Chapter 93 DAMIEN’S DESPERATION
DAMIEN’S POV
They tell me there is nothing left to be done.
They do it gently, as if softness will dull the blade of the words. The healers avert their eyes. The elders speak in practiced tones, invoking fate and balance and the cost of divine interference. Even the shadows seem to understand, retreating from Selene’s chamber as though they know better than to linger where a goddess has pressed her hand.
I reject all of it.
I stand at the foot of Selene’s bed and listen to her breathe. Each inhale is shallow. Each exhale carries a faint shimmer of silver light that fades before it can fully leave her lips. She is not unconscious. She drifts, caught between worlds, fingers twitching now and then like she is trying to grasp something slipping through her grasp.
Her skin glows faintly beneath the coverlet. Not the wild flare of Moonfire, but something quieter. Something restrained and wrong. Veins of light trace paths beneath her flesh that were never meant to exist in a mortal body.
Every breath she takes tightens something in my chest until it aches.
“She is stable,” the head healer says quietly from behind me. His voice is careful. Controlled. “For now.”
For now.
I turn slowly, shadows stirring at my feet in answer to my mood. “Do not say that like it is comfort.”
He swallows. “The Goddess has not fully taken her.”
“Yet,” I say.
Silence settles between us, thick and useless. I can hear Selene’s heartbeat. Strong. Familiar. Beneath it, I hear the second rhythm. Slower. Deeper. Ancient. That is the one that makes my hands curl into fists.
“What happens if she wakes?” I ask.
The healer hesitates.
That hesitation tells me everything.
“Tell me,” I growl.
“If she wakes fully bound,” he says at last, “she will not be Selene as we know her. The Third Bleeding reshapes what it touches. The moon is already dimming. Wolves across the realm are losing their balance. If she rises with the Goddess seated fully inside her…”
He cannot finish.
“She will become something the world cannot survive,” I say.
He nods once.
I leave before I destroy the room.
The corridor outside feels too narrow. Wolves press themselves flat against the walls as I pass. No one meets my eyes. They smell it on me. Desperation. Rage. Fear sharp enough to cut.
Good.
Let them fear me.
If the world wants a monster, I will show them what one looks like.
I go first to the seers.
The forbidden ones. The bone readers and smoke walkers my father outlawed when I was still young enough to believe laws mattered more than outcomes. I do not knock. I do not ask permission. I step into their den with shadow magic coiled tight around my spine and my Alpha aura unleashed.
They drop to their knees instantly.
One of them begins to tremble so violently her teeth chatter.
“Look,” I command. “Look for her. Look for a path where she lives and remains herself.”
They obey.
Blood spills onto the stone floor. Incense burns until the air grows thick and choking. They chant until their voices crack, until the smoke writhes and bends into shapes that make my skin crawl.
I wait.
Minutes stretch into an hour. One of the seers screams and claws at his eyes, sobbing as he collapses.
“Enough,” I snap.
The eldest looks up at me, tears streaking down her lined face. “There is no clean path.”
“Try again.”
She shakes her head violently. “Every vision ends the same. Flame cannot return untouched. The Goddess does not release what she has claimed.”
“Try again,” I repeat, softer this time.
Her voice breaks. “If you love her, you will stop asking.”
I leave them alive because Selene would want that.
Barely.
Next, I go to the shadow archives.
My father’s secrets. The ones sealed with blood and threat and silence. Garron follows me, his jaw tight, his eyes heavy with knowledge he does not want to share.
“You will not like what you find,” he says.
“I do not care.”
We break the seals. Ancient wards hiss and collapse. Scrolls crumble in my hands as I tear through them. Prophecies. Variations. Failed endings. Entire realms reduced to footnotes and ash.
Every single one speaks of sacrifice.
Not hers alone.
Mine.
“She cannot cross fully while you live,” Garron says quietly after hours of silence. “Your bond anchors her. Your shadow resists the Flame.”
I close my eyes.
“And if I die?”
The room seems to still.
“That is one of the endings,” he admits.
I laugh.
It sounds hollow. Wrong.
“So the Goddess wins either way,” I say. “She takes her, or she takes me first.”
“There may be another option,” Garron says slowly. “But it is forbidden.”
“Everything worth doing is.”
“The ritual requires her consent,” he says. “Conscious consent.”
Ice floods my veins.
“No.”
“If she wakes to choose,” Garron continues, “she may release the Goddess. Or she may complete the binding. Once chosen, it cannot be undone.”
I see Selene’s face in my mind. The way she always chooses others before herself. The way she would look at me if I offered my life as an answer.
“She would kill herself to save the world,” I say hoarsely.
“Yes.”
“I will not give her that choice.”
Garron meets my gaze. “Then you will have to make one.”
I leave him standing among the ruins of prophecy.
When I return to Selene’s chamber, the light is dimmer. The moon outside the window has faded another shade.
She stirs as I sit beside her. Her lashes flutter. For one fragile moment, her fingers curl around mine.
“Damien,” she whispers.
Something inside me fractures quietly.
“I am here,” I murmur, pressing my forehead to her hand. “Rest. I will fix this.”
She smiles faintly. Too faintly. “You always say that.”
“I mean it.”
Her eyes do not open.
The moon flickers again.
And I understand then, with brutal clarity.
The Third Bleeding has not finished.
And the final words of the seer echo in my mind, sharp and precise.
She cannot return while you still breathe.
I sit there long after Selene drifts back into silence, shadows crawling up the walls around me as though bracing for what comes next.