She was almost unconscious when the door opened.
A soft creak. A flicker of candlelight. And then—shuffling footsteps across the bakery floor.
Selene blinked through the blur, her vision swimming with blood and rain. Her arms were locked around the twins. She couldn't feel her hands anymore. She thought, for a moment, that death had finally come—not with claws or fire, but with flour-dusted floors and the smell of warm bread.
But then a voice—low, clear, and kind—pierced the haze.
"Oh stars above… you're half-dead."
Hands touched her gently. Cool fingertips checked her neck. A palm pressed to her forehead.
Selene flinched.
The voice didn't retreat. It only grew quieter. Firmer.
"You're safe now, darling. No one will find you here."
The woman who knelt beside her wore a linen apron streaked with flour and herbs. Her silver hair was braided in a crown around her head, and her eyes—soft, wise, gold-flecked—shone not with fear, but recognition.
"You've come a long way, haven't you?"
Selene opened her mouth. No words came. Only a sob.
The woman touched the babies first. She unwrapped their blankets, humming softly, checking their limbs, their breath, their tiny hearts.
"Twins," she whispered, not surprised. "Moon-born. A rare fate."
Selene barely managed a nod.
"They're hungry," the woman said. "And you... you've lost too much blood."
She stood, unhurried, like she'd done this a hundred times. She moved through the darkened bakery with the ease of a ritual. Water. Towels. A basin of herbs she conjured from a drawer beneath a sack of rye.
The woman's hands worked quickly, efficiently, but always gently. She cleaned the babies. Wrapped them in soft, dry linen. Then, with careful strength, she helped Selene to her feet.
"Name's Genevieve Baker. But you can call me Gen."
"This place," she added, "has been waiting for you."
---
Selene slept for nearly three days.
The fever broke on the second night, and when she woke, the storm had passed. The world was quiet. The babies slept beside her in a woven cot beside the fire. And someone had braided rosemary into the windowpanes.
She lay still, breathing in the scent of cinnamon and something sweet—was it cardamom? Or maybe just peace.
Gen sat at the hearth, stitching the hem of a cloak. Her cat—an old, smoke-gray creature—slept curled around her feet.
"You're awake," Gen said softly, without turning.
Selene tried to sit up, winced, and gave up almost instantly.
"You used valerian on me," she murmured. "And dreamroot."
Gen smiled. "You remember your craft, then."
Silence stretched between them.
"I don't want to," Selene said. "I want to forget all of it."
A word you wouldn't want to hear from someone as powerful as her. She used to conjure fire from silence.
Now, even her breath felt borrowed.
And Genevieve after hearing her statement, didn't answer. She simply poured a cup of tea and brought it over, holding Selene's gaze with an understanding that didn't ask questions.
---
The days passed slowly.
Selene began to move again, though she limped. Her ribs ached. Her magic—once a roaring flame inside her—had gone quiet. Or maybe she had silenced it.
Gen never pried. But she watched. And she tended. She showed Selene how to knead the dough in the early mornings when the air was cold. She taught her which windows caught the best light for growing healing sages.
She rocked the twins when Selene couldn't stand to hear them cry anymore.
And every night, before bed, Gen lit a candle and whispered a prayer in a tongue Selene hadn't heard in years.
"Old words," Gen explained one night. "To keep the house hidden."
"Do they work?" Selene asked.
"So far. So good."
---
But grief was a strange thing.
Some days, Selene held Xena and Xavier as if she could mold them into shields. On others, she stared at the door for hours, half-hoping Adrian would walk through it just so she could kill him or beg him to end it all.
And sometimes—late at night—she would wake up and forget that her husband was dead. She would turn toward the empty side of the bed and whisper his name, only to remember the blood, the scream, the sound of ribs breaking.
"I don't want to be a witch anymore," she confessed to Gen one morning in sharp tears, as they shaped loaves of bread. Her hands trembled. "I want to be normal. I want to live quietly. I want to grow old and die without anyone burning me."
Gen didn't flinch. She brushed flour from her knuckles and looked Selene dead in the eye.
"Wanting peace doesn't make you less of what you are. It just makes you human."
"But I'm not human," Selene said, her voice breaking. "I'm something else."
Gen smiled. "Ain't we all, child. Some of us just learn to bake through it."
---
One afternoon, as twilight settled over Paradis Hills, Selene stood in the garden holding Xavier. Xena slept nearby in a bassinet, her tiny chest rising and falling.
The wind was warm. The lavender bloomed.
And for the first time in what felt like eternity, Selene felt something like... stillness.
She didn't know if it would last. She didn't know if the Devil would find them. But she knew one thing:
In this moment, she was a mother. A survivor. A woman trying to live.
Not a priestess. Not a hunted thing.
Just Selene.
And maybe, in this cursed, crooked little town, that could be enough.