48. A Duel and a Death #2
Dorian doesn’t give him the chance.
With a roar, he charges, colliding with the Duke in a storm of fury and fists. They crash to the ground, Dorian on top, punching until Drakefell's head snaps back, blood streaking across his jaw.
But the Duke isn’t weak. He twists, shoving Dorian off with a grunt and rolling to his feet, spitting blood.
Soren tosses Dorian a sword. He must have been forced to relinquish his own at the gate. Steel meets steel in a shriek of sparks.
Drakefell fights like a cornered animal—slashing, lunging, his blows wild but powerful. The last time they fought, Dorian had been poisoned and the Duke had the upper hand.
But in this timeline…
Dorian is faster, stronger. The Duke is wounded and clumsy. Drakefell feints left, then drives forward, slicing across Dorian’s arm. Blood splashes, but Dorian doesn’t even flinch. He steps in close—too close for the Duke’s sword to be useful—and drives his shoulder into the other man’s chest.
They crash into a statue, stone shattering on impact. Drakefell gasps, winded. Dorian rips the sword from his hand and flings it aside.
“Please,” Drakefell gasps, stumbling back, raising his hands, chest heaving. “We can still make a deal. I can disappear. You don’t need to—”
Dorian steps forward and punches him so hard his head snaps to the side. “You have absolutely nothing that I want,” he says. “Not in this lifetime.”
He drives his sword straight through the heart.
The Duke’s mouth opens. No words come. Just a breath. A gurgle .
His knees buckle.
Dorian holds him there, face inches from his, eyes burning. “You won’t ever touch my wife again,” he hisses, as the Duke slides off his blade.
The Duke’s breathing becomes ragged, uneven. The sharp exhale, the gasps for air—they all fade as the life slips from him.
Selene watches as he dies, watching the light fall from his eyes. Once, in another life, he whispered falsehoods to her, words and praise and flattery. He’d spun her around a dancefloor and draped her in jewels.
He’d cut away at her, wrapped her in silken chains, poured poison in her ears, made her doubt herself, made her heart crack, turned her world to ice.
Rot in the afterlife, Edmund Drakefell, she thinks, not even bothering to speak the words aloud. No one will miss you.
She watches until he lies motionless at Dorian’s feet.
No one moves. The world seems to pause.
Finally, Selene looks up. Her gaze finds Dorian’s. There is nothing in her but a mix of raw relief and fear, her body trembling as if she could shatter at any moment.
“Dorian,” she breathes.
“ Selene. ”
They run towards each other, arms outstretched. He’s here, he’s really here, he remembers, he’s hers—
“ Halt !”
Palace guards flock around them, freezing them in place. They seize Lady Duskbriar with impersonal hands. She doesn’t resist; there’s nothing left in her to fight, nothing to fight for.
She glances at Selene only once before she’s dragged away.
Selene doesn’t spare her a second glance.
She fights through the guards to Dorian’s side.
His arms find her. The world falls away, eclipsed by the perfect, wondrous beating of his heart.
All other sounds fade. She kisses his face a hundred times, a thousand, blotting out pain, colouring him with relief, before finally burying her face in his chest .
“I’m sorry,” Dorian whispers, clasping her tightly as the tears stream down his face. “I’m sorry I forgot.”
“You remember me,” she sobs, her voice breaking as she clings to him. “You remember me.”
“I’m so sorry,” he repeats, his hands moving over her, like he can’t hold her tight enough, like he’s afraid to let go again.
The sound of familiar voices pulls them back to reality.
“Soren!” Dorian calls, pulling away just enough to look over his shoulder.
Soren is the first to reach them. He slaps Dorian on the back, then wraps an arm around Selene, pulling her into an embrace as well.
Ariella’s there next, her arms reaching for them both, and finally Rookwood appears too.
Torsos press over torsos, arms over arms. Selene has never been held by so many people at one time before. She ought to feels smothered.
She surrenders to it instead.
Someone coughs from outside the hug.
“The captain wishes to speak with you all,” one of the guards announces.
The arms fall away from her, Dorian’s last. He still clutches tightly to her hand.
“Separately,” the guard insists, dividing the group out.
Selene doesn’t object. Of course they need to be questioned separately.
She’ll stick to the truth as much as she’s able—that she and Dorian have been working together in secret.
She should probably say that the marriage part was a lie, done just to stall while the rest of their group found the evidence, because she knows no evidence of such a marriage will exist in this timeline.
But it will. Very soon.
She keeps her eyes on him until he vanishes behind a hedgerow. The guard escorts Selene towards the front of the house, where the conspirators are being loaded into carriages.
“This is outrageous!” Lord Fairmont declares. “ We have done nothing—”
Lady Fairmont is silent as she’s loaded into a carriage behind him. She says nothing in her defence. Several other ladies cry. A few hold their heads high.
Lady Duskbriar is one of them.
“Please,” she asks her escort, “may I have a moment with her?”
The captain of the guard nods. Selene has proven herself an ally today, after all.
Selene runs towards her, barely knowing what she wants to say, only knowing that it will be the last time they ever speak. If there’s a trial, Selene will give evidence, but she won’t talk to her. She won’t ever say a single word in her defence.
Her mother doesn’t meet her eyes. “You’re not hurt?” is all she says.
Selene shakes her head. “I’m unharmed.”
“Good.”
Selene glances around them. The guards seem distracted with everyone else at the moment. They’re watching, but they aren’t listening. Selene can speak freely.
But what is there to say? This might be the last time she ever speaks to her mother, and although she has spent so much of her life wanting something from her, her words completely fall away.
There is nothing that her mother can give her now.
Except a reason.
“Why?” she asks finally.
“I already told you,” Lady Duskbriar responds. “For our country, for all the women—”
“Not that,” Selene says, sick of hearing the excuses.
Pure motives don’t justify cruel actions, and she isn’t entirely sure her mother’s actions were pure.
She suspects she was motivated largely by ambition.
Selene notes an absence of lower-class women in Lady Duskbriar’s circle, even when a network of serving girls could have served her very well indeed.
“I meant why risk killing yourself? You can’t have known you’d definitely come back in time if you ended your life in the temple, despite what Rookwood and Ariella told you.
Why… why did you risk it? With Dorian and I both dead, th e estate would have fallen to you.
You could have still completed the tunnel. Why didn’t you?”
Lady Duskbriar meets her gaze for the first time, her eyes shining. “You don’t know?”
“Of course I don’t.”
Her mother smiles at her sadly. “When you have a child, you’ll understand.”
It's the only indication Selene has ever had that her mother truly loves her. It isn't enough. Not anymore.
Selene is escorted into the blue parlour and questioned thoroughly by one of the guards.
When did she first start working alongside Lord Nightbloom, when did she suspect her mother, what was the Duke’s role in all of this?
Selene keeps her questions close to the truth, but tells him that it was Dorian who discovered most of everything.
She trusts he’s smart enough to realise that she can’t come up with the details: only one of them can.
He’s had years of sabotage to fall back on. Hopefully he’s come up with something.
In any case, there’s enough evidence from the letters, and with so many people in custody, some of them will start to talk soon. Selene’s story isn’t important enough to double-check.
She is, after all, only a woman.
King Alden interrupts the interview to come speak with her. He doesn’t ask any questions about her role in this. Instead, he thanks her profusely, and asks what she would like for her assistance. “Clemency for your mother, perhaps?”
Selene thinks for a moment. That isn’t what she wants—her mother can hang, for all she cares—but she does want something. Because as much as she disagrees with her mother’s methods, she does agree with something .
Selene will have her happy ending, but many other women won’t. She can depend on Dorian. Love is not nearly so dependable for others.
And for many, it will not be enough.
“If you please, Your Majesty, I would ask you to reconsider the laws surrounding the rights of women,” she tells him.
“My mother was wrong to ally with Ashvold, but she will not be the last person to rise up if we are not treated as equals. I’m sure there are good reasons for the laws currently enacted” —Selene can’t think of any right now, but flattery has always gotten her further than civility— “but as it is, the transferrence of my property into the name of my husband’s upon our marriage is exactly what the Duke initially planned to exploit until I escaped him.
If women are able to own their own property, if we have rights to protect us, we are safe from the manipulation of men like the Duke.
If we are educated, we are safe from women like my mother. The country is safer as a result.”
The King smiles. “With a mind like yours, Lady Selene, I’m surprised that you weren’t on your mother’s side.”
“This mind wasn’t made for scheming, Your Majesty.”
“No? What is it made for, then?”
“What a man’s is made for, I suspect,” Selene replies.
The King laughs. “I could find a place for you amongst my advisors.”