The moon's light spilled across the temple courtyard like liquid silver, casting long shadows between the pillars. There, Daryn stood alone, his blade resting against the stone wall, his thoughts heavier than ever.
The name—Seris—still echoed in his mind. Hades took his sister, and she was also promised to be reclaimed, as if she were some bargaining chip.
And Selene had known
He clenched his fists. The goddess who had chosen him, who whispered in his dreams, who claimed to love him, had kept this from him.
"Some mother you are,.... "
"Why?" he whispered to the moon. "Why wouldn't you tell me?"
As if to answer his questions, the air suddenly shifted. The wind stirred, and moonlight thickened. The floor he stood on glowed until it seemed to be made of glass instead of the marble he was normally used to seeing.
Though he wasn't worried, in fact, he was expecting it anyway. But it seemed like Selene, as patient as she was would only have acted when she felt it right.
The courtyard cooled until the moonlight felt like liquid, and the air around Daryn thinned into something that tasted of salt and old pages.
And then, the dream came. This dream did not arrive as a voice this time. It arrived at a temperature.
He was standing in a field of stars. The ground beneath him shimmered like glass, and the sky above pulsed with constellations. He stood barefoot on black glass that held a thousand tiny reflections of himself; each reflection blinked at a different memory.
The statue of Selene rose from the horizon—tall, cloaked in silver, her face veiled.
She was not marble now but living light, a shape that both hid and revealed.
She was near enough that he could smell the sea on her hair and the old dust of temple offerings in her breath. Her veil moved like a heartbeat. Her eyes were an impossible pair—one silver as a new coin, one deep as a well that remembers drownings.
"You found her,.... You have found the ledger," she said. Her voice was soft, but it carried through the void like music. Her voice unspooled like a ribbon across the glass he was standing on.
Daryn did not bow. He had learned how to hold himself in the presence of gods.
"You knew. All this time."
"I did."
"Then why didn't you tell me? Why did you decide to keep it from me? "he said. The words had been honed on the edge of the tablet and found their mark. They did not tremble.
Selene's face softened, and for a moment, it was only a mother looking at a child who had scraped a knee. "I kept pieces to protect you," she answered.
"You were not ready. You are not strong enough to carry more without breaking."
"You broke me anyway," he shot back. The shards of memory—Seris's hands, a lullaby—rattled under his ribs. "I remember her," he said. "Pieces. Her laugh. Her hand in mine. I swore I'd protect her."
"You did," Selene said. "And you will again."
"You took my sister's name and kept it behind priests and seals. You made bargains that cost me my past." He stared at her and his voice shook.. "You cursed me, you made me forget, then you made me yours."
"I made you mine," she echoed. "Because I could not bear to lose you."
The stars dimmed and the field trembled.
"I am your mother," she said. "But I am also a goddess. And gods do not mourn. We reshape fate."
Selene's hands moved as if rearranging stars. "I did not take her to spite you. I bargained with Hades in a language that gods speak because he would not return what he claimed. I paid a cost so that a soul might not be erased. I tethered her so she would not be lost to oblivion."
"By stealing my memory?" Daryn asked. "By making me yours? How is that protection?"
She inhaled slowly, and the moonlight caught the line of her cheek like a blade. "You would have died to keep her once. I could not bear that. I could not stand again at a grave and watch you empty. The tether I made rebirthed you; it kept your thread intact, and the price was for you to forget. I thought—perhaps foolishly—that I would trade a memory for a life."
Anger flared hot and then colder in his chest. "You decided what I would trade. You decided without asking me." Daryn's heart pounded. He stepped forward, and moonlight reflected from his eyes, turning them as pale as the moon.
"You have bent faith once before, haven't you, then reshape it again. Bring Seris back, mother. "
Selene's gaze dropped, and for a breath, the goddess who commanded tides looked like someone bearing a private grief. "I feared your choice. I feared that, knowing you would choose a path that unthreaded more than it mended. There are laws that even I do not break lightly, and I have bent them once for love before; no deity would make it easier for me this time."
A thin laugh slipped from Daryn. "Love makes gods criminals, too, I see."
"You see only the wound," Selene said. "Look further and you will see what I feared. We gods measure everything in balances. I could not let your life be another debt in the ledger of loss. I have tried to be both a mother and a custodian...."
"Even though I have failed you in ways I thought I could never fail." Her voice softening.
Selene stepped closer.
"But there is a way we can get her back, since Hades will not let me have her because of what I have bargained, you will have to make an accord with him on your own. You must stand before the gods and demand what they owe. You must win the trial."
"If I stand before the gods and demand Seris back, will you stand with me? Or will you watch as they gouge us both for defying the rules you bent?"
Selene's veil fluttered like a sigh. "I will be at the edge," she said. "I will not step into their hall without cost. But I will be there. I have watched you enough lifetimes to know what you carry. Win, and I will move mountains in your name. Lose, and I will keep pulling you back until the fabric tears..... and I will wait..... Again."
Daryn's hands balled into fists. "I do not want your bargains anymore. I want to choose."
"You will choose," Selene promised, and the words trembled with something not purely divine. "Not because I forced it, but because you have remembered."
The dream folded into itself like a flower closing for the night, and Daryn woke with the aftertaste of salt on his lips as the moonlight faded from his skin.
He now had the certainty that Selene's aid would be both weapon and burden. His mother's presence had clarified nothing and everything:
She loved him; that much had been clear to him, even if she had lied by omission.
And she might yet be the ally who made his demand possible—or the goddess whose choices cost him everything he hoped to hold. He picked up his blade and prepared to leave, but noticed Lyra was waiting at the edge of the courtyard, her eyes worried.
"You saw her," she said
Daryn nodded. "She told me the truth. Or part of it."
She sighed and stepped closer. "So what will you do?"
He looked at the stars. "Train. Fight. Win."
"And after?"
He turned to her. "After, I'll find Seris. And I'll decide if Selene deserves me."