FORTY EIGHT

FORTY EIGHT
CIARA'S POV

"Your daughter has always been a little bit special."

Silver light danced across Selene's face as my lips parted to question her, but the words died in my throat. The marble altar beneath my feet dissolved.

Dappled sunlight warmed my skin. The scent of wildflowers and damp earth filled my lungs. A garden sprawled before me—not the manicured beds of my estate, but something wilder, freer.

A child crouched near a flowering bush, dark curls falling across her face. Her shoulders trembled.

Erin.

My heart stuttered. She couldn't have been older than five, her face still round with baby fat, her tiny hands cupped around something.

"I didn't mean to scare you," she whispered, tears tracking down her cheeks and dripping onto a small sparrow with a twisted leg. "Don't die. Please don't die."

I reached for her instinctively, but my fingers passed through her shoulders. This wasn't my memory. I'd never witnessed this moment.

Erin pressed her palm against the bird's broken body. Blue light rippled beneath her skin—faint as a moonbeam through gauze, but unmistakable. The sparrow's wing twitched. Its frantic breathing calmed. Its beady eye blinked once, twice.

"Your daughter was a healer." Selene's voice curled around me like mist.

"How?" The word escaped as barely a breath. "Why wouldn't she tell me?"

"Children build fortresses of secrets." Selene materialized beside me, her silver wings casting delicate shadows. "This gift was hers alone. Not shared with you. Not with Ronan. With no one. But it coursed through her veins. The blood of the O'Donoghues."

I spun toward her. "Stop speaking in riddles."

Selene's fingers snapped.

Light blinded me, then faded.

Luna Brigid stood like a blade in an opulent chamber, flanked by her sons. Ronan and Ewan—younger, sharper, hungry. Their academy blacks absorbed the light.

"Before the crown's poison corrupted her soul," Selene murmured, "Brigid O'Donoghue answered to Brigid Lyubov. Daughter of an Omega... and a healer."

My lungs constricted. "A healer?"

"She doesn't know. Her father vanished before she understood what flowed in her blood. But it sleeps in her. In her children. Dormant, but present."

The vision rippled.

"Not in your Erin," Selene added, her voice softening. "Your daughter was mine. Blessed by me."

The scene shattered, reforming into a nightmare I knew too well.

My death chamber.

Brigid's face twisted with cold purpose. The blade glinted. The betrayal seared through my chest again as I watched my body collapse, blood seeping across marble. The memory of pain exploded behind my ribs.

Then, the moment I remembered my eyes closing and me reawakening back to the ball where it began, this memory took a different turn.

My eyes still blinked and I caught movement at the staircase while I was bleeding out.

It was Erin.

Her small face contorted in horror as she watched her grandmother drive silver right through me. Her knuckles whitened around the banister as her knees buckled.

"She saw everything." My voice cracked. "Goddess, she witnessed it all."

Selene's eyes held ancient sorrow. "She couldn't look away. So she ran to you."

Erin's scream pierced the memory. She tumbled down the stairs, her knee hitting marble with a crack that made me flinch, but she scrambled up and flung herself across my fallen body. Her sobs ripped through the air.

"Mama! Wake up! Please! Please!"

Ronan lunged toward her. Ewan stepped forward, uncertainty flashing across his face.

Erin's fingers dug into my bloodied clothes. "You killed her! You killed my mom!" Her accusation sliced through the room. "You monsters!"

Blue light pulsed from her trembling hands as she pressed them against my wound. The glow flickered, unstable as a candle in a storm.

Nothing happened.

I dropped to my knees beside her, trying to wrap my arms around her heaving shoulders, but I passed through her like smoke. "I'm here, baby," I whispered uselessly. "I'm right here."

Erin's sobs deepened as the blue light spread across her skin, casting her in an unearthly glow.

Brigid retreated a step. "Ronan," she hissed. "Your daughter... she's a healer."

Erin pressed her forehead against mine, her tears falling onto my lifeless face. "Please wake up, mama," she begged. "Please. Don't leave me. Please."

Light condensed beside her, twisting into Selene's form—not the goddess watching with me, but another version, in another time, materializing before my daughter.

Erin's head snapped up, hope blazing in her tear-soaked eyes.

"Please," she hiccupped. "Lady Selene, Please help."

Selene knelt, her silver wings folding around them both. "Child, you called to me."

Erin nodded frantically, pointing to my body. "Can you bring her back? She deserved better. She never knew real happiness. Everyone in this room betrayed her."

Selene's fingertips brushed Erin's wet cheek. "Death claims us all, little one. Your mother comes to my realm now. She will find peace."

"But she never had peace here!" Erin's voice broke. "She didn't get to truly live. Is that not the point of life?"

Ronan advanced, confusion etching his features. "Erin? Who are you talking to?"

Erin whirled, a surge of blue energy exploding from her hands, sending him sprawling across marble.

She turned back to Selene, desperation radiating from her small frame. "Please. She deserves another chance. I don't care if I never exist. I want my mom to be happy. To find real love. To live." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Even if—especially if it means I won't be born."

The words stabbed through me.

"No!" I lunged forward, my fingers grasping at nothing. "Don't say that, baby. Please, Erin, no!"

But the memory couldn't hear my screams.

"Why would you say that?" I collapsed beside her phantom form. "ERIN!"

The vision dissolved into silver mist.

I found myself on my knees at Selene's altar, gasping for breath, tears streaming unchecked down my face.

Selene towered above me, moonlight incarnate. "Your daughter sacrificed everything for you."

My fingers clawed at the marble floor as sobs wracked my body.

"She prayed not for your survival," Selene said, her voice gentle as falling snow. "But for your joy. Your freedom. Your love."

I stared at my trembling hands, unable to form words past the knot in my throat.

"I didn't know," I finally whispered. "I never imagined she would loved me that much to do such a thing. She was a child. She was just a child."

"She loved you enough to let you go."

Grief crashed over me—not fresh, but ancient, as though I'd carried it in my bones without knowing. I'd been given this second chance not by cosmic accident but by my daughter's selfless heart.

"I need to see her again," I whispered, the words raw. "To hold her, just once more."

Selene's gaze held the weight of eternity. "Then live as she wished for you. Live fully. And perhaps you will earn that grace."

I pressed my palm against my heart, feeling its beat—a gift from Erin.

My daughter had saved me. Now I had to live for her.

I looked up to Selene and sighed. "Thank you Lady Selene."

"Live well healer." Selene replied.

Then the world blinked back into place like a shattered mirror pulling itself together. I wasn’t on the moon anymore. I was back in the healer’s office, the faint smell of herbs in the air, the weight of my body grounding itself again. My legs hit the floor with a soft thud, and I stumbled a little before catching myself.

But the tears didn’t stop.

They fell in quiet streams down my cheeks, hot and endless. My chest rose and fell with uneven breaths, and for a moment, I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. I just stood there, trembling, overwhelmed by the memories I hadn’t asked for—but that had always been mine.

The moon rock floated slowly down in front of me. My fingers moved on instinct, reaching out to catch it gently in my palm. It was still warm, like it remembered the altar too.

The healer stepped closer. Her voice was quiet but steady. "Do you remember now?"

I nodded. My lips parted, but no sound came out. Just a small breath as my hand glowed with that unmistakable blue light.

"I do," I whispered. My voice cracked. I could barely hear it over the pounding in my ears.

I looked down at my hand. That glow wasn’t just light. It was something deeper, something older. I could feel the pulse of it inside me now. Not hiding. Not shielded.

Alive.