Chapter 10
TEN
Selene
The first thing that broke through the suffocating blackness was a sound. A high, monotone beep. A clinical metronome marking a rhythm that drifted in and out of focus.
Next came light. A searing white that forced its way through my heavy eyelids. It washed out the world, turning everything into a shapeless blur.
Pain followed, dragging me down. It centred on my shoulder—a serrated pulse. Wrong. Acute. A sensation of something shifting beneath the skin, thrashing against the bone.
Lifting my eyelids was like hoisting iron shutters. The world was a liquid smear of white ceiling and blurred motion. Someone leaned over me. The shape was broad, the scent a mix of old books, clean laundry, and burnt toast.
Dad.
His face swam into focus for a single, terrible second. The lines around his eyes were canyons, his mouth a grim slash of suppressed panic. Fear poured from him in cold tides, potent enough to taste.
His hand found mine, grip crushing. I tried to squeeze back, to offer a shadow of reassurance I didn’t feel, but my fingers were clumsy strangers that refused my commands.
The world dissolved into grey static. The beep faded. I sank.
Time lost its meaning, allowing me to surface only in splintered fragments like a swimmer fighting an undertow. Each time, I found new snapshots of a reality I couldn’t hold onto.
A new voice cut through the fog. Mira’s. It was ragged, stripped of its usual brisk confidence.
“…no idea when she’ll wake up. The Calysteri doctors are baffled.”
Her face appeared above me, a pale moon with red-rimmed eyes.
She had been crying. Hard. The sight twisted something deep in my chest, a dull, secondary ache that had nothing to do with my injury.
I wanted to tell her to stop, that I was fine, that my mascara had probably seen worse.
But the words were buried under a mountain of exhaustion.
Then a shadow fell over me. Orin. I could not focus on his face, but the vibrating energy that always clung to him hummed against my skin. He hovered close, his voice a low murmur against the steady tempo of the machines.
“…signature… like two separate storms in one jar.”
He was not talking to me. He was trying to solve me. The thought drifted through the fog—quintessentially Orin—but the effort to hold onto it was too great. The grey static rose up again, the world blurred, and I let it go.
The next time I surfaced, the room was different. The beep had settled into a soft rhythm. The blinding lights were gone, replaced by the gentle green and orange glow from the forest of machinery beside the bed.
Night. My body cast in lead, pinned to a mattress that hissed and breathed beneath me. The pain had receded to a low, thrumming bassline, managed by whatever fluid dripped steadily into my veins.
For a moment, there was a strange, quiet peace.
And then the air thinned.
Someone was here.
My thoughts drifted to my father, assuming he was napping in the visitor’s chair. But this wasn’t his presence. His worry was a frayed blanket. This was different. A block of ice in the corner.
A quiet, constant mass pressed on the air, making it thick and hard to breathe.
The ambient magic filling the space, the faint traces of healers and lingering spells, all bent around this singular point of density.
It was a black hole, an impossible gravity that the rest of the room seemed to tilt towards.
My gaze moved to the armchair in the corner. It remained shrouded in shadow, but I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the core, that someone was sitting there.
Watching. Waiting. Alien.
The presence was dense, solid, lacking the light blur of concealment I expected. A predatory stillness. Beside it, the storm inside me was faint, distant.
Panic, thin and brittle, tightened along my spine. I needed to see.
I fought to lift my head, to force my eyes to focus on that suffocating emptiness. The muscles in my neck screamed in protest. The glowing numbers on the monitor blurred, the lines of light stretching into a meaningless green smear.
The weight in the corner remained. Patient. Unmoving. It offered no overt threat, but its unnerving silence was a threat in itself.
Helplessness tasted like ash in my mouth. The undertow was too strong, pulling me back down into the soft, senseless dark. My body gave up. My mind followed. I sank again, the feeling of those unseen eyes on me the last thing to fade.
The monitor’s rhythm kicked into a frantic beat. I woke with a gasp, the sheets clinging to me in a damp shroud.
“Dane,” I whispered. My throat was sandpaper.
A hand, warm and familiar, closed around mine. My father’s. The grip was gentle, anchoring me against the drift.
I forced my eyes open. The harsh overheads were gone, replaced by the pale grey light of early morning. Dad’s face was etched with exhaustion, shadows under his eyes mirroring the heaviness in my own limbs, but as he saw me stir, the tight line of his mouth softened.
“Selene, thank the gods.” His voice was thick, unused.
He brought a glass to my lips. The water was cool, a blessed relief. I took a long, slow drink, and reality returned in a sickening rush. The Lows. The concrete. Dane.
“Dane,” I said again. The name rasped in my throat. “Where is he?”
Eamon’s hand tightened around mine. His focus dropped to the edge of the blanket, refusing to meet my eyes.
“Dad,” I choked out. “Tell me.”
“He’s alive, Selene.” He spoke quickly, racing to get the words out before I shattered. “Broken spine. But Varkyn physiology… it protected the cord. Remarkable, really.”
He shook his head, a wry, tired smile touching his lips. “They have him in an induced coma. Let the healing magic work its course.”
My lungs seized. A broken spine. Induced coma. He was alive, but the limbo of the coma felt a thousand miles away from recovery.
“I want to see him,” I tried to sit up, but a sudden rush of dizziness swept through me. The room tilted violently. A sharp pain lanced through my joint. My scar. It burned, a dull ache radiating into my chest.
Eamon gently eased me back against the pillows. “Easy, easy. You’re not going anywhere yet. Your magic… it almost tore you apart. Severe depletion. They’ve been pumping you full of every healing draught the Calysteri know. Only two days, Selene. You barely survived.”
Two days. It felt like an eternity in a blink.
“I need to see him.” I ignored the dizziness, the weakness. Ignored the phantom ache in my shoulder. My feet hit the cold linoleum floor. The IV tube tugged at my arm, a small, irritating tether to this antiseptic purgatory.
“Selene, stop it. You’re exhausted. You’re depleted. You are too weak…” Eamon’s voice hardened, his eyes wide with a fear he couldn’t quite hide. He’d seen something. He knew.
I waved away his words with a trembling hand, already yanking the IV from my arm. A tiny prick, a bead of blood. Nothing compared to the raw, deep-seated terror that still clutched my throat.
“I need to see him. He protected me, Dad. He took the hit meant for us both. He kept fighting.”
My voice broke on the last word. The memory of Dane’s struggle, the shadow tendrils, the desperate rage that had erupted from me… it all blended into a single, overwhelming need. To see him. To know he was truly alive.
My clothes hung on a hook by the door. Still damp, probably, but I didn’t care.
The hospital gown fell to the floor with a soft rustle.
My fingers fumbled with the buttons of my shirt, my hands shaking so violently I could barely manage them.
My jeans were stiff. But they were mine. A small anchor of control in the chaos.
Eamon watched, helpless, his face a mask of worry. He knew better than to physically stop me. Not now.
“His room… which one?” I asked, yanking my boots on with an effort that left me gasping.
Eamon’s voice was a weary sigh of defeat. “Down the corridor. Room 304. I’ll come with you.”
“I’m going to see Dane alone,” I told him, already moving. My refusal was absolute.
I left him standing there and started the slow shuffle out of the room.
The hospital corridor was a blur of featureless cream walls and hushed movements.
Each step was a monumental effort, my legs still trembling from the recent battle, the pain in my back a constant, searing companion.
My breath came in ragged gasps, each inhale a fresh reminder of how close I’d danced with oblivion.
Room 304. The door stood slightly ajar, a sliver of dimmed light spilling into the hall. I pushed it open, hand shaking. The room was quiet, heavy with the faint scent of antiseptic and something deeper, more primal—grief.
Mira sat hunched by the bedside, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Her usually impeccable auburn hair was dishevelled, her lab coat discarded over a nearby chair. She didn’t look up. Her attention was fixed on the figure in the bed.
Dane.
He lay utterly still, the stark white sheet pulled up to his chest. His face was translucent, a sharp contrast to his dark hair. A bandage wrapped tightly around his forehead, another peeked out from under the collar of his gown. His chest rose and fell with a hiss of the respirator.
The usual bright energy that radiated from him, even when he was asleep, was gone. Replaced by a crushing void.
The realisation hit hard, a punch to the gut that stole my breath. My own grief, a raw, tearing thing, clawed its way up my throat. My vision blurred. Hot, stinging tears ran down my cheeks. I reached a trembling hand to my face, surprised by the wetness.
Mira stirred then, slowly lifting her head. Her eyes, red and swollen, met mine. A fresh current of despair washed over her face. She managed a weak, wavering smile, a grimace more than anything.
She pushed herself to her feet, movements stiff, and took a step back from the bed. Giving me space. Her silent understanding was a comfort, a small anchor in the storm of my own unraveling.
I moved towards the bed, each footstep dragging, unwilling.
His hand, resting on the pristine white sheet, seemed impossibly still.
I reached for it, fingers tracing the familiar calluses, the strong, blunt nails.
His skin was cool beneath my touch, lifeless.
I held it, tightly, trying to pour my own warmth, my own desperate energy, back into him.
“Dane,” I whispered, voice cracking, barely audible. “I’m so sorry.”
The tears came faster now, blurring his still face into an indistinct mask of suffering. I blamed myself, utterly and completely. I should have been faster. Stronger. I should have protected him.
My rage, an iron knot in my stomach, flared anew. Against the world. Against fate. Against whatever dark force let this happen.
“I promise you,” I vowed, my voice hoarse, thick with emotion. “I’ll find who sent him.” My knuckles were white against his skin. “I won’t stop. Not until I have answers.”
I would tear the city apart if I had to. Dig through every shadow, confront every lie.
I squeezed his hand one last time, a desperate plea for him to hear me, to know. Then, reluctantly, I released my grip. The stillness in the room pressed against my ears, broken only by the soft hiss of the respirator.
Outside the room, Mira waited. Her face was still etched with pain, but less raw now. I reached for her, drawing her into a tight, fierce hug. She folded into my embrace, her body shaking silently against mine. We clung to each other, grounding ourselves against the drift.
When we pulled apart, her eyes were fixed on mine.
“They found you, you know,” she said, voice a murmur.
“Someone called for an ambulance—an anonymous tip. The phone couldn’t be tracked.
You were both… just there. In the alley, 300 metres from the workshop.
” She shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself.
“Like someone dropped you there. No trail. No blood. No sign of a struggle nearby. Nothing where you were found.”
My heart plunged. Nothing?
My mind flashed back to the chaos, the desperate fight, the raw power that had erupted from me.
And then the Umbrakynn. The one I fought. The sigil.
“The Umbrakynn,” I said, the name a harsh rasp against my raw throat. “The one I… the one I confronted.”
Mira’s brow furrowed. She looked confused, head cocked to the side. “What Umbrakynn?”
Her voice carried a strange inflection; she thought I was talking nonsense.
“Selene, there was no body. No perp. Nothing. Just you and Dane. Out cold.”
The denial hit me hard, but my memory held its ground.
I saw him. Felt him. Fought him.
And the sigil. Burned into his neck. The stolen magic. The violent implosion.
Dread spread through me, more profound than any of the physical aches.
My head ached again, a dull, insistent beat.
The fragmented images stuttered behind my eyes: the youth’s twisted face, his eyes blazing with stolen magic, the dark tendrils choking Dane, the bone-shattering crack, my own scream.
Then the raw, searing power, the implosion, and the sigil. Burned into his neck.
It was a brand. A crystal-clear memory of that last fragment of clarity before the darkness consumed me: the fleeting glimpse of someone at the alley’s entrance.
The missing body and vanished evidence painted a terrifying picture. The alley was pristine, devoid of any struggle. A professional hand had sanitised the scene, extracting every trace of the fight before we were found.
I turned from Mira, my mind racing, scrambling for answers. My body dragged, but my thoughts were racing, leaping from one impossible conclusion to the next.
The hospital was too clean, too sterile. Too contained. I needed out. I needed air. I needed to think.
I shuffled through the silent corridors, each step amplifying an ominous certainty. The hospital’s fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, sterile and uncaring. I pushed through the glass doors, stepping out into the biting dawn.
The air was still damp with lingering mist, but it felt like freedom after the suffocating oppressiveness of the hospital.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. A text message. My landlord. Pipes fixed. Flat’s good to go.
Home. A place of my own. A place to think.
As I walked, the realisation hardened from vague unease into brutal certainty: The missing Calysteri, the dead bodies, the sigil burned into the Umbrakynn’s neck, the vanished evidence—they were all connected.
And someone powerful was making sure I never found out how.