CHAPTER.16
1064 Words
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Chapter 16 — The Moonlight Veil
The silence that followed was not gentle.
Selene’s heartbeat thudded in her ears as she stood at the edge of the crumbling courtyard, her eyes locked on the figure now slowly rising from the pool of moonlight. Valerian. Still cloaked in shadows, still regal in his stillness, but different. Changed. His breathing had slowed, and his once wild eyes now glowed with something else—clarity, perhaps. Or recognition.
“Selene…” His voice was hoarse, dry as if from centuries of silence. “You—”
“Don’t,” she whispered, her chest tightening. “You don’t get to say my name like that. Not now.”
He took a step forward, then paused, unsure. “You stayed,” he said instead.
Selene felt the wind brush her cheeks, and she realized tears had escaped her control again. “Only because I had nowhere else to go.”
“You had the entire realm,” he said. “And yet you came back here. To this cursed ruin.”
She turned away from him, unwilling to be disarmed by the soft edge in his voice. The ruins behind her groaned under the weight of memory. This used to be the place where they trained—where he taught her how to fight, how to read ancient glyphs. Where he taught her how to see her power not as a flaw, but as fire.
Valerian took another step, this time without hesitation. “Selene, the letter you left… it broke something in me.”
She froze. “Then perhaps now you understand what it did to me to never receive one from you.”
A gust of wind passed between them, almost as if the old gods were still listening.
He didn’t argue. Instead, he reached into the folds of his coat and pulled something out—a scroll, aged and sealed with crimson wax.
“I wrote one. I just… I never sent it.”
Her lips parted, breath hitching. “What?”
“I was too afraid,” he said, stepping closer now. “I knew what it meant. To feel. To love. For someone like me, that kind of attachment is dangerous. It weakens our grip on the Abyss. But I never stopped thinking of you. Not for a single breath.”
Selene’s knees nearly gave out. She closed her eyes, refusing to cry again. “Then why let me believe I meant nothing?”
“I thought it was the only way to protect you.”
She laughed bitterly. “That’s what they all say. ‘I hurt you to protect you.’ ‘I left you to keep you safe.’ But the truth is—it was easier. Easier for you to retreat behind your throne and your shadows.”
He didn’t respond at once. And in the silence, she heard the scroll being unsealed.
“Read it, then,” he murmured. “If there’s still enough of you that wants to know the truth.”
Her hands trembled as she took the parchment from him. The scent of him clung to it—frosted pine and bloodrose. She slowly unrolled it, heart lurching with each word her eyes drank in.
> To the one I never stopped watching from the shadows…
> If you’re reading this, then I have failed. Failed to fight what I am. Failed to be the kind of man who could choose love over legacy. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t feel it. Selene, you must know this: your laughter is the one sound I wish to hear at the end of the world. Your stubbornness, your fire, your questions—they unraveled everything I was taught to fear.
> When you left, you took the light with you. I told myself it was for the best, that your absence would harden me. But all it did was remind me of how hollow this castle is without your footsteps echoing through it. Every night, I relive that final argument. And every night, I wish I had stopped you.
> You once asked me if monsters can love. I didn’t answer then. But I am answering now: Yes. But not without ruin.
Selene’s hands began to shake. The letter fell from her grasp and fluttered to the stone floor like a wounded bird.
“You should’ve sent it,” she whispered. “It would’ve changed everything.”
“I know,” Valerian said softly. “That’s why I never forgave myself.”
There was something utterly vulnerable in his voice now. The man before her was no longer the untouchable Night King. He was the boy who had once carved her name into frost-covered trees. The one who dared to believe that even the cursed might find peace in another’s warmth.
“You think a letter can fix years of silence?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “But it’s a start.”
Selene walked past him, toward the balcony that overlooked the abyss. The mist rolled below like a restless sea. The moonlight bathed her hair, and her scent—sweet violets and silver salt—wrapped around him.
“Do you remember the pact we made?” she asked.
Valerian nodded. “That if the world ever forgot us, we’d remember each other.”
“And do you?” she asked, not turning around.
“I remember everything.”
She finally looked over her shoulder. Her voice was soft but firm. “Then prove it. Not with words, not with empty letters. But by walking beside me now.”
He stepped forward. “Where?”
“To the Oracle’s shrine,” she said. “There’s something I need to see. Something I’ve feared for too long.”
He blinked. “The Oracle hasn’t been summoned in over a century. The path is—”
“Cursed?” she finished. “I know. But if there’s even a chance it holds the answers… I have to try.”
Valerian stared at her, then nodded. “Then I’ll go with you.”
They stood in silence for a breath, then two. And then together, they descended the broken stairs leading away from the ruins.
The path ahead was shrouded in fog and secrets.
But for the first time in a long while, they were walking it together.
- Writer
