s tall. Her hair is raven-black and pinned up with surgical precision, not a strand out of place. Pretty in that sharp way vipers are pretty. Her lips curve when she sees me.
“Selis,” she says. “There you are.”
Naera tenses beside me.
I don’t move.
Veyra always starts like this. Warm. Familiar. Like the edge of a knife tucked into a bouquet.
“You’ve been hard to track,” the woman continues, voice smooth as smoke. “We found William dead not far from here. Messy work. I’m glad you’re in one piece. Unlike him, you would’ve been missed.”
I scoff, just once, though my tone matches hers. “Come now, Veyra, you don’t miss anyone.”
“Not true,” she says, tilting her head. “I miss good knives and bad habits. You’re both.”
Her gaze slides past me to Naera, and something in her expression sharpens.
“And you must be Naera of The Garden,” she says. “Pleasure.”
She says it like she’s offering her hand to royalty. And she does—gloved, polished, motion perfect.
Naera doesn’t take it.
Can’t. Her wrists are still bound, silver cuffs glinting in the pale light. Veyra notices. Her gaze flicks to the metal, just for a second, then she draws her hand back, slow and elegant, as if she meant to tuck it away all along.
“My name’s Veyra,” she adds.
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Her gaze lifts from Veyra's pristine glove to her face—sharp, pale, and too calm.
“How do you know my name?” Naera asks quietly.
Veyra just smiles, unbothered.
“We’ve been hoping to meet you. Sooner, rather than later.” She gestures toward the carriage. “Come in. No need to freeze out here in the dirt.”
I glance at Naera.
She’s wide-eyed now, pulse fluttering at her throat. She feels it too—the wrongness curling out from the thing on wheels behind Veyra. It hums. Not like a sound. Like pressure. Like a warning .
The kind of hum that makes your teeth itch and your shadow look the wrong way.
I jerk my head toward the door. “Go on. Get in the carriage.”
Naera’s eyes snap to mine. “You want me to step into that ?”
“It’s worse out here.”
That part, at least, is true.
She doesn’t believe me. But she trusts me. Enough. She climbs the steps, slow and careful, like something inside might bite.
Veyra watches her go, then turns back to me.
I don’t look at her.
Not yet.
I step into the dark behind Naera.
And just like that, it swallows us.
Because the inside of the Black Lantern’s carriage isn’t a carriage at all.
It’s a house.
A hall.
A maze built from blood and intention.
And we just walked in…