30. A Grave Man #2
Rest. He didn’t know if he could. The fever dragged him into restless, shifting dreams—shadows twisting through halls, cold metal closing around his wrist, the Duke crushing his hand.
The old nightmares surfaced again, watching his father die, his body flushed and frail and thrashing.
He didn’t want to die like that. He didn’t want to die at all.
He wasn’t sure he’d have a choice.
His world narrowed to the feel of Selene’s hand in his, the sound of water dripping into a basin, the scent of herbs lingering in the air. Voices drifted in and out: Ariella’s clipped, determined; Rookwood’s gruff; Selene’s softer, urgent, always there. Always there.
Time bent. His body was leaden, heavy with heat and exhaustion, but Selene’s touch was light. He fought to hold onto it, onto her, but his strength slipped away. His breathing stuttered, his thoughts frayed. Somewhere, someone called his name.
He tried to resist, but his limbs were heavy. A voice murmured near him, soothing, pleading. Selene? No. No, that wasn’t right. That name was wrong.
“Luna,” he gasped, voice cracked and raw. His lips barely formed the name. “Luna—please—”
Silence. Or maybe just a pause. He didn’t know anymore. Soft fingers brushed damp hair from his brow, and he felt his body shudder beneath them. Was she real? Was she really here?
His throat constricted. He turned his head, seeking. The hands—Selene’s hands, but weren’t they the same?—tightened around his, but he couldn’t feel them properly. His right hand was numb, burning at the same time, veins black and swollen, but it didn’t matter.
He needed it.
“Handkerchief,” he croaked, reaching blindly with stiff, aching fingers.
Someone moved. A rustling sound. Then soft fabric was pressed into his palm, and his trembling fingers curled around it with what little strength he had left.
The cloth, already damp with sweat, was familiar—delicate embroidery beneath his fingertips, the same pattern he had traced in the quiet hours of the night, over and over again.
It was all he had left of her.
He pressed it against his face, breathing in the faint scent that still clung to it, something softer than all the pain, something that tethered him when everything else spun out of reach. His chest hitched, and though his body was too weak for true sobs, his breath came in ragged, uneven gasps.
A hand brushed through his hair again, tender, lingering. “Don’t you call him back to you, Luna,” a voice whispered. “Please let me have him a little longer.”
Luna was speaking, which didn’t make sense. Hardly anything made sense anymore.
Except that touch. That voice. She was here. She’d never left.
“I don’t know if you can hear me,” Selene’s voice surrounded him, “but I want to be your wife. Truly and completely. I want to share my bed and my life with you. I want to grow old beside you. I don’t need children—but I do need you.
So if your heart is too weak to bear this all alone, take mine. It’s only ever been yours.”
Is this real? Or was he just imagining what he’d always wanted her to say? Was she just saying that because he was dying?
Darkness tugged at the edges of his vision. He exhaled, barely aware, barely conscious, but the last thing he felt was Selene’s fingers curled tightly around his own. Holding him here. Keeping him tethered.
Dorian drifted in a world of fever and shadow pressing in from all sides. The heat pulsed beneath his skin, searing his bones, drowning him in something slow and inescapable.
He knew this feeling.
He’d seen it before.
His father had drowned the same way—his skin too pale, breath too ragged, fingers twitching weakly against sweat-soaked sheets. Dorian remembered the desperate gasps, the fever-glass eyes staring at nothing. He remembered watching and being unable to look away .
A sound broke through the haze, soft and urgent. “Dorian?”
Selene. She was still there.
His lips parted, but it took effort to form the word. “Selene…”
Pain lanced through him, like ice shattering beneath his skin.
His body seized, a violent shudder ripping through him.
His fingers twitched against something warm—her hand?
He couldn’t hold on. His chest jerked with a ragged gasp, his throat closing as fear surged through him, sudden and uncontrollable.
Her hand clasped his, cool against his burning skin. “I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m right here, Dorian.”
His chest was too light, too tight, as though he were floating just beyond the edges of himself. He tried to focus on her, but the exhaustion was bone-deep, clawing at him.
He forced his weak fingers to curl around hers. “How… how long?” His throat felt dry, his voice not quite his own.
“About a day,” she answered.
“You’ve been here… all this time?”
She raised her free hand to his temple, and brushed back his hair. He liked that. He wished he could feel more of her. “Well, where else was I going to be?”
She tried to smile, but Dorian knew the look of her trying to summon one.
He swallowed. His throat was raw. Pain spiked through him again, like a sledgehammer against bone. “Must be bad. It… it feels bad. Is it… am I going to…?”
Selene didn’t answer.
“I don’t… I don’t want to die,” he breathed. The words came out raw, fragile, like they might break apart before they reached her. “I don’t… I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to stop being me.”
They could try taking him back to the temple, but he doubted he’d survive the journey. Would Selene even let him go? She didn’t know. She didn’t understand.
He had to let her know—to let her know everything.
Her grip tightened. “You’re not going to die.” Her voice wavered, even as she tried to sound sure.
But he knew. He heard what she didn’t say.
He shuddered. “My father died like this.”
Selene’s tears fell onto his skin like raindrops.
“I had to watch,” he forced out. “Did I ever tell you that?”
“No,” she whispered, her words thick with sorrow. “I’m sorry.”
“I want… I want to stay here…”
“Stay, then.”
“I want to stay with you.”
Her fingers trembled against his skin, curling his damp hair away from his face. “I want you to stay with me, too.”
The warmth threatened to drag him under again. He fought to stay in the light, to hold on to her voice, her touch.
Selene pressed a cup to his lips, coaxing him to drink. The liquid was bitter, but he swallowed. She offered medicine, and he took it, though he wonders if it will do any good.
She spoke again, her voice lighter. “Do you remember when I told you that you weren’t allowed to expire when I was mad at you?”
A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. “But you aren’t mad at me right now.”
“Oh, I am,” she insisted. “I’m furious. Incensed, even.”
He hummed, voice weak but teasing. “You can lie better than that.”
She climbed onto the bed beside him, her warmth easing some of the cold that lingered beneath the fever.
“Does it hurt when I touch you?” she asked softly.
He shook his head as well as he could. “It only hurts when you don’t.”
She exhaled and then—blessedly—she pressed closer, her hand gliding down his arm in a slow, careful stroke.
The tension in his body eased.
She shifted until she was curled beside him, her forehead resting against his temple, her hand lacing with his. “You’re a beautiful liar, Dorian Nightbloom.”
He huffed a quiet breath, the ghost of a scoff.
“I’m not… beautiful.” The word felt foreign, ill-fitting, like a garment that had never belonged to him.
Beautiful were the po ets and princes, the golden-haired sons of noble houses.
Beautiful were the ones untouched by ruin, unmarred by the weight of their own choices.
He was not beautiful—he was fractured, pieced together with shadows and sharp edges.
“You are to me,” she whispered. “You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever known. And I know you, Dorian. I know you so well…”
Dorian breathed in the scent of her, clinging to the steady weight of her presence. His fingers twitched weakly against her waist.
“You’re staying,” she murmured against his fevered skin. “You promised me.”
His lips parted, the words barely escaping. “I did.”
A kiss pressed to his forehead, soft, lingering. “Then you’d better keep your word.”
He wanted to. More than anything, he wanted to. He’d made her so many promises in so many different lifetimes, and he wanted to keep them all.
But the warmth was pulling him under again, heavier this time. His grip on her slackened, the world blurring at the edges.
He heard her voice, felt the shape of her beside him—
And then, nothing.
Dorian drifted in and out of the fever’s grasp, caught in a world that flickered between fire and darkness.
He no longer knew where he was—whether he was still breathing, whether the weight pressing down on him was the sickness or death itself.
Time had no meaning here. The world had narrowed to heat and weight, to the slow, laboured thud of his heart.
The sheets beneath him were damp with sweat, the air thick with the copper-sweet scent of sickness.
He felt hands on him sometimes. A voice. Selene. Her presence wove through the fever like thread through unraveling fabric, but he could no longer grasp it. Could no longer grasp her.
Something cool brushed his forehead—fingers, he thought, but the sensation barely registered. The fever had burned everything away.
He wondered if Luna would be waiting for him on the other side, or if she didn’t exist because Selene did. What of their child? Would it be there in the afterlife, or was it forever lost to time?
What about his mother, his father, the brother he lost? Would someone be there?
Was it worth letting go of his family on this side? Worth letting go of Selene?
Except—
Selene.
She was there. He didn’t know how he knew, only that her presence pressed against him like a whisper in the dark.
He wanted to reach for her, to call her name, but his body no longer obeyed him. His lips would not part. His fingers would not curl.
His choice is trickling away from him. The heat had sunk deep into his bones, leaving him hollow, wrung out.
His skin burned, but his blood had turned to ice.
He could barely feel his own body anymore.
He floated above it, aware of nothing but the sluggish pound of his heart, the distant murmur of voices, the slow slip into—
Pain.
A violent, searing bolt ripped through his chest and seized his limbs. His back arched, his muscles locking so tight that he felt like his bones were breaking.
A choked, strangled sound tore from his throat—he barely recognised it as his own .
His body jerked against the sheets, his vision swimming. Hands pressed down on him, voices rising in panic, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying.
His lungs refused to draw breath. His fingers spasmed, his chest crushing inward, too tight, too tight—
He couldn’t breathe.
His heart stuttered.
A horrifying, skipping beat. Then another. Then—
Nothing.
For a single, unbearable second, he felt his body go still. Felt something deep inside him stop.
No—
He fought, but there was nothing to fight with. His body was no longer his own. His blood had turned to ice, his limbs gone leaden, his mind unspooling into darkness.
Faintly, he felt his own nails scrape against his chest, a last, desperate attempt to hold on, hold on—
And then—
Selene.
Her hands on his face, trembling. Her forehead pressed to his, her breath against his lips.
“No,” she whispered, raw and wrecked. “You do not get to leave me.”
Something deep inside him broke.
He needed to answer. Wanted to stay.
But he was already falling.
She won’t remember me. The thought clawed through the haze, ragged and brutal. Not really. Not in the way I want her to.
Not the way he remembered her.
He had been given a second chance. He had wanted more time. Just a little more time.
But this was it. It was all over now.
A sharp crash.
Heavy footsteps.
Too late—
The world blurred, spinning away.
Voices. Urgent, shouting.
A sudden grip on his arm.
Pressure. Cold.
The sharp bite of a needle piercing his skin.
Something rushed through his veins, slicing through the suffocating heat like a blade.
A second passed.
Then another.
Then—
A breath.
A deep, shuddering breath, forced into lungs that had nearly stopped working.
His body slumped against the mattress.
His muscles uncoiled.
His heart—
Beat.
Once.
Again.
Again.
Dorian sucked in another breath, his ribs expanding. The darkness did not swallow him whole.
He was still here.