46. Silk and Whispers
T he next three days pass in a blur of silk and whispers.
Selene is never alone.
Her mother glides at her side from dawn until dusk, guiding her through fittings, meetings, and the endless rituals of a noblewoman’s impending marriage.
Selene doesn’t remember her being this watchful when she was marrying the Duke, but then, Drakefell wasn’t the King of Ashvold.
Perhaps it’s only natural her mother should be so fraught.
Selene barely has a moment to breathe before another seamstress kneels at her feet, another maid smooths her hair, another courtier offers a carefully measured word of flattery.
She endures it all in silence.
It is not the first time she has prepared for a wedding that is not truly hers. But this one is different. This time, she is to wed a king. And this time, there is no escape .
Except the one that will come when she kills Eirik, and becomes Queen of Ashvold. The Crown does not pass from male to male. It does not require her to bear an heir. As soon as Selene is Eirik’s legal wife, she’s the legal queen.
If she marries him, she stays in Ashvold. She will rule it, even as an outsider.
She is no stranger to being alone, but this is not the ending she wanted for herself. She is not her mother’s daughter. She doesn’t crave power, only an escape from powerlessness.
You’ll be able to do good, she reminds herself. Goodness is worth happiness.
Mostly.
The evening before the ceremony, Roselune Abbey is thick with laughter and candlelight. The married noblewomen gather in the bower house, their voices bright with wine and anticipation.
The games begin as they always do—harmless at first, small wagers and teasing dares. But as the night deepens, the conversation shifts, their smiles turning knowing, their words hushed and conspiratorial.
They giggle as they describe the mysteries of the marital bed. Selene listens, nodding when required, forcing a small smile when someone clutches her hand and promises it won’t be so bad.
“Lie back and think of Haverland!” Lady Fairmont suggests.
“Or Ashvold,” her mother adds, with a quiet gleam in her eyes.
Selene does not need to hear this.
She has been a wife before. Twice. In different times, in different lives.
She knows what it is to be touched. To touch.
But not like this.
Not with Eirik, the King of Ashvold.
Wrong. It is all wrong. She should be with Dorian. Dorian, with his quiet smirks and steady hands, with the warmth of a man who saw her as she was, not as she ought to be.
But Dorian is lost to her. And tomorrow, she will wed another .
The night wears on, the women’s laughter turning drowsy, their voices slurring with wine. Selene excuses herself, slipping from the bower house back into the cold corridors of Roselune Abbey.
She lies in her bed, staring at the ceiling, welcoming the silence.
The bower house had been warm and golden, filled with laughter and perfume. Her room is dark and cool, a relief. And yet, dread coils in her stomach.
Tomorrow, the dawn will break.
Tomorrow, she will belong to Ashvold.
And, eventually, to herself again.
But no one else. She will never belong to anyone, ever again. It ought to be a freeing thought, but it isn’t. She belongs with Dorian, and he belongs with her…
The knock at the window is soft, but Selene is already awake. For a moment, she wonders if she imagined it—if exhaustion and unease have conjured ghosts against the glass.
But then it comes again.
She throws off the covers and crosses the room in a few silent steps, drawing back the curtain just enough to see the figure standing outside, hugging the trellis.
Soren.
Relief rushes through her. She unlatches the window and pulls him inside hastily, scanning the darkness beyond him before shutting it again.
“Have you found anything?” she asks in a whisper.
Soren shakes his head, brushing the foliage from his cloak. “I mostly came to see how you are.”
Selene exhales sharply, half a laugh, half a bitter sigh. “Terrible. You?”
“Nervous,” he admits. His gaze flickers over her face. “Let me do it.”
She frowns. “Do what?”
“Kill the King.” His voice is quiet but certain. “As soon as you get to Ashvold. We can work out the specifics later, but there’s no need for you to—”
Selene throws her arms around him. It’s tight, desperate, the kind of embrace that says everything she can’t.
“What’s that for?” he murmurs.
“For caring about me,” she says, pressing her face into his shoulder. “Even when no one else in the world does.”
He hesitates, then holds her just as tightly. “Dorian still cares, you know,” he tells her. “Maybe not like before, but he still cares.”
Selene lets out a short breath, almost a scoff. “Enough to come to Ashvold and be whatever the male version of a mistress is?”
Silence.
“I didn’t think so,” she sighs. “It can’t be the same. You know that.”
Soren pulls back just enough to look at her. “Come back,” he says. “Go to Ashvold for a bit. Change what you need to. Appoint someone else in charge and then… come home. Come back to Ebonrose. We can… we can still be a family.”
Tears prick at Selene’s eyes, hot and unwelcome. Soren’s, meanwhile, fall freely down his cheeks. She takes his face in her hands, thumbing them away.
“The change we want could take years,” she whispers. “How long do you think a man like Dorian will stay unattached?”
Soren swallows. “It’s only ever been you for him, Selene.”
“Not in this life.”
They embrace again, and this time it feels final. Selene holds on tighter, unwilling to let go, unwilling to acknowledge what this moment truly means.
“This isn’t goodbye,” she tells him. “I will take you up on your offer to end Eirik’s life.”
Soren exhales shakily, nodding against her shoulder, but when he pulls back, his arms linger around her. He hugs her like he thinks he’ll never see her again, despite his promises.
And then, with quiet steps and one last look, he slips away into the night.
Selene closes the window behind him and presses her forehead against the cold glass, breathing in the silence, breathing in the loss .
Tomorrow, she will be a queen.
A week later, a widow.
I am already a widow, she realises. The man she loved is gone.
She sits in the dark, staring at the ceiling, her limbs too heavy to move, her heart a dull, aching weight in her chest. The silence stretches, swallowing minutes, stretching into what feels like hours, until a soft knock at the window shatters it.
Her body tenses. “Go away, Soren,” she hisses, pressing her fingers into her temples. She can’t deal with another goodbye. She’s all spent.
The knocking persists, gentle but insistent.
She clenches her jaw. “I said go away.”
Still, it doesn’t stop.
With a sharp exhale, she throws off her blanket and storms towards the window, ready to berate him properly. But when she wrenches the curtain aside, her breath catches.
It isn’t Soren.
It’s Dorian.
Her pulse stutters, confusion laced with something perilously close to hope. For a moment, she can’t move. Then, slowly, she unlatches the window and cracks it open. Cold air rushes in, but it’s nothing compared to the ice settling in her ribs.
“What are you doing here?” she murmurs.
Dorian hesitates, lingering at the windowsill, his silhouette framed by the moonlight. “I wanted to see you. Before… well, before.”
“Why?”
“I… I don’t know.” His fingers flex against the wood. “Can I come in?”
She swallows. Then, wordlessly, she steps aside.
Dorian climbs through the window, straightening once he’s inside. His eyes flicker over the room, as if memorising it, or… or as if he’s trying to remember it, even though he’s never been there before. Then, without preamble, he turns to her.
“Don’t do this,” he says. “Don’t marry him. ”
Selene crosses her arms. It’s the best defence she has against those words and the way his expression threatens to undo her. “Why do you care, anyway?”
His jaw tightens. “I don’t like the idea of you being alone with him. Of having to—”
“I’ve endured far worse.”
“I don’t doubt that,” he says, frustration and helplessness woven through his voice. “I also don’t have to like it.”
She scoffs, shaking her head. “You don’t even love me.”
“But I could,” he says, “with just a little more time—”
With a little more time, she could probably make Dorian Nightbloom love her just as much as he did before. With a little more time, perhaps she could learn to love him as much as the one she lost. With a little more time, all manner of things were possible.
But they didn’t have more time, and her heart was all used up.
“How much did Soren tell you of our lives together before?” she asks.
“Not… not too much,” he admits, shifting uncomfortably. “Just that we were…”
“Married?”
“Yes,” he says. “He said it started as something political—at least for you—and it soon became something more.”
“You were very easy to fall for,” she tells him.
“Astonishingly easy, actually, though it took me a long time to tell you. You first kissed me the night of the Fairmont ball when I was crying, but it quickly changed into something else… I would have consummated the marriage then and there, but you refused. Wanted to give me the option of an annulment.”
Dorian exhales, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “That sounds like me. I could never have… I mean, the idea that someone like you would want to be with someone like me is…”
She tilts her head. “Someone like me?”
“Someone so…”
“Beautiful?”
His cheeks flush, but he nods. “Beautiful, and brave, and lovely.”
She smiles weakly. “You are those things too.” Or you were .
“Or I was, right?” Dorian says quietly, watching her too closely. The uncanny accuracy of his words makes her flinch. “I’ve… I’ve never been called beautiful by a girl before.”
“You will. Give it time.”
His throat bobs. “Is that why you won’t… why you don’t want to try this again? Do you think I’ll be happier with someone else—”
“I think another girl will hurt you less than I have.”