Page 5 of The Girl Who Fell Through Time
No one hears it, of course.
She closes her eyes. All goes black and silent.
Selene’s eyelids flutter open to a world that shouldn’t exist. Soft, hazy sunlight trickles through heavy velvet curtains the colour of smoke, casting the room in a dusky blue tint.
“Meow?”
A cat lies beside her on the pillow. She hasn’t woken up to a cat beside her since…
Since she left her parents’ house over a year ago, leaving her beloved cat behind.
She turns in the bed. A huge ball of fluffy cream fur with a tabby face stares back at her.
“Mistress Stripe?”
She sits up, reaching out to stroke the cat as if it might vanish into smoke, a figment of her imagination.Perhaps she’s dead, and this is the afterlife. It would make sense for her afterlife to include her cat.
What makes decidedly less sense is finding herself in her parents’ house. She blinks at the polished mahogany of her childhood bed, the faint whiff of lavender polish, the musty scent clinging to the thick damask walls that haven’t seen much ventilation in years. Her fingers sink into the plush duvet she used to hate, its weight pressing her down as if to remind her: yes, this is real. This is home. It’s all so achingly familiar, yet so completely, impossibly wrong.
She can’t be here. She can’t.
Every detail feels surreal, over-sharpened—her fingers seem lighter, more delicate than she remembers, her body somehow less worn. Her hair tumbles around her shoulders, brushing against her elbows. She touches it gingerly, noting that it’s shorter than it was yesterday by a good few inches—and softer, too.
If she isn’t dead, then how, by the goddess’ grace, is she here? Had someone found her and brought her back to her parents’ house? Had her hair been such a mess they had to cut off several inches? How had they washed it without her waking? Why does her body feel so much lighter?
It’s a journey of at least two days from Nocturne Hall to Roselune Abbey. If she slept the entire way—if she had been unwell the whole journey—surely she wouldn’t have woken feeling so… refreshed?
And how would anyone have managed to get her back here with half of Ashvold pouring through the mountain?
She clutches her middle to confirm what she already knows.
There’s no wound.
The door swings open, and Cassie appears, her expression softening when she sees Selene awake. Cassie looks lighter than she did at Nocturne Hall, her golden-brown haircarefully tucked beneath a lacy cap, her bright eyes alive with the gentle humour she once wore perpetually.
Until she followed Selene to Blackthorn House, Drakefell’s primary estate, where life squeezed the softness out of her as surely as it dimmed Selene’s own brightness.
Selene has missed Cassie’s slightly crooked smile. It lights up the freckles on her face, like clusters of daisies in the grass.
Selene can’t remember the last time she saw Cassie in this uniform—the soft mint-green dress and white apron of the Duskbriar estate. Cassie has been trapped in magenta for nearly a year.
Nearly a year. Maybe Selene does remember the last time she saw Cassie in this uniform after all. It was the day of her wedding.
Oh no, she prays to whatever gods might hear her,please let it not be that day.
Even if this is just some impossibly vivid dream—some memory her mind has conjured as she bleeds out somewhere far away—she doesn’t want to experience that day again. She doesn’t want to face the Duke. She doesn’t want to see his face, knowing what he will do.
“Lady Selene!” Cassie exclaims, placing the breakfast tray down on the table. “I didn’t think you’d sleep this late, today of all days.”
Today. The word stabs through her, sharp as glass. Her mouth goes dry. “What… day is it?” she whispers, barely audible.
Cassie raises her eyebrows, as if she thinks Selene might be teasing her.
I’m not teasing, Selene wants to explain.I don’t think I’ll ever tease anyone, ever again.
“Oh, no day in particular!” Cassie laughs. “Notyet, anyway! But we all know the Duke will be proposing today, don’t we?”
Selene’s brow furrows. The Duke can’t be proposing today, because he proposed to her a year ago. He can’t propose, because she is already his wife.
