35. Naera
Naera
Selis hasn’t spoken to me in hours.
It’s better this way. I have to believe that…
Every step we take toward The Garden is a step she can still walk away from.
And if she does—if she turns around and never looks back, or even collects the bounty like she threatened—then good. Let her. Let her hate me. Let her spit my name like a curse.
Because Selis is a survivor. She always has been.
And the more she hates me, the more likely she’ll survive this.
I told myself I’d rather die than see her on that altar—bound and bleeding, the way I saw her in the vision. I meant it.
I still do.
Now I’m proving it. With every breath. Every blister. Every heartbeat that doesn’t belong to me anymore.
She walks ahead of me, not too far—but far enough that I feel the distance between us. Boots crunching into the moss like she resents the earth for holding her up. Her back is rigid, too straight. Her braid swings like a blade, tight with fury.
She hasn’t looked back once.
And I don’t blame her.
Behind me, Rialeth murmurs the old prayers. The ones we were raised on .
“Moon above, guide the vessel’s steps. Moon above, gather the bones…”
I flinch and block her out.
I don’t want the comfort of it. Not now. Not when I know what it was always meant to prepare me for. Not when I know who I’m walking away from. Not when her silence is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.
It howls. It gnaws. It echoes in the hollow places I didn’t know I had.
But I don’t have a choice. Not when staying away means my sisters—my siblings, glowing girls with soft hands and frightened eyes—die in one fell swoop.
We may not share blood. We may not be close. Some I barely know beyond whispered prayers and shared silence in the halls. But they are mine. They are my responsibility.
And Selene told me to come back… to fix what I broke… to unmake what has festered in my absence.
This burden—this ruin—it belongs to me. And though I may long for something else, for something soft yet sharp, for Selis…
I can’t have her.
Not when the cost of holding on is a temple of bodies bathed in moonlight. Not when the only way to keep her safe is to make her let me go.
***
The trees change first.
It’s subtle at the start—just a stretch of taller trunks, bark slicker than it should be. The kind that catches the light wrong. Then I notice the branches—they don’t sway with the wind .
There isn’t wind.
Just a deep stillness that presses against my skin like breath held too long.
The trees rise higher with every step. Towering.
Ancient. Their trunks widen until five people could lie head-to-foot across one base and still not span the width.
The bark is black-silver, smooth as glass, and when I brush my fingers to it in passing.
It hums like a second pulse that doesn’t belong to me.
Then, at last, the forest opens—and there it is.
The Grove of Selene.
The last border.
The first place we were all meant to kneel.
I stop just at the edge. My boots still on moss. The grove's silvered roots stretched out like fingers waiting to close.
Just for a moment, I breathe it in.
The air here is different. Not heavy. Not choking. Just… full. Like every breath I take was breathed by someone else first. Like Selene’s watching through every leaf.
Beside me, Rialeth lowers herself to the earth. She touches her fingers to the soil. Her lips move, but no sound escapes.
It’s an old prayer. One I know.
I kneel too, slower. My knees press into the damp moss as I reach my hand forward and whisper it in my mind, not aloud. I don’t need the sound to mean it.
Moon above, see me. Moon above, let it be enough.
I feel Selis before I hear her. A crackle in the air. A change in pressure. She turns and finds us kneeling, hands pressed to the earth. I rise fast, brushing moss from my palms. She’s already glaring.
“What is this place?” Her voice is low, ragged. Like gravel in a dry throat. She hasn’t forgiven me. She might never .
“The Grove of Selene,” I say, nodding toward the trees that arch high above, cloaking the sky.
Her gaze travels upward, narrowing. “It looks like the woods are swallowing the sky.”
“That’s the point.”
She scoffs—sharp, humorless. “Yeah. I’m sure they love that.”
She doesn’t kneel. Of course she doesn’t. She doesn’t bow. She doesn’t do anything but stand there, arms stiff at her sides, like she’s waiting for The Grove to bare its teeth so she can fight it.
But she slows. Her footsteps lose their usual bite. Because The Grove does that to people. Even the angry ones. Even Selis.
It doesn’t demand reverence. It pulls it from you. Quietly. Unrelenting. Like gravity.
And I feel it already. The Garden is near, and there’s no turning back...
The Grove breathes.
The deeper we walk, the more alive it feels—not just the trees, but the earth itself.
Beneath each footstep, the moss pulses faintly, like a heartbeat.
Flowers I’ve never seen before push up from the roots, blooming open in slow, luminous spirals.
Pale lavender. Bruised blue. Soft as breath and glowing faintly under the cloud-thinned moon.
Wind snakes low along the ground. It’s the same wind I felt as I had run away weeks ago. Strange wind. Not cold. Not warm. It moves with intent, like a hand brushing along the hem of my robes.
It stirs my hair as if to welcome me back, then follows Selis’s braid like it remembers her too somehow. She stiffens every time it shifts direction.
The Grove is responding. To me. Maybe to both of us .
My glow brightens the farther in we walk. I don’t mean to make it happen. I don’t know how to stop it.
Rialeth doesn’t seem surprised. She walks behind me, murmuring a prayer so old I barely remember the words. The trees lean in closer. Their limbs don’t sway, but they bend, like they’re listening.
“How much farther?” she asks after a long stretch of silence.
Her voice startles me—not because it’s loud, but because it isn’t. It’s flat. Distant. Like I’m a stranger she’s making polite conversation with on a road neither of us want to be on.
“A few miles,” I say.
She doesn’t answer.
That’s the worst part.
Not her shouting. Not her sharp little barbs. I could take those— welcome them. Anything but this: the silence. The deliberate withholding.
She walks like every step is a punishment. Her boots chew up moss and root, her braid swinging behind her like a whip. I feel the weight of her anger behind me like a second sun—hot and impossible to ignore.
I want to tell her I know what she’s doing. That I see through it. That her fury is armor, not truth.
I want to tell her that I love her anyway…
But I don’t.
Because if I say it now, she’ll try to save me. Again.
And if she tries—she dies.
So I keep walking.
Then I stumble.
My ankle rolls and my balance goes with it. I suck in a breath, sharp and startled, and reach out before I even think.
Toward Selis .
My fingers twitch toward the line of her shoulder, the familiar leather of her cloak. But she doesn’t move.
Instead, Rialeth does. She’s there in a breath, one arm catching my elbow, the other steadying my waist. Her grip is practiced, gentle but sure.
She smells like pressed herbs and temple stone, and for a beat—just a beat—it feels like I’m sixteen again, caught slipping barefoot through the library halls, saved by the same hands that taught me which prayers were forbidden.
“Careful,” she murmurs, voice low and chiding. “The Grove watches.”
I nod, numb, and start to murmur thanks—but then I see Selis. She has turned. She’s watching.
But that’s all.
Her eyes, dark and unreadable, track every movement. Her jaw is clenched. Her arms hang stiff at her sides. She doesn’t come toward me. Doesn’t speak.
Just watches.
Like she’s measuring something inside herself and doesn’t like the shape of it.
I’m still glowing. I know I am—too bright now, casting shadows on the silver-glass trunks of the trees around us. The light makes Rialeth’s robes shimmer, the moss glint underfoot. It outlines the hollows beneath Selis’s eyes, the tightness in her throat.
The part of me that reached for her curls up. Quiet. Hurt.
I step away from Rialeth gently, pulling my arm from her grasp like it might burn me if I hold on too long.
“Thank you,” I whisper, barely audible.
Then I keep walking. One foot in front of the other. Deeper into the trees, into The Garden’s throat, glowing like bait on a hook.