44. Two Spies in the Dark
T he breath rushes from Selene’s lungs all at once, leaving her reeling.
“Bloody hell,” says Soren, “that hurts! ”
He turns to face her, and Selene knows all at once that he remembers her.
Selene can’t help it. She sobs into his arms.
“You remember me,” she whispers, fingers balling into his clothes. “I thought… I thought I was the only one…”
“Sorry,” he tells her, arms circling round her back. “It took me a while to get here.”
“Dorian doesn’t remember me.”
“I know,” Soren says. “I’m sorry.”
“He promised me. He promised me that I’d never have to face anything alone!”
“And you won’t,” Soren insists, voice almost breaking. “You read me a bedtime story, remember? We’re family now.”
Selene sobs harder.
Eventually, her tears subside. She gains enough presence of mind to light a lamp, setting Soren down on the bed, and fetches him a cold compress for the back of his head. He accepts it gratefully.
“What happened?” she asks. “Start from the beginning of your day.”
“I didn’t remember immediately,” he tells her.
“That’s never happened before. It’s always come in the morning, waking from sleep.
But today… today I woke as before. Dorian left for here, and I went about my day like I hadn’t come back.
It wasn’t until he returned, and he told me that he’d met you, and what you’d told him… that it all came flooding back.”
Selene swallows. “Did you tell him?”
“Of course. He… he didn’t take it well.”
She wants to ask him how much, but that hardly matters. Nothing matters unless Dorian remembers everything. Knowledge is not the same as understanding.
“Do you… do you think he’ll remember?” she asks him. “I mean, if you did…”
Soren goes quiet. “I hope so,” he says. “But at the same time, I can’t help but shake this terrible feeling—”
“—that something has gone wrong?”
Soren nods. “We’ve barely come back any time at all, and the fact that only you remembered at first, and that my memories came back in the middle of the day…” He rolls his shoulders, like stretching an injury. “Something doesn’t feel right. Like…”
“Like the Goddess’ power was stretched too thin?”
He nods again. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I’m sorry that I remember, and he doesn’t.”
Something sharp settles under Selene’s ribs. She swallows, but the pain doesn’t vanish. She wonders if it ever will .
“What if the goddess can only send two at a time?” Soren continues. “What if we’ve confused her?”
Selene doesn’t know what to say to that, or what to think. She barely knows how to breathe. She wonders if Dorian’s theory is correct about multiple timelines and if, somewhere, there’s a world where Dorian’s the one who remembers. She hopes not. She doesn’t want him to be alone.
She comforts herself that she doesn’t think he is. She thinks, like Soren theorised, that there is only one, but that the Goddess’ power is frayed through overuse. She used a lot of it, sending Selene back during the last loop, months after Dorian and Soren had already travelled back.
She is reaching her limits.
So is Selene.
Soren dabs at the back of his head, and finally places down his compress. “Anyway,” he says. “What’s this I hear about you being engaged to King Eirik? ”
Selene pauses. “Dorian wasn’t here,” she says. “I had to think of something.”
“You can’t marry Ashvold.”
“Why not? It’s a perfect plan. That way, I have ultimate control of the invasion.”
“You think he’ll let you direct it?”
“You think I’m planning on letting him rule beside me?”
Soren’s eyes widen. “You’re going to kill him?”
She nods. It feels good to confess her true intentions to someone.
It makes it less terrifying. In Ashvold, any royal spouse can rule after the death of the monarch.
Selene can kill Eirik, and ensure that the country is never invaded.
“If I can’t find the evidence to frame my mother in time, I’ll have to. ”
“How?”
“I haven’t got that far ahead. Smothering him? Strangling him with my hair? Something no one would suspect of me.”
“I’m… I’m oddly impressed, but…”
“But what? ”
“Murder is hard. I’m here right now because I failed at my first. I’ve killed a fair few people now—some of them more than once—but it’s still not easy. If you fail—”
“Then teach me how to succeed.”
Soren’s pale eyes widen. She waits for him to refuse, to dissuade her, to tell her that she can’t do it. But he doesn’t. He turns away from her, staring at the floor.
“You’ll have to remain in Ashvold,” he says eventually. “You and Dorian—”
“He doesn’t know who I am, Soren!”
“He can learn again. You did.”
Selene shakes her head. “I don’t think I can do it again, Soren. I don’t think I can look him in the eyes and not see him looking back—”
“He did it for you.”
Selene knows this, but then Dorian is stronger and braver than she has ever been. “Maybe he shouldn’t have,” she says quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“I brought him nothing but suffering—”
“He loved you,” Soren insists. “You don’t think he’d do it all again, twice over, if he thought it would save you?”
The thing is, Selene knows that Dorian absolutely would. He would suffer again and again for the mere chance of saving her.
And she will do the same for him.
“I… I’m not worth all he went through.”
Soren runs a hand down his face. He takes a long, shuddering breath.
“I’m tired, Selene,” Soren admits. “I’m just so ready for this all to be over.
I’ve not been through as many loops as Dorian, but I feel like I’ve inherited them.
It’s exhausting, doing the same thing over and over, desperately trying to change things.
He was exhausted too. He was so, so tired.
I think he was at his wit’s end during that final loop.
You’ve no idea how marrying you changed him.
How happy you made him for the first time in so long.
Don’t… don’t think that doesn’t matter, just because he doesn’t remember. ”
Selene wants to believe him, but she can’t. She tells herself that perhaps this is Dorian’s reward—that he suffered so much, for so long, that this is the only peace he’ll have.
He’ll never remember the pain of the poison, she reasons. He’ll never remember how much it took from him, how scared he was. He’ll never remember the loops where he was alone, how hard he tried, how much he failed.
Tears well behind her eyes.
He’ll never remember how much I loved him, either.
She knows how much Luna’s death hurt him. This is the first time she truly understands it. Her Dorian is still dead, and although there’s a Dorian Nightbloom living and breathing, it doesn’t negate the loss of hers. Softens it, maybe.
This is what she would have picked, had she known the cost. If it was a choice between living in a world without Dorian, and living in a world where he lived but wasn’t hers, this is still what she would have chosen.
It hurts nonetheless.
“How’s your head?” she asks, to spare them both the thoughts currently going through her mind.
“It still smarts, but luckily for the both of us, you are terribly weak.”
Selene manages a small smile. “Will you help me?” she asks him. “Help me find evidence against my mother, I mean.”
“Why do you think I’m here?”