39. Naera
Naera
The gown clings to my skin like frost.
White. Always white. White like the altar. White like surrender.
It’s stitched from silk and song—or that’s what they say. That the threads are blessed by moonlight. That it’s a privilege to wear it. That the purity of it reflects devotion.
I used to believe that. I used to think it was beautiful. After all, all the vessels wear it.
Now it feels like I’m being dressed in someone else’s skin.
The Moon Room is still. The glass dome above me darkens inch by inch, as if the night is eating the sky. The eclipse isn’t here yet, but I can feel it coming. Like breath on the back of my neck.
I sit alone on the edge of the reed bed.
The door clicks open behind me. I don’t turn. I know the sound of her footsteps. I know the way they used to make me feel safe. I know how much that’s changed.
Rialeth enters without a word, robes whispering around her ankles, the scent of incense curling in with her. She's holding a wide, shallow bowl—polished silver, etched with spirals that mimic the stars.
Sacred ash: the last preparation.
“May I?” she asks gently .
I nod. I don’t look at her. I can’t. If I do, I might say something I shouldn’t. Scream something I can’t take back. Beg her not to do this. Ask her if it’s too late to run.
And I already know the answers.
She kneels beside me, and the ash shifts faintly in the bowl, a fine gray powder like ground bone. She dips the brush slowly. Reverently. The scent curls around us, sharp and smoky. Her hand finds my shoulder. I flinch without meaning to.
“It won’t hurt,” she murmurs.
I know that. That’s not why I flinched.
Her hands used to mean safety. Now they feel like rope.
She paints the sigils carefully—spirals and slashes, moon-phases etched into skin. Across my shoulders, down my spine. One for devotion. One for purity. One for death. All the sacred things.
I stare at the far wall and try not to think. Try not to feel. But thoughts slip in anyway.
Selis.
Her smirk. Her blade. The heat in her eyes when she looked at me like I was more than my light.
Rialeth’s brush stills for a breath, and then she says softly, almost to herself, “You used to hum when you were nervous.”
I don’t answer, and I certainly don’t hum.
She dips the brush in ash again.
“I wonder when you stopped…”
The next line she paints runs along my collarbone, soft as breath.
Neither of us speaks for a while.
I think of all the nights we whispered secrets into the dark, giggling beneath the covers, wondering if the moon ever truly watched us sleep.
I think of the first time she braided my hair.
The first time I made her laugh until she cried.
How her hands used to shake the day a vessel was sent to Selene.
Now they don’t.
Now she moves like she belongs here, and I wonder when that changed. When I lost her.
She touches my temple next. The ash is cool. The brush gentle.
“I never thought it would be you,” I say quietly. My voice sounds distant. Like it’s coming from somewhere outside my body.
Rialeth doesn’t stop. “They allowed it,” she says. “Because I helped bring you back. They said I’d earned the honor.”
Another pause. The brush hovers above my forehead.
She waits—for what, I don’t know. Maybe for me to say thank you. Maybe for me to believe her.
“I didn’t come back for The Garden,” I whisper. “I came back for the girls. For Selis.”
She exhales through her nose, almost a sigh. Almost disappointment. She paints the final sigil on my forehead: a full eclipse.
“You were never meant to belong to yourself, Naera.”
And that’s the thing that breaks me. Not the ash. Not the silence. That .
Because she believes it. They all do.
I close my eyes and count the seconds as I will myself not to cry.
Selis would tell me to spit in her face. To run. To fight.
But I gave that up the moment I left her behind. Not because I stopped believing in her.
I left to save the girls. Because Selene whispered that they needed me, that only I could keep them from a horrible fate. And I want to believe it. I choose to believe Selene has a plan, something good. That this—this return, this sacrifice—isn’t all for nothing.
The brush returns to the bowl. Rialeth stands, but something changes in her posture. A flicker of tension crosses her face as she glances toward the door.
Then I hear it.
Low voices, muffled beyond the glass walls of the Moon Room.
“…set the girls near the altar before the eclipse…”
“…be sure they’re clean… no blemishes…”
My body goes still.
Girls.
Not me.
Girls.
My voice claws up my throat. “What do they mean?”
Rialeth blinks, like she’d forgotten I was still here. “It’s nothing. You needn’t concern—”
“They said girls,” I bite out. “Who?”
She hesitates.
And it’s all the confirmation I need.
“You said I was the vessel,” I press. “You said the others would be spared. That I was the offering.”
Rialeth’s expression doesn’t flicker. “They’re blessed, Naera. Like you. Their light will not be lost. It will be transformed.”
Transformed.
Sanitized.
Sanctified.
I feel sick. Not just in my stomach—but deep, marrow-deep, a sickness that starts in my soul.
“You lied,” I whisper.
“I did what I had to,” she replies. “So did you.”
I turn my head. Look up through the glass dome above. The moon is climbing, inch by inch, into position.
Six glowing girls.
One vessel.
One lie.
And no miracles.
“Selene…” I beg the moon, broken.
“They were already prepared,” Ria answers, voice calm—too calm. “Their blood will sanctify your offering.”
“You mean soften it.”
That makes her pause.
Her gaze sharpens. But she doesn’t deny it.
“The moonmother asks for what is necessary.”
My hands curl against the silk pooled at my sides. “ You lied to me .”
“We told you what you needed to hear.”
The cold in my chest twists into something hotter. Something sharp.
I stand. Slowly. My legs ache from stillness, but I stand tall anyway.
“You promised me they would be safe.”
“They were never going to let this cycle pass without renewal,” she says simply. “You gave them something pure to anchor it. But the rest—”
“No,” I breathe.
No, no, no.
I see their faces. The youngest, glowing like she doesn't know how to be afraid yet. The six-year-old crying without a sound. The ten-year-old with trembling hands and too many questions in her eyes.
They trusted me .
I trusted The Garden.
And we were all fools.
“ You lied to me, Ria!” my voice breaks, the betrayal sinking its teeth into me.
I don’t know what I’m waiting for—maybe a miracle, maybe a blade in the dark—but I know this much: I’m not praying anymore.
Rialeth takes half a step back, not in fear, but surprise.
“Naera—” she scolds.
I don’t hesitate.
I lunge.
We crash to the floor with the screech of silk and skin. The bowl of sacred ash tumbles from her hands, scattering like powdered bone across the stone. My fingers twist in her robes, clawing, shoving, wild with fury.
She resists. She’s stronger than she looks. Her elbow catches my ribs, but I don’t feel it—not really. I don’t feel anything but fire.
We tumble hard across the stone. I shove, I bite. I snarl . It’s not graceful. It’s not sacred. It’s feral.
“You lied—” I sob between gasps, rage and heartbreak choking me. “You lied, you lied, you lied— ”
Her hands shove me back, barely holding me off. Ash smears down my chest, across my face, streaking the symbols she so carefully painted. The ones meant to bless my death.
The door slams open.
Attendants flood in. Women in white. Hands like hooks. They descend on me, five, six of them, dragging me from her. Nails scratch my arms. Fingers yank at my hair. I thrash, scream, fight —
I don’t want to be a vessel .
I don’t want to be holy.
I want to live.
One of them hisses my name. Another chants a prayer. And beneath it all, something shatters.
Inside me.
What if Selene lied too?
What if Selis never forgives me?
What if the girls die anyway?
I scream again, wordless, half sob, half fury. My heel catches someone’s shin. I taste blood. My own? I don’t know. I claw for the door, nails splitting. I get halfway upright before something clamps over my mouth.
Sweet.
Too sweet.
Cloying.
A cloth soaked in something soft and awful.
No.
I thrash harder. Limbs jerking, breath burning. But my head goes light. My legs fold beneath me. My arms slow.
Darkness blooms at the edges of my vision.
No. No. Not yet. Please not yet…
Selis —
The last thing I see is the scattered ash still marking the floor.
And the ruined, smeared sigil on my outstretched arms.
Unblessed. Unworthy. Mine.