Chapter 88 CRACKS IN DEVOTION
“Stop,” I gasp. “Stop this. You are lying.”
She studies me, head tipped slightly to the side, as if I am a curiosity rather than a vessel.
“He kneels in the night,” she whispers.
The image slams into me with brutal clarity.
Damien on the cliff. The dying moon. His voice breaking under the weight of words he never meant to speak.
I cry out, clutching at my chest as agony rips through me, hot and unbearable. “No,” I choke. “He loves me.”
Her smile softens, just enough to make it cruel.
“And love,” she says gently, “makes him dangerous.”
The room tilts. Static crackles through the air, raising the fine hairs along my arms. I cling to the bedpost, knuckles white, fighting the sick spiral in my gut.
“You want me afraid,” I say, forcing the words through clenched teeth. “You want me alone. That is why you are doing this.”
Her gaze darkens, the edges of her pupils burning white-hot.
“I do nothing,” she murmurs. “You are simply seeing truth.”
Her voice slides through me like smoke, curling into my lungs, my thoughts, my bones.
“He is the Shadow.”
“You are the Flame.”
“And when the third bleeding comes, he will choose the dagger.”
“No!” The word tears from my throat raw and feral. “He swore he would die before letting anything take me.”
Her expression shifts, not mocking now, but almost… pitying.
“He will break that oath.”
Something inside me fractures.
I slam my hands against the mirror.
“STOP!”
The glass ripples beneath my palms, liquid and alive, cold seeping into my skin. My reflection leans forward until her forehead presses against the opposite side, her presence bleeding through the barrier between us, numbing, invasive.
Her voice drops to a whisper, intimate as a lover’s breath.
“You were never meant to live.”
A tear slips down my cheek before I can stop it.
Deep inside, my wolf whimpers, curling inward, sensing a truth she cannot fight.
My reflection lifts her hand and places it against the glass.
Slowly, trembling, I do the same.
The cold burns.
“When the moon fades,” she whispers, “your time ends.”
Then she moves.
She pulls her hand away first.
Her smile widens into something triumphant.
“Soon,” she says softly, “you will kneel to me.”
The mirror cracks.
A single fracture snakes from top to bottom, splitting the glass with a sharp, echoing sound. The room shudders violently as silver light erupts from my chest, tearing a scream from my throat.
Then everything stills.
The mirror darkens.
My reflection breathes in time with me again, eyes dim, expression empty, as if nothing has happened.
As if she was never here.
But her words remain, carved into my mind.
He kneels in the night.
He asks the stars how to kill you.
Shadow ends Flame.
He will end you.
My legs tremble so badly I have to grip the table to stay upright.
Damien.
Did he really…?
The moon flickers weakly outside the window.
And the whisper returns, softer now.
Soon.
I turn away from the mirror, heart bleeding inside my ribs.
However, he's beginning to avoid me.
I feel it the moment I enter the training yard. The air shifts. Shoulders stiffen. Warriors look away. And Damien—my Damien—turns the instant he senses me and walks straight out through the opposite archway.
My heart sinks lower with every step he takes.
He hasn’t touched me in three days.
Not a kiss.
Not a brush of fingers.
Not even a comforting hand on my back.
Three days.
He always said my touch steadied him.
Now it seems to break him.
I follow him—quietly, through the hall, down the stairs, toward the old armor vault beneath the keep. His aura leaks through the air like a wounded thing. Darker than usual. Sharper. Filled with a grief so powerful it chokes the shadows.
He’s unraveling.
And he won’t let me near him long enough to ask why.
At the bottom of the vault stairs, I pause. A faint flicker of light pulses beneath the door—silver, not torchlight. A whisper of magic skims my senses, thin and cold.
The hairs on my arms stand on end.
What is he doing down here?
I push the door open slowly.
The vault is dim, lit only by a single lunar crystal suspended above the table. The weapons racks gleam faintly in the low light—swords, axes, armor, relics untouched for decades.
And in the center of the room stands Damien.
His shoulders shake.
His breath shudders.
And in his trembling hand—
A dagger.
Forged from lunar steel.
Pale as bone.
Sharp as prophecy.
Its edge hums faintly, glowing where shadow meets moonlight.
My stomach twists painfully.
“What is that?” I breathe.
He flinches.
He doesn’t turn.
He grips the dagger harder, knuckles white, veins raised, shadowfire flickering around his wrists like restrained lightning.
I step closer.
“Damien,” I whisper. “Please look at me.”
He closes his eyes.
His voice strains when he speaks.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
I swallow. “Then why are you?”
He says nothing.
I take another step. “Damien. What are you hiding?”
Silence.
Another step. “Talk to me.”
Still nothing.
He is stone—unmoving, unbreathing, unbreaking only because he’s trying so hard not to.
I reach for him.
That’s when he finally turns.
His eyes are raw, red-rimmed, haunted. His face is pale, lips pressed tight in a line that looks like it’s holding back a scream. The shadows cling to him like tar, rippling with an emotion I’ve never seen in him before.
The dagger glints in his hand.
I stare at it.
Then at him.
“What,” I whisper hoarsely, “are you doing with that?”
His mouth opens.
Closes.
Opens again.
But no lie comes out this time.
Only a breath.
A broken, trembling breath.
And two words:
“The truth.”
My chest squeezes painfully. “Tell me.”
He looks away.
His jaw trembles.
“Selene, don’t—”
“Tell me.”
His fingers flex around the dagger.
“My reflection said you meant to kill me,” I whisper. “She said you knelt to the stars and asked how.”
He staggers as if struck.
“You heard—” He cuts himself off, voice cracking on the edge of panic. “Selene, it wasn’t—it wasn’t—”
“Tell me the truth,” I plead, stepping closer. “Please. I can feel you slipping away. I can feel the distance. I can feel your fear every time you look at me.”
A tear slides down my cheek.
“Don’t you trust me?”
His breath fractures.
He turns his face away but I cup his jaw, forcing him to look at me.
His eyes shine with pain.
And there, at last, the cracks show.
The cracks in his devotion.
The cracks in his armor.
The cracks in the lie he’s been living.
He swallows hard.
“I trust you more than I trust anyone,” he whispers. “But I don’t trust fate. I don’t trust prophecy. And I don’t trust the Goddess.”