Chapter 8
“You must be Selene,” I breathe.
Her lips curve into a knowing smile. “Yes. Would you like to join me for a cup of tea?”
My stomach betrays me with a loud growl. I wince.
“Or perhaps,” she adds smoothly, “something more.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. Minutes later, I’m perched at a long worktable in the kitchen, nibbling buttered bread while Selene pours steaming liquid into a delicate cup. The fragrance reaches me first—spice and warmth, unfamiliar but comforting.
That’s when I notice the tattoo on her left hand, gleaming gold in the low light—a twin to Zillah’s.
Selene follows my gaze, and I realize I’m staring.
Seeing it this way, something in me now knows it’s not casual decoration, but something intimate, bound to meaning.
I don’t ask—though my curiosity burns. Some marks feel too private to touch with questions.
I lift the cup instead, letting the steam curl around my face.
With one sip, warmth unfurls through me.
“This is… interesting,” I murmur. “Comforting. Cinnamon? Ginger?”
Her smile deepens, soft as starlight. “Yes. And more. You will need it soon.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“Your cycle,” she says matter-of-factly. “I can feel the fertility thrumming through you. You are still moving in step with the lunar Threads of Fate, and it will bless you soon. I expect it will find you within the next day or two.”
I choke on the sip I’ve just swallowed. “I’m sorry—what?”
Her gaze never wavers. Calm. Certain. Heat prickles in my cheeks as her meaning clicks. Almost on cue, a cramp twists low in my belly. I’d written the earlier pangs off as hunger, but now that I’ve eaten, the truth curls sharp and undeniable in my gut.
“Oh, no.” I push back from the table, flustered. “ I-I should go. Thank you. For the tea.”
Selene doesn’t look surprised or concerned. She lifts her own cup, serene as a priestess in ritual. “May the moon guide you to your Fate.”
I mutter a quick thanks and all but flee, hurrying back upstairs before another cramp can double me over.
Back in my room, I sink onto the bed with a groan. Perfect. After all the trauma, all the magic tearing through my body, I guess it makes sense that everything was out of balance. And now—now it’s back. Great. What am I supposed to do about that here? By the next morning, Selene proves to be right.
My cycle had always been complex, but now that it has returned to this changed body, it comes with a vengeance. I’m lying in bed, curled against the ache, half-drifting in and out of restless dozing.
Alva brings me steaming mugs of herbal concoctions—bitter, pungent, soothing in ways I can’t quite name. Sirona perches cheerfully on the edge of the mattress, chattering away about everything under the sun. I barely catch half her words, but her bright voice is oddly comforting.
At one point, Alva sets another cup in my hands and says gently, “You should know—here, both males and females have the option to visit a healer and end their cycles, and therefore their fertility, if they wish. It can just as easily be restored later.”
My eyes snap open. “Wait. What?”
She nods. “Mostly the wealthy take advantage, but anyone in my reach who wants this, I’ll do it without charge—or for barter, if they insist. I consider it essential. No one should be forced into a family before they’re ready. Or ever if that’s their choice.”
A wry laugh escapes me despite the pain. “I completely agree. I just did not know that was even possible.”
“Most people here prefer it,” she says, a smile tugging at her mouth. “Everyone likes to have a little fun now and then.” She winks at me. “But that doesn’t mean they’re ready to reproduce.”
I laugh again, then grimace as another cramp twists low in my stomach. “Great. Well, sign me up. Can we do this today?”
Her smile softens, almost regretful. “Not yet. It requires my touch, and until you can shield yourself, we risk complications. But I wanted you to know the option is here when you’re ready.”
I slump back against the pillows. “Okay.”
She pats my hand through the blankets. “I’ll check on the tea.
” Then she slips out, leaving me alone with the sound of Sirona humming at the window.
I let my eyes fall shut. I’ve got to master shielding, I think.
Not just to protect myself, not just to finally gain some control—but so Alva can end this torment. Gods, it would be glorious.
My mind drifts further, unbidden. If anyone could touch me safely—Lowan’s face surfaces in the haze. His eyes. His voice. His hands… A cramp slices through me, sharp enough to make me gasp. I curl tighter, muttering under my breath, “Point taken.”
I burrow back into the blankets, clinging to the warmth, and let the pain drag me down into uneasy rest. At first, I think it’s just the cycle. A brutal one, worse than I’ve ever known. But by the second day, it’s clear it’s more than that.
The fever comes in waves, wracking me with heat and chills. My body trembles with cramps so sharp I can barely stand upright. Nausea coils in my gut until even water turns sour on my tongue. I’m exhausted, drenched in sweat, unable to rest for more than an hour before pain wakes me again.
Maybe it’s just everything catching up with me. The binding, the escape, the power ripping through me, the endless training. Maybe my body is finally saying, “Enough.”
Alva checks on me constantly, bringing steaming mugs of bitter tea and sachets that smell of mint and herbs to lie across my forehead or my stomach.
Sirona perches beside me, chattering about anything and everything to fill the silence, her cheerfulness a balm even when I can’t follow her words.
I don’t see Lowan. I don’t see Zillah. Not that I expected to.
But once, I think I hear his voice outside my door. I can’t be sure of anything.
By the fifth day, I’m so far under that I barely know when it’s day or night. The fever leaves me slick with sweat one moment, shivering the next. I drift in and out of strange half-dreams. Sometime deep in the night, I wake. My throat is dry, my head throbbing. And on the windowsill—
A raven. Dark, silent, its silver-ringed eyes fixed on me. The moonlight limns its feathers with sharp edges, like smoke and shadow come alive. I blink—my vision swims. The bird doesn’t move. When I jolt awake again, the window is shut. No trace of feathers. No trace of anything.
A fever dream, I tell myself. But the memory lingers, sharp as talons.
The fever drags me under, night after night.
My dreams turn restless, fractured. Sometimes it’s my mother, her face sharp with fear, shouting at me to run.
Sometimes it’s softer—her arms around me as a child, the smell of lavender, her voice humming a lullaby I can almost remember.
Other nights it’s Abigail and Trevor—our laughter echoing in the apartment, the three of us cross-legged on the floor, cartons of greasy Chinese food spread out across the coffee table. Trevor cursing at his chopsticks, and Abigail nearly crying from laughing so hard. My chest aches even in sleep.
And then—I see Mason. We’re at a crowded frat party, music thundering, lights flashing.
He’s smiling, looking out at the crowd with that smug glow of someone basking in being adored.
I’m watching him, but he isn’t watching me.
He’s watching them. The popularity. The attention.
The position he held in our world. And even in the dream, I feel that hollow sting: I was never really the point.
When the fever finally breaks, and I wake clear-headed, I’m weak, wrung out. An emptiness I can’t ignore anymore. I’ve been pretending—pretending I’m fine, pretending I can adapt, keep going, roll with the punches. But I can’t. My body gave out, and now my heart does too.
The sobs start quietly, but once they begin, they won’t stop.
My chest heaves, my throat burns, my face is wet and raw.
“Please,” I choke into the silence, to no one in particular, to everyone.
“I just need… answers. Any answers. I can’t keep going like this.
I can’t keep being a pawn in some game I don’t even understand. ”
The words tear out of me, ragged and desperate. For once, there’s no sarcasm, no mask, no fight left. Just me, hollowed out, begging the universe, Fate—anyone listening—to finally, finally let me see. The sobs wrack me until I’m raw, every bit of composure shredded.
The door creaks. I scrub at my eyes, but it’s useless—I’m blotched and tear-streaked when Alva steps inside. She doesn’t speak at first. She sets down the tray she’s carrying and crosses the room, quiet as a shadow.
When she sits on the edge of the bed, I brace for one of her usual lectures, her calm but cutting analyses. Instead, she reaches out, then pauses—waiting. Her gloved hand hovers until I nod, wordless. Then, she lays her palm gently against my temple. The touch is steady. Maternal.
“I know,” she says softly. “I know you’re tired of being in the dark.”
Fresh tears spill. I press my face into her sleeve like I’m twelve years old again, like I’m a child clinging to my mother. She doesn’t flinch. She merely strokes my damp hair back, sighing.
“I don’t have all the answers,” she murmurs. “But I can tell you this: your magic is rare. Rarer than anything I’ve seen in all my years as a healer. And the unknown can be frightening. Even for me.”
My breath catches. She cups my cheek, tilting my face so I meet her steady gaze. “But it also means something. You’re not here by chance. You’re here because you’re part of something larger. And while I cannot tell you everything, I can tell you that you are not alone. Not anymore.”
Her words aren’t a full explanation. They solve nothing. But the way she says them—low, warm, fierce with conviction—soothes something raw inside me.
For the first time since I arrived here, I feel seen, not just studied, not just tested.
Held. The tears finally burn themselves out.
I push up, unsteady, and curl into the chair by the fire.
My legs tuck under me, my arms around my middle, like I can hold myself together if I make the space small enough.
Alva drags another chair close and sits beside me, not across the room, not distant—right here, her presence steady and warm. She doesn’t speak for a long while, and for once, the silence feels like kindness, not interrogation.
At last, she says, “I wish I had concrete answers for you. But I don’t. All I have are theories, and even those may prove wrong.”
I glance at her, searching her face. “Then tell me anyway. Please. Anything.”
She nods slowly, folding her hands in her lap. “Based on what you’ve revealed—your speech, your attire, and your disbelief in what everyone here considers normal—I think you came to us from the mortal realm. How you crossed over, I cannot say. I would dearly like to know myself.”
My heart thuds painfully. “The… mortal realm?”
Her eyes soften. “Yes. And that makes your presence even more impossible. Because the Donovan line—your line—was believed to be long gone.”
I suck in a breath. “My mother—”
“—was Elin.” Alva’s voice gentles further, though her eyes sharpen as if weighing memory against fact. “I know that much. But I believed Elin to be dead, as nearly all the Donovans were said to be. I do not know who your father was. I cannot imagine. Your very existence is a mystery.”
The fire crackles between us, filling the space where my words should be. My head swims with her revelations. Finally, my voice comes out in a whisper. “Another realm. Then, what realm is this?”
Alva leans forward, cupping my cheek again as though I were her own child. Her eyes glint with tenderness and something heavier—an old grief, maybe.
“This, sweet child,” she says, her voice soft as velvet, “is Thrae.”