36. Nocturne Hall #2
The chandelier above shifts—no, changes.
Where once there was glass and crystal, there are bones now.
Curved and sharpened. Candles drip thick red, pooling on the floor in silent puddles.
The portraits on the walls begin to weep black tears.
One of them bears her face. It watches her with hollow eyes and a cracked smile .
“You can leave your little manor,” the Duke says, stepping in front of her now. “You can have another man’s name. Carry another man’s child. But you’ll always be mine, Selene. You belong to this house. To me .”
Something moves behind him—shadows slithering, claws scraping wood. She wants to scream, but the sound won’t come.
“Foolish girl,” he murmurs, reaching out. His gloved hand brushes her cheek, and frost blossoms where he touches her. “You thought love would save you.”
And then he laughs.
The Hall laughs too—its doors slamming shut, its windows cracking, its walls groaning with the sound of something ancient and hungry.
Selene tries to run.
The floor opens.
She falls.
Selene gasps as she wakes, the sound torn from her throat like a sob. Her limbs jerk, tangled in sheets that feel too tight, too heavy. For a moment, the shadows on the ceiling seem to twist like the Hall’s thorn-spires, and she almost screams again.
But then—
“Selene,” a voice murmurs. Warm. Real. “It’s all right. It’s me. I’ve got you.”
Dorian.
She turns into him without thinking, pressing her face to his chest, breathing in the steady, anchoring scent of him—linen and ink and faint smoke from the fireplace. His arms close around her without hesitation. One hand finds the back of her head, fingers sliding through her damp hair .
“You’re safe,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to her temple. “It was just a dream.”
Selene clings to him. Her hands fist in the fabric of his nightshirt, her breath coming in sharp, uneven bursts.
She wants to believe him. She wants it to be true.
But her skin still burns with frostbite that isn’t there, and somewhere, in the marrow of her bones, she still feels like Nocturne Hall remembers , the timelines all bleeding together beneath the skeleton of the house.
“I dreamt about him,” she says hoarsely. “Drakefell. He was here. He said…” But the words trail off. She doesn’t want to speak them aloud. She doesn’t need to.
A dream, a dream. It was only a dream.
Dorian’s hold tightens. “He’s not here, Selene. He can’t touch you anymore. He will never touch you again.”
But the walls of Nocturne Hall creak. The fire in the hearth flickers, casting long, reaching shadows. Outside, the wind moans low and strange, like a voice calling through stone.
Selene buries her face deeper into Dorian’s chest.
She wants to believe him.
But something in the house feels… off. Not wrong, not yet—but waiting .
And beneath Dorian’s steady heartbeat, beneath his soothing words and careful hands, the unease grows like ivy—slow, quiet, curling inward.
Nocturne Hall had always watched her.
Now it feels like it remembers her, too.
Dorian rises late the next morning. Selene is too hungry to wait for him, and wants him to sleep in. She knows where her grandmother likes to breakfast and ventures down without him. It is strange not to see Soren, Ariella or Rookwood at the table. She hopes they’re being treated well.
The breakfast room is flooded with pale morning light, filtering in through tall windows draped in sheer curtains. A fire crackles in the hearth, warding off the autumn chill, and at the head of the table, her grandmother sits, a delicate teacup in one frail hand.
Lady Sylvana Ashwyn looks smaller than Selene remembers. Thinner, her sharp features softened by age and weariness. Yet her eyes are as bright as ever, keen and observant as she takes in Selene’s approach.
“Good morning, my dear,” Sylvana greets, setting her teacup down. “I was beginning to think you’d be sleeping half the day as well.”
Selene manages a small smile as she takes her seat. “Dorian needed the sleep. I thought it best not to wake him.”
“A wise decision,” Sylvana muses. “The boy looked like he could use it. How are you finding Nocturne Hall? Does it feel strange to be back? It has been a long time.”
Selene hesitates. Back is a complicated word.
It isn’t quite right, not when this Nocturne Hall is subtly different from the one she knew.
It’s uncanny—so much the same, yet impossibly distant.
And then, of course, there is the matter of Sylvana herself, very much alive in this timeline.
Selene still hasn’t entirely adjusted to the reality of it.
“I—” she starts, but the door swings open before she can gather her words.
She turns, expecting a servant.
She stills.
It is not a servant.
Instead, Lord and Lady Duskbriar stand in the doorway.
The breath leaves her lungs.
For a fleeting, foolish second, she wonders if she’s dreaming. But no—there is her father, as imposing as ever, his greying hair swept back in an impeccable style, and her mother, tall and elegant, wrapped in emerald silks as she takes in the sight of Selene .
“Ah,” Sylvana says, glancing between them. “I take it no one warned you of their arrival.”
“No,” Selene replies, voice carefully even. “They did not.”
Her mother tuts, shaking her head with fond exasperation. “There was no time to tell you last night—you both went straight to bed as soon as you arrived!”
Selene keeps her expression neutral as she rises, smoothing down her skirts with unnecessary precision.
Uneasy pleasantries are exchanged—her father’s hands squeeze firm but cool, her mother’s kiss on the cheek light as air.
It is all so painfully polite, as though they are distant acquaintances rather than family.
She sits through the conversation, through the careful inquiries about her health and her travels, through the subtle way her father’s gaze flickers over her, assessing. He does not ask about Dorian.
For now, she plays the part of the dutiful daughter, smiling where she must, answering where she must, all while her stomach coils with something tight and uncertain.
And all the while, she wonders how much longer Dorian will sleep—and how much she wishes he were already here.
“How have you been, my dear?” her mother asks. “Truly? We read about your dreadful ordeal in the papers. To think that the Duke—”
“I never liked the fellow,” Sylvana interrupts.
“Never understood why you two liked the man so. He had a certain charm about him, true, but in the same way a snake charms before it bites. He seemed an ambitious sort. Bit surprising he went for our Selene, come to think of it. This old place isn’t worth much to tempt him. ”
“Selene is tempting enough on her own,” Lady Duskbriar pouts.
“I am not a cake,” Selene mutters under her breath.
“Come again, my dear?”
“I am not a cake,” she repeats, louder this time. “I am not a thing to be devoured.”
“My dear, I merely meant—”
“I find I have some business to attend to,” says Selene, rising from the table without offering any further explanation, as if she were the mistress of Nocturne Hall. “I beg you will excuse me.”
She removes herself from the room without another word, leaving them all speechless.
She doesn’t care to discuss the Duke, nor to be talked about as if she were an object or delicacy.
Worse still is the feeling of knowing that once upon a time, she would have had no problem with being spoken about that way. She delighted in being desirable.
She no longer cares for the girl she was or the opinions of others. She cares about what precious few think about her, for theirs is a good opinion worth earning.
She finds a passing servant and asks her where Ariella, Rookwood or Soren might be.
“Mrs Everfrost and Mr Rookwood are in the kitchens, my lady,” she replies. “Soren I saw outside. Shall I fetch them for you?”
“No, that’s fine,” Selene responds. She fancies a bit of fresh air, anyway.
The air is crisp as Selene steps outside, the cool bite of morning lingering despite the sun’s slow ascent. She draws her shawl tighter around her shoulders and breathes deep, taking in the scent of damp earth and fallen leaves.
The gardens stretch before her, just as she remembers—manicured paths winding through clusters of neatly trimmed hedges, bursts of late-autumn flowers spilling over the edges of stone planters. But beyond them, past the ornamental pond and the bare-branched orchard, stands the bower house.
It sits half-forgotten at the edge of the estate, ivy creeping up its weathered walls. Once, it had been a place of sanctuary. A place where she had hidden away from the world, from expectations too heavy for her narrow shoulders.
And though she does not remember, it had been Dorian’s refuge, too. Theirs.
A gust of wind stirs the trees, their skeletal branches rustling as she turns her gaze to the horizon. There, beyond Nocturne Hall’s borders, the Ashvold Mountains rise in the distance, their snow-capped peaks stark against the pale blue sky.
Soren stands at the edge of the terrace, staring out at them.
She approaches quietly, her steps softened by the gravel. He does not turn at first, but she sees the way his shoulders shift slightly, the way his fingers curl and uncurl at his sides.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” she says.
He exhales a slow breath, as if he had forgotten he was holding it. “They are.”
“Do you ever miss it? Ashvold, that is?”
“Sometimes,” Soren tells her, his voice quieter now. “Sometimes I miss the climate and the land and the food—little things like that.”
Selene studies him, noting the way his gaze lingers on the distant mountains, as if he’s looking through them, back into his past. “Tell me about it,” she asks, tilting her head slightly.
She knows what she’s read in history books, of course, but that is not the same as hearing it from someone who has lived there.