Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Selene
The drive felt unreal. Wet streets smeared past the windows, streetlamps reflecting in long, fractured streaks across the tarmac. The air outside was thick and cool, fogging the glass at every stop.
Riven was slumped in the passenger seat, pale and bleeding, his breath shallow.
My hands were white-knuckled around the steering wheel as I followed the address he had rasped into my ear.
When the road finally ended, I hesitated. The structure rising from the mist looked like something carved from the cliff itself—tall, dark stone streaked with damp, ivy clinging to the walls like black veins. Windows caught the faintest traces of moonlight, watching us with indifference.
It looked like a sentinel.
I slowed the car to a crawl, peering through the rain-streaked glass at the iron gates.
“Riven?” I asked, my voice tight. “Is this the place?”
Beside me, he managed a rough, pained noise of assent.
I killed the engine and shoved my door open. The silence of the coast was broken only by the distant, rhythmic crash of the sea against the rocks below.
“Riven,” I whispered, hurrying to his side. I wrenched his door open. “Come on. Stay with me.”
He forced his eyes open. They were glassy, the blue dull. “I’m—fine.”
He wasn’t. But he managed to get an arm around me as I hauled him out of the car. His weight sagged against me, a dead, dense burden that nearly buckled my knees. He tried to walk on his own, but his feet dragged on the gravel.
We made it through the overgrown path and inside the house. The hallway was freezing, smelling of old stone and rain-soaked wood—a preserved scent undisturbed for years.
I kicked the door shut behind us, the latch clicking with a finality that made me shudder.
“Where?” I asked, adjusting my grip as he sagged against me. “Riven, where do I take you?”
“Upstairs,” he gritted out, his head lolling against my shoulder. “Left.”
I nodded, gritting my teeth against the strain. I aimed him towards the wide wooden staircase, half-dragging, half-guiding him up. My breath came faster than his, harsh with effort.
At the top of the landing, an oak door stood slightly ajar—a bedroom. I steered us towards it, desperate to get him off his feet.
“No,” he mumbled, his fingers digging into my arm. He fought my momentum, stumbling. “Not there.”
“You need to lie down,” I argued, panic rising.
“Bathroom,” he insisted, forcing us down the hall. “First.”
I didn’t have the energy to protest. I let him steer us towards the next door.
The bathroom was cavernous, all slate tiles with a large window, too calm for the panic clawing at my throat. I flicked the light on, the sudden glare harsh against the gloom.
“Sit,” I ordered, steering him towards the wide edge of the porcelain tub.
He obeyed, collapsing onto the porcelain rim with a pained exhale.
His shirt was soaked and glued to his skin. When I peeled the fabric back, he stifled a hiss, revealing the wound. It was deep, weeping blood that looked black in the dim light.
My stomach lurched.
I reached up, hands shaking, searching the mirror cabinet for bandages, alcohol, anything. Bottles clattered as I shoved them aside.
“Selene.” His voice was low, strained.
“I’ve got this,” I insisted, grabbing a bottle of antiseptic. “Just—just stay awake.”
“Selene.” Firmer this time. “Stop.”
I went still and turned back to him.
His eyes were half-lidded, pain turning the blue almost black, but his hand lifted, reaching for me.
“Come here.”
I knelt in front of him, confused, heart pounding against my ribs. “Why won’t you let me treat it?”
“Because I need you to,” he murmured. “Not bandages. Just you.”
“What? Riven, I—“
“I need your Light,” his voice no more than a whisper. “Place your hands over the wound.”
Blind panic spiked through me. “I’ll hurt you. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You won’t.” His voice softened, losing its command. “Trust me. You can do this.”
My hands hovered over his skin, shaking.
Healing was a Calysteri discipline, capable of patching minor injuries at best. I had spent my entire life believing I was half-blooded, a lie maintained by Eamon until a few weeks ago.
My magic burned far hotter than any ordinary bloodline, but my true nature remained a complete mystery.
I had no idea how to knit flesh together.
He nudged my hands closer with a faint push of his fingers.
“Reach for your magic,” he rasped. “Deep down. Where it burns brightest.”
I swallowed hard. The metallic smell of blood filled my nose.
“I don’t know how.”
“You do.” His breath shuddered. “You’ve always known. Just breathe.”
I closed my eyes. And breathed.
I stopped trying to think and started trying to feel. I reached for the heat that lived under my skin—the golden fire I had used to burn the Umbrakynn.
Something shifted deep in my chest, answering a call I didn’t realise I’d been ignoring. The air around us stirred, gentle as a breeze in a sealed room.
My palms warmed. In contrast to the violent flash of the warehouse, a faint, soft glow gathered there.
It touched his skin, and he exhaled, leaning into the warmth.
The wound began to knit. Slowly. I watched the skin knit together, cell by cell, sealing the breach.
I could feel it—not just the healing, but the cost. Energy drained from my chest, siphoned through my arms, leeching reserves I hadn’t built back up since the hospital. A bloodless haemorrhage hollowed out my marrow.
When the glow faded, the bleeding had stopped. The skin was closed. The wound was gone. New, pink flesh had knit together in its place.
I gasped, the room tilting violently to the left. I withdrew my hands back, but my fingers were numb.
He grabbed my wrist before I could retreat fully.
“You did it,” he said, his voice rough with more than pain.
“I—“ My throat tightened. Grey spots danced in my vision. “You lost so much blood. You should’ve let me call a doctor.”
“I trusted you.” His fingers slackened on my wrist, his thumb brushing the sensitive skin. “I wasn’t wrong.”
He was swaying. I tried to stand to catch him, but my knees buckled the moment I put weight on them. The floor rushed up.
I stumbled, clutching the edge of the sink to keep from hitting the tiles. My breath came in shallow, ragged bursts.
“Selene?” Riven’s hand was on my arm instantly—weak, shaking, but there. Even half-dead, his instinct was to steady me.
“I’m okay,” I said, though the room spun like a carousel. “Just… dizzy. The magic…”
“It cost you,” he murmured. He sounded angry with himself.
“Cheaper than a funeral,” I managed.
I forced myself upright, using his grip as an anchor. We swayed there for a second, leaning heavily against each other—him bleeding out the last of his adrenaline, me hollowed out by the spell.
Neither of us could make it down the hall alone.
“Come on,” I whispered, looping my arm around his waist again. “Let’s get you to bed. Before we both fall over.”
He let me hoist him to his feet, breathing hard as I half-carried him down the hall and into a dim, quiet bedroom.
I lowered him onto the bed; he sank back with a pained exhale, the mattress groaning under his weight.
I tugged the blankets over him.
He watched me through half-open eyes, his gaze softening in a way I didn’t understand—or didn’t dare understand.
“Selene,” he murmured, voice fading. “If I—if I hadn’t reached you in time—“
“You did.” I brushed a stray lock of damp hair from his forehead before I realised what I was doing. “You did.”
His eyes closed for a moment, then reopened—barely.
“Don’t… leave,” he breathed.
Something in my chest folded in on itself.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
A faint, almost-smile touched his mouth—a ghost of a smile, exhausted and fragile.
“Good,” he whispered.
And then his eyes fluttered shut, his breathing evening out, drifting into sleep.
I sat on the edge of the bed, hand still trembling, watching the rise and fall of his chest, the storm battering the windows beyond.
He was safe.
He was alive.
And gods help me—that should not have mattered as much as it did.
The house settled around me like it was breathing—slow, deep, and age-old.
I had been lying awake in the armchair for hours, but sleep refused to come. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw flashes of the lift shaft—Riven staggering, the wet crack of bone, the glint of a knife in the rain.
There was no point trying to force it.
I eased the bedroom door open and slipped across the dark hallway to the bathroom. The face in the mirror looked like a stranger’s—pale, eyes hollowed out by exhaustion. Dried blood matted my hairline, a stark, rusty reminder of where my head had slammed against the lift cage.
I wet a cloth and scrubbed at it. The water ran pink in the basin. Beneath the gore, it was just a cut—shallow, already clotting. It throbbed, a dull counterpart to the ache in my shoulder, but it wasn’t deep. It would hold. Nothing compared to the hole in Riven’s side.
Cleaned up but still restless, I wandered further down the upstairs hallway. The air was cool, carrying that faint scent of damp stone you can’t fake—the kind that seeps into old buildings and refuses to leave.
The first door I tried opened into a spare room. It was dark and empty, the furniture draped in white sheets like ghosts waiting for permission to rise. Dust motes drifted through a thin sliver of moonlight. There was a strange sadness to it. The room remembered people the house no longer held.
I stepped back and tried the next door.
A study.
It was warmer here. The smell of old paper and leather hit me instantly.
I flicked on a small desk lamp, and amber light spilled across shelves packed tight with books—tall spines, cracked leather, worn edges.
These weren’t decorative. They had been read hundreds of times.
Some were ancient, handwritten journals; others were in languages I didn’t recognise.