Page 138 of The Girl Who Fell Through Time
They stay that way for a while, Dorian’s hand curling through her hair, her fingers playing with the laces of his nightshirt, tips occasionally brushing against his skin. She knows they still need to talk, but she needs a little longer likethis,of convincing herself that he’s safe, that she is too.
“Selene,” Dorian begins eventually, “there’s something I need to tell you.”
Selene shifts up on her elbows. “I have something I need to tell you, too.”
She needs to tell him that she loves him, but also, as insane as it sounds, she thinks she needs to tell him about her past life, too. She wants him to understand why she is the way she is, what the Duke did to her, what she feared he might do to Dorian. She isn’t sure how to make him believe her—her knowledge of precise events in the future is limited—but this isDorian,and, somehow, she thinks he’ll listen.
Maybe.Hopefully.
“But first,” says Dorian, sitting up, “I was hoping you might explain this to me.”
He retrieves the small wooden totem of the fifth goddess from his pillow.
Selene stares at it.
“I’ve asked Marta about it,” he said. “She says you asked Jon to make it. My question iswhy?”
Selene takes a breath. It’s as good a place as any to start.
“There’s a temple, near my grandmother’s house,” she explains. “Hidden.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Yes,” she tells him. “And also… no.”Not in this timeline, anyway.
Dorian waits for her to explain.
“I think the temple is home to a fifth goddess,” she tells him. “I think… I think she sent me back in time.”
“You…think?”
“She did,” says Selene, with more conviction than before. “She sent me back in time. One year. The reason I needed to marry you was because I knewexactlywhat the Duke was planning… because I’d seen it happen. In my original timeline, almost a year after my marriage, the Duke opened a path between Haverland and Ashvold, and invaded our country.”
Dorian doesn’t respond. He stares at her, blank-faced.
“I know it all sounds too fantastic to be real… I don’t even know how to prove it to you… I’ve got a terribly bad memory for anything outside of society events—”
“Selene.” Dorian grabs her hands, thumbs squeezing her knuckles.
He probably thinks I’m insane,Selene reasons, hoping that if he doesn’t believe her, he’ll just assume she’s exhausted by the past few days, and won’t think she belongs in an asylum.
“I believe you.”
Selene stares at him. “So easily?”
Dorian smiles. There’s something in that smile, something knowing, even though his eyes are shining with tears.
Something clicks in the back of Selene’s mind… several tiny things, suddenly, and all at once. How well Dorian seems to know her, though they’d barely spoken in years. How he’d investigated her father when he’d barely been to Roselune Abbey, how he’d said he’d gone to King with news of Drakefell’s betrayal, only the King seemed to know nothing about it—or Dorian.
How he knew how she liked her tea.
You’ve been there?Dorian had said just now.
He wasn’t surprised to hear about the temple. He was surprised to hear—
He was surprised to hear thatSelene had been there too.
Selene clasps a hand to her mouth. “Dorian,” she gasps, “you too?”
Dorian exhales, like he’s dropping an awful weight from his shoulders. “Oh, my Luna,” he whispers, kissing her hands, “do I have a story to tell you…”
