The Witch of Fading Echoes A Fading Witch. Four Fallen Gods. One Deadly Bargain. #10
Selene held all four inside her.
The Hollow Gate opened wider, hungry for them.
Seraphine’s smile vanished.
“No,” she whispered.
Selene could hear that word.
She smiled.
The bond snapped into being.
Not a chain.
Not a bargain.
A circle.
Ronan’s protection. Lucien’s luck. Dorian’s oath. Elias’s future. Selene’s mortality.
Four years, the bargain had demanded.
A year to each god.
Selene changed the terms.
No years taken.
Years shared.
Not ownership.
Not payment.
Time braided through all five of them, bright and dark and burning. Her life anchoring their divinity. Their divinity anchoring her life. The memories waiting ahead were still there—crossroads, masks, battlefields, futures—but she would not walk them as tribute.
She would walk them with the men who had given her their names.
Seraphine screamed.
This time Selene heard it.
The bells rang hard enough to split the mirrors.
“They are mine,” Seraphine shouted. “Your senses are mine. Your Gate is mine.”
The bells above them flared.
Inside each one, Selene saw a stolen sense.
Taste curled like red smoke in a bell made from jawbone.
Smell glowed green-gold in a bell wrapped with dried rosemary and hair.
Touch burned silver inside a bell made of finger bones.
Hearing pulsed blue-white in a bell shaped like an ear.
Sight began to lift from Selene’s eyes, drawn toward the final bell.
The world blurred.
No.
Selene reached for the true names.
A mortal throat was not meant to hold them.
But she was an echo-witch.
She did not need to survive a sound forever.
She only had to hold it long enough for it to become memory.
She spoke Ronan’s true name first.
The crossroads name tore from her mouth.
The jawbone bell shattered.
Taste slammed back into her.
Blood. Rain. Salt. Copper. Storm.
Selene gasped.
The shock of flavor was almost violent. She tasted fear on her tongue, power in her teeth, and the bitter edge of Seraphine’s magic coating the air.
She spoke Lucien’s name next.
The rosemary bell exploded.
Smell returned in a rush.
Smoke. Wet stone. Burned feathers. Ghostfire in the streets below. Ronan’s iron warmth. Lucien’s spiced sweetness. Dorian’s ash and leather. Elias’s ink and night air.
She sobbed once, overwhelmed by the world flooding back through her nose.
Lucien’s eyes shone.
“Again,” he whispered.
She heard him.
She spoke Dorian’s name.
The finger-bone bell cracked apart.
Touch returned like lightning.
Cold rain struck her skin. Pain flashed through her cut palms. Her wet dress clung to her legs.
Ronan’s hand gripped her shoulder. Lucien’s mouth brushed her knuckles as he caught her falling hand.
Dorian’s arm locked around her waist, solid and shaking.
Elias’s fingers pressed to the back of her neck, steady and reverent.
Selene cried out.
Not from pain.
From too much world.
Fabric. Heat. Breath. Blood. Skin. The press of four bodies closing around her as the tower groaned beneath the storm.
She spoke Elias’s name last.
The ear-shaped bell screamed apart.
Hearing returned with a thunderclap.
Rain. Bells. Lightning. Seraphine’s furious prayer. Ronan’s ragged breath. Lucien’s soft curse. Dorian’s heartbeat beneath her palm. Elias whispering, “Live. Live. This path. Stay on this path.”
For one impossible moment, Selene felt everything.
And the Hollow Gate tried to take her sight.
Darkness spilled across her vision from the edges inward.
The mirrors vanished one by one.
Seraphine’s face blurred.
The men became shapes of heat and power.
The Gate opened its mouth inside Selene and spoke in Niall’s scream.
That scream had lived in her for eleven years.
The worst sound in the world.
The sound of a little boy being taken while his sister failed to hold on.
The Gate had fed on it. The Choir had followed it. Her magic had carried it like a wound that never scabbed.
Selene reached for it now.
Not with force.
With memory.
She found Niall beneath the scream.
Niall with sugar on his lips, hiding under the stairs.
Niall drawing foxes with too many tails.
Niall asleep beneath a quilt while sleet tapped the window.
Niall laughing through the gap in his teeth.
Selene took the scream in both hands.
And changed it.
Not into grief.
Not into guilt.
Into his laugh.
The sound burst from her.
Bright.
Small.
Human.
Alive.
The Hollow Gate convulsed.
Seraphine screamed, but Niall’s laugh swallowed the sound. It rang through the tower, through the bells, through the mirrors, through the drowned city beneath Bellgrave and the ghostfire spilling across the streets.
The Gate collapsed.
White fire erupted from the floor.
The Choir burned.
Not like bodies.
Like lies.
Silver masks melted. White robes dissolved into ash. Rib-bells cracked apart, releasing stolen prayers that flew upward as sparks. Mother Seraphine Vale staggered back, her beauty splitting like porcelain beneath the heat.
“You cannot crown them,” she spat, burning from the inside out. “You do not know what they are.”
Selene stood in the circle of four fallen gods, rain and blood on her face, all five senses roaring inside her.
“No,” she said. “But I know what they chose.”
The white fire took Seraphine.
The tower began to fall.
Ronan lifted Selene against his chest. This time she felt everything: the hard wall of him, the wet fabric, the frantic beat of his heart.
Lucien caught her hand, his fingers warm and trembling.
Dorian put himself between them and the collapsing beams. Elias wrapped silver futures around their bodies and chose the only one where they survived.
The clocktower shattered.
Bellgrave disappeared in white light.
Dawn came quietly.
Selene woke to the smell of smoke, rain, black salt, burned feathers, and tea.
For several seconds, she did nothing but breathe.
Smell.
She parted her lips.
Copper from blood. Bitter tea. Sugar on her tongue from someone having placed a cube there while she slept.
Taste.
A blanket scratched softly against her arms.
Touch.
Rain tapped the cracked window downstairs in her apothecary.
Hearing.
Morning light spilled over the shelves, the broken vials, the bone charms, the locked grimoires, the dead men’s coins scattered across the floor.
Sight.
Her senses had returned.
Her life was still hers.
Mostly.
Selene turned her head.
Ronan stood guard at the door, arms crossed, scar silver in the dawn. Lucien sat beside her bed, pretending he had not been holding her hand. Dorian watched the windows, blade resting across his knees. Elias stood before the cracked mirror across the room, his face grave.
Selene pushed herself up.
Every one of them moved toward her.
She felt that too.
“Do not hover,” she said.
Lucien’s smile broke open with relief. “She lives, and she’s cruel. A miracle.”
Ronan said nothing, but his shoulders loosened.
Dorian looked down, hiding something too tender for his face.
Elias did not turn from the mirror.
Selene followed his gaze.
In the cracked glass, her reflection stared back.
Pale. Bruised. Alive.
Above her head flickered a faint crown of black flame.
Selene went still.
Elias saw it too.
Lucien’s smile faded.
Dorian reached for his blade.
Ronan stepped behind Selene, close enough that she felt his heat along her back, his voice low and possessive near her ear.
“Selene,” he said, “what did you bring back with you?”
The mirror answered before she could.
Not in Seraphine’s voice.
Not in Niall’s.
Something older.
Something amused.
“Not what,” it whispered. “Who.”