Selene Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

Selene came to the basin on the second-to-last night with the boy's name humming in her chest. It had started as a small warm stone. Now it was a bell. Two soft syllables, over and over, louder each hour. She could feel them push at her teeth when she opened her mouth. She had promised not to say them. If they slipped out during the drain, the moonlight in the water would break, and the ritual would end with the moon still bright. She knelt at the basin's rim. The moon in the water was a thin silver hook. She began the drawing gesture she had used for four nights, palms low, breath slow. The name pushed harder. She clamped her jaw. A syllable pressed against the back of her tongue and she swallowed it down like a hot coin. The boy was already there. He stood on the far side of the basin in his torn sweater, watching her hands shake. He said, "You're going to say it." Flat. Not a question. Selene shook her head and could not answer, because opening her mouth would spill him. Elspeth stepped out of the dark behind him, gray robe still, hair pale. She said, "She can't hold it another night. It wants out." Elspeth looked at the boy. "You said not until you asked. Ask now, or she loses the moon." The boy's face went tight. He looked at his shoes. Then at the basin, where the silver hook trembled. Selene watched him decide. He walked around the rim and stopped in front of her. He said, "Give it back. I'll try." She nodded once, hard. She opened her mouth and let the two syllables go, straight at him, not at the water. His own name struck him in the chest. He flinched. Then he said it himself, out loud, angry the way he had told her he needed to be. He said it three times. On the third, a patch of white moonflowers behind him opened all at once, petals lifting like small lit cups. The little ghost girl came out of the flowers. She took the boy's hand. He did not fade. He stayed, and he was steady, and his eyes were dark and clear. He looked at Selene and said, "Thanks." Then the girl led him into the flower patch and the light there folded shut around them both. Selene turned back to the basin. Her chest was empty and quiet. The silver hook in the water was still there. She drew again, clean now, and the hook thinned. Elspeth watched from the grass. "One night left," Elspeth said. "And something under the towers is awake enough to listen." Selene heard it then, under her knees: the slow breath below the stone had changed pitch. It was no longer sleeping. It was waiting.