27. Naera
Naera
We fall out of the carriage like we’ve been exorcised.
My bare feet hit frozen earth. Selis stumbles beside me, cursing under her breath, one arm still bloody from where she slit Veyra’s throat.
The door behind us slams shut on its own. And then… the wheels creak. The black carriage groans forward. Its flag doesn’t flutter. It leans. Tilts toward the fog like it knows which way to go.
“It’s leaving,” I breathe, stunned.
Selis stands at my side, panting. She watches the thing go, jaw tight with something like awe, like wariness.
We both stare as it drifts away—across frost-laced roots, past the tree line, into the fog.
Then it’s gone.
Like it was never really here at all.
Selis laughs. It starts low, dragging up her throat against her will, then blooms into something real. Wild. Unhinged. She presses a hand to her ribs and lets it roll out of her, shaking her head.
“Fuck,” she says between breaths. “I thought for sure we were going to die in that thing.”
I don't laugh .
Because I don’t know where we are. Not exactly. But I feel it. In my ribs. In my teeth. In the hush between heartbeats. Like the ground itself is whispering my name back to me, calling me forward.
My heart clenches tight.
“We’re close,” I whisper.
Selis sobers at once.
“To what?”
But I don’t answer.
Instead, I take one step forward, hand out like I’m feeling for a pulse in the air.
And there it is—deep under my ribs, low and aching.
The pull. That golden thread thrumming faint and steady like breath in the dark.
Not a dream. A direction. The same tether I felt in The Black Lantern, when all I had was instinct and a name and the knowledge that Selis needed me.
I follow that tether now. Downhill. Past the frostbitten bramble. Toward the old trees who remember too much, whose roots are braided with secrets.
“Starlight!” Selis calls after me, her voice laced with something between caution and concern. “Where are you going?”
I don’t turn around.
“I’m not certain…”
My feet sink into the snow as I move forward, each step numbing more than the last. I hadn’t thought to grab shoes when I ran through the mirror. I’d only thought of Selis. Now, the cold bites up my calves, sharp and unforgiving, but I keep walking.
Behind me, Selis groans under her breath. “Oh sure. Let’s just follow the mysterious mystical tug into the wilderness. Brilliant plan.”
But she doesn’t stop me, and she doesn’t turn back.
She follows .
We pass through thinning woods, the branches bare and bowed like they’re listening. Snow hushes the world. Our steps are the only sound—soft crunches beneath us like bones wrapped in silk. The air smells of rust and frost and something older than both.
And then—
I see it.
“...Selene…”
A statue rises from the hollow like a sentinel. Towering, ancient, the goddess carved in stone—weather-worn and wind-smoothed, her face nearly gone. One hand lifted in quiet benediction. The other rests on a sword, point down, like a promise—or a warning.
I run to it.
My bare feet sting in the snow, but I don’t stop. The pull in my chest tightens, urgent and aching.
At first, I don’t see them. Just the curve of earth. The crumbling stone. A field gone still beneath the moonlight and my goddess.
But then—I do.
Stones rise from the ground like crooked teeth, half-swallowed by time. Moonflowers curl around them—dried, pale, clinging like ghosts.
It takes me too long to understand what they are.
Graves.
Not like the ones in the Garden’s sanctuary, where the priests rest beneath sanctified sigils and polished marble. Not where the servants are remembered with flowers and light.
These—
These are hidden…
Forgotten.
And then I know…
These are the ones who glowed.
The daughters. The ones who failed to bring Selene back to us. The ones who came before me.
Selis slows behind me, footsteps crunching softly in the snow. “What is this place?” she asks, voice low. Cautious. “Have you been here before?”
I shake my head. “No. Never.”
I turn in a slow circle, taking it in. The hollowness of the air. The hush. The way even the moonlight feels thinner here, reverent somehow. I’d imagined it differently. Bigger. Grand, maybe. Sacred.
But this is quiet. It's the kind of graveyard you only build when you’re ashamed of the dead.
“It’s where The Garden brings the bodies,” I say. “Of the ones who failed. The daughters who couldn’t… couldn’t carry the light.”
The names carved into the stones shimmer faintly beneath a crust of frost. Crescent script. The kind only we were ever taught. The kind that never belonged to the world beyond The Garden’s walls. That wasn’t meant to. And yet… here it is. Cold and real. Just bones and stone.
Selis breaks the silence with a scoff, dry and quiet behind me. “So this is where they planned to bury you?”
My breath clouds the air. “If I failed… yes.”
She lets out a frustrated exhale, the kind that sounds like it’s been held in too long. “Naera, you would have failed. Because none of this—” she gestures vaguely at the statue, the stones, the sky— “none of this was ever possible. You were chasing a myth they wrapped in silk and knives. ”
I don’t answer her. Don’t rise to the bait. Just turn my gaze to the graves instead.
They speak more honestly than anyone ever did.
I move among them like a ghost retracing old steps. My fingers drift over lichen and worn stone, over moons etched in quiet desperation. Some graves have names. Some… nothing at all.
I stop at one. The breath catches in my throat.
Lira.
Her name is still clear, still sharp in the stone. The last to die. The one who smiled when they dragged her away, like she knew it would end here. Like it was always meant to.
My knees give out before I realize I’m falling.
The snow soaks into the hem of my dress, clings to my skin.
My toes are numb. My hands tremble as they brush the frozen earth, as if I could touch her memory, feel her again.
My vision blurs. A tear slides hot down my cheek, then another, until they fall steady, soundless, soaking into the snow and lichen.
Behind me, Selis says nothing.
No quip. No clever remark.
She just waits.
And somehow, that silence—the mercy of it—is what undoes me.