46. Silk and Whispers #2
Dorian exhales sharply, running a hand through his hair. “I’m not great at talking to women—”
“You are,” she corrects. “You just never noticed them before because of me.”
Silence presses between them. He’ll never understand, of course, how much he’s lost because of her. This is for the best , she tells herself, although it doesn’t feel that way. Her Dorian wouldn’r have believed that, either.
But he isn’t here. However kind and lovely the man is in front of her, he isn’t hers.
“I want you to be happy,” she tells him.
Dorian looks at her, eyes searching. “And if I want the same for you?”
“Then you have to understand that my happiness is a small sacrifice to save a country.”
His expression flickers, something wounded in the set of his mouth. But she presses on.
“You tried so many times to save everyone,” she says, voice softer now. “You would have made any sacrifice to save them—to save me. You lost so much. It’s my turn. And I’m not even losing anything, not really. I’m going to be a queen.”
“You’re going to be miserable.”
Selene inhales sharply. Her breath hurts, her chest hurts.
All of her hurts. She knows that he’s right.
There might be moments of happiness in her life, moving forward, but it will be nothing like the happiness she’d known at Ebonrose.
That life, that future… all of it is lost to her, the memories now sharpened into a blade.
“Florian and Iris-Rose,” she whispers.
Dorian blinks. “What’s that? ”
“The names of the children we planned to have.” She forces another breath.
“I felt like they were alive the minute we spoke about them, like we could wish them into being. I could imagine carrying them inside me. I could see them playing in the midnight irises, see Soren teaching them how to fight, saw them squabbling over cakes in Rookwood’s kitchen.
Ariella would have loved them like her own.
Aunt Elizabeth would have been a wonderful grandmother. ”
Her voice catches. She swallows hard.
“I don’t remember the moment I realised I loved you.
It was like a tapestry I spun in my sleep, a thousand threads tying me to you.
I can’t tell you if it was at the Fairmont ball, or when I realised you were allergic to cats but still let me keep mine, or when we danced at the strawberry festival and I saw you with another woman, or if it was some tiny, seemingly insignificant moment, like when we were playing a game in your room, and things were so warm and simple and easy in a way I didn’t know life could be.
Sometimes, I worried that I only thought I loved you—that my feelings were conjured by your own, a reflection of your kindness echoed back.
You never said anything, but I think you might have thought the same thing.
You said you needed more convincing sometimes that I loved you in the way that you loved me. ”
She pauses. Realisation crashes into her. Now she’s the one loving him, the one who needs convincing. Only he can’t convince her of what he doesn’t feel.
“It would be easy to die for you, Dorian Nightbloom,” she whispers. “It will be much, much harder to live, loving you, and being half a world away. But I will do it. To save you, to save everyone you love, I will do it.”
Dorian swallows hard. “Why are you telling me this?”
She lifts her chin. “Because you asked me to. I have kept my promise.”
Dorian’s eyes shine. He looks so much like himself. So perfect and hurt and hers.
She never could resist him when he was sad .
Her hands drift over his shoulders. She leans towards him and presses her lips to his. It’s soft, tentative. He tastes like Dorian, but the kiss is uncertain. A Dorian not used to kissing her.
When they part, his eyes are large. “Why did you do that?” he whispers.
She smiles, but it’s broken. “It’s nice to be kissed by someone who likes you.” It’s even nicer when they like you back.
Dorian touches her cheek. “I swear,” he says, “it’s like I almost remember, like I’m trying to read words through a handkerchief. I can almost do it. I want to do it—”
“You want to want it,” she tells him. “But it isn’t enough.”
Slowly, silently, he concedes. He takes his hand back, stepping towards the window. “Goodbye, Selene,” he whispers.
“Goodbye, Dorian.”
Selene watches him vanish down the trellis and across the lawn before sinking into her bed.
I’m never going to kiss him again, she realises after he goes. She might not even see him again. She’ll never, ever know what it will be like to hold the one she loves in her arms.
The last time she did, he was dying.
She’ll go to her grave loving Dorian Nightbloom. He probably won’t even think of her in a year or two. He’ll certainly never love her again, not when she’s off in Ashvold, out of sight and out of mind.
She could live a good life there. But it won’t be the one she wants. There will be no Dorian or Thormere or Ebonrose. No Ariella and Rookwood and Soren and Aunt Elizabeth. Whatever friends she makes, whatever connections she can bring herself to form… it won’t be those ones.
There will be no Florian or Iris-Rose. No little children with rust-coloured hair or hazel eyes and hearts as big and bright as Dorian’s.
Her insides turn hollow.
She cries until she’s utterly spent.