41. Naera
Naera
The world comes back in pieces.
Groggy. Heavy. My tongue is thick and bitter in my mouth. My head throbs like I was cracked open and stitched back together wrong.
There’s something cold beneath me—too cold. Not stone. Something stranger. Something smoother. Circular. Polished.
… The altar…
I’m tied down.
Silk cords at my wrists, my ankles. Decorative. Beautiful. Tight.
I groan. A low sound. The scent hits me next—crushed petals and smoke. Incense wafts through the air like ghosts.
My fingers twitch. I blink up at the dome overhead—etched with stars and crescent light, clear glass at the center where the eclipse will soon pass. Already, the rim glows silver, rimmed in shadow.
Pre-eclipse.
It’s almost time…
Panic claws at my chest.
The girls.
I jerk my head to the side, ignoring the pounding behind my eyes. Looking—scanning—for glow, for silver hair, for tiny hands wrapped in silk .
But I don’t see them.
Instead—
“Hey, starlight…” Her voice cuts through the haze—dry, rough, low. Like she forced it up from somewhere deep just to reach me. “Finally awake, are you?”
I twist. There. Slumped near the edge of the platform. Silks wound tight around her wrists, staked to a ring in the floor like she’s just another offering.
My stomach lurches. Terror hits me like a slap.
“Selis,” I whisper. The word is raw, scraped out of me. Then louder—horror splitting my throat. “ Selis. ”
Her name tastes like blood and heartbreak and all the things I never got to say.
She shouldn’t be here. She was supposed to live. Even if she hated me. Even if she never looked at me again. I made peace with that.
But this?
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Not her.
Never her.
She shifts slightly—barely—but I hear the faintest scrape of silk against stone. She’s trying to sit up.
But she’s here.
She’s here.
“I—how—?” My breath stutters. “You were supposed to be gone.”
Selis lets out a soft, bitter laugh that doesn’t reach her eyes. “I was… But then I decided that I couldn’t leave you and the others to die.” Another dry exhale, more breath than humor. “Don’t look so surprised. Turns out, morals are contagious. Or maybe you’re just annoyingly hard to forget. ”
The world tilts.
“The girls,” I echo. “You got them out?”
“Cut their ties myself. Told them to disappear past the wall. Couldn’t tell you how far they made it. But they’re not here now, are they?” Her gaze flicks up to the altar where I’m bound, her mouth tightening. “So maybe that counts for something.”
My ribs crush in on themselves.
They’re not here. Not scattered around the floor like broken ornaments. Not glowing like bait in the dark.
They might’ve made it.
Tears sting again, and this time I let them fall. I laugh, a soft, hiccupping thing that sounds almost unhinged. Relief and grief war in my chest, too big for my bones.
“You saved them.”
“Well,” Selis mutters, wincing as she shifts against the bindings. “I got them out. That part’s done. The rest… they’ll have to save themselves.”
A sob bubbles up in my throat. I bite it back. “You shouldn’t be here. I left you behind for a reason. ”
“Yeah. And it was a shit one,” she snaps.
I flinch, and her face softens immediately. She sighs.
“Naera. I know why you did it. I do. But I couldn’t just sit by and let them—” She shakes her head, leaving the sentence unfinished.
I choke on air. Gods, she’s still her. Even now. Bleeding. Bound. Stubborn as hell.
“I thought—after I left—I thought you hated me.”
“Hated you?” she scoffs, then winces. “I could never hate you. That’s the problem, isn’t it?” she mutters.
I laugh, breathless and wet. “And now? ”
Selis finally looks at me— really looks at me—and there’s something there that breaks me clean in half. Something too big for the space between us.
“Now,” she says softly, “I’m just hoping I get one more chance to hold your hand.”
My heart stutters.
I don’t deserve that.
“I was ready,” I whisper. “I made peace with it. With you hating me. With never seeing you again.”
“Well,” she says, her smirk faint but real, “sorry to disappoint.”
I blink through more tears. “Don’t be.”
We sit there in silence for a long breath.
Something is coming. But for a moment, it’s just her. And me. And the fragile hope that maybe, maybe, there’s still time to ruin all of it together.
The door creaks.
Boots. Robes. The swish of ceremony.
Three priests sweep into the chamber—hooded, robed in silver and bone. One carries a bowl of powder. One clutches a book. The last one… he has a blade.
Selis tenses. Her shoulders draw taut, but her eyes never leave mine.
“Hey,” she murmurs, like it’s just us. Like we’re back in the woods, in the hot spring, before all this began. “No matter what happens, I’m glad I found you.”
The priest with the blade stops in front of her.
“No,” I say, voice cracking like brittle glass. “Don’t touch her.”
He doesn’t listen. He grabs her hair, jerks her head back. The other priests are talking, but my panic drowns out their voices.
“ Don’t touch her! ” I scream .
Selis doesn’t flinch. Her storm-grey eyes stay locked on mine. Fierce. Steady. And still, she smiles. A slow, confident smirk.
Just like the dream.
Just like all the dreams…
No. No, Selene, why? Help me! Help her!
The words aren’t even sound. They live only in the raw places beneath my ribs, in the churning space where fear becomes desperation.
And something— someone —answers.
Not with words.
With light.
It floods me from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head. Burning. Expanding. Filling every part of me until I can’t breathe, until there’s nothing left but glow.
I gasp, arching against the silks that bind me. My skin glows gold-white, brighter than firelight, brighter than the moon. Something moves in the air before me—silver strands, glimmering, unbound. My… hair?
It floats around me like a halo, weightless as water, shimmering like a prayer made visible.
Beneath me, the altar thrums—not cold, not cruel, but aware . Like it recognizes something it had no right to hope for. Like it knows me .
The priest drops the knife. His knees hit the floor with a sickening thud.
“Selene,” he breathes. “She’s come.”
The other two follow, crumpling in a wave of awe and terror.
Selis, still bound, stares up at me—wide-eyed, stunned. Blood trails down her temple from a bruise I didn’t see before, and my chest cracks wider.
“Naera?” she whispers, and I hear it: awe tangled with disbelief. Hope and heartbreak, clashing hard.
“I’m here,” I say.
My voice is not just mine anymore. It echoes in the chamber, something vast and bright layered beneath it. A resonance that vibrates in the stone and the air and the marrow of my bones.
It’s me.
But it’s also her.
Selene.
Her presence blooms behind my ribs, in the space where my heart has always lived. She doesn’t take over. She joins. A tide surging under my skin, hot and silver. A second heartbeat, pulsing through my blood.
My lips move again, but I don’t remember choosing the words.
“I am here now,” I say, voice ringing like tempered silver, like the crack of a blade unsheathed. I turn my gaze to the priests. “And you have defiled my garden.”
The air shudders.
The priests tremble as if the floor has dropped beneath them. One crawls backward, eyes wide with terror.
“She—she’s awakened—” one of them breathes. “The vessel holds— the goddess truly holds— ”
Another priest lurches upright, hands raised in supplication, voice frantic. “We did this for you, holy one! Everything—we made you flesh! We brought you here!”
But I’m not looking at them anymore.
I’m looking at her.
Selis, bruised and bound and still watching me like she doesn’t know whether to fall to her knees or yell at me. Like she’s seeing a ghost and a miracle and her worst fear all at once.
Because I’m not just the vessel anymore.
I’m the reckoning.