Page 31 of The Girl Who Fell Through Time (To Fall Through Time #1)

T he sound shatters the quiet of the night.

The ballroom doors burst open. Figures rush onto the terrace, dresses rustling, voices overlapping— What happened? Who screamed? —but Selene barely registers them. The moment has shattered like glass, and all she can see is blood, bright against linen.

Dorian is speaking, trying to tell her something— I’m fine. It’s nothing. Just a graze. But the words bounce uselessly off the walls of her skull, drowned by the roar of memory.

Blood. The bullet. Her death.

She is on the ground again, pain blooming in her stomach, her fingers slick with red. The Duke is standing over her, impassive, while she gasps like a beached fish.

She did this .

This is her fault.

Her knees buckle, and someone catches her—Isabel, perhaps, or Cecily, or one of the other girls who were just laughing and dancing moments ago. Their voices are urgent, but distant. She barely hears them.

More shouts. More people.

Soren appears out of nowhere, his sharp gaze cutting through the chaos. Selene doesn't know when he arrived, but he’s already moving towards Dorian, clasping his hand against his wound. There’s a flurry of motion—Lord Everton, the guards, too many people, too many questions.

“What’s going on?”

“Is Lord Nightbloom bleeding?”

“Selene, Selene, it’s fine, I’m fine—”

Dorian is whisked away.

Selene tries to go to him, but someone holds her back. She fights against the hands, against the swirl of silk and worried faces. The world tilts, her breath ragged in her throat.

She cannot let this happen again.

“Come away, My Lady.” It’s Marta, Marta at her elbow, helping her to her feet.

“Soren!” Dorian cries. “Go with her!”

Soren protests—like he always does when Dorian orders him away from his side—but he does what Dorian asks.

He has Dorian’s blood on his hands.

Selene is barely aware of the journey back to her chambers. She is moving, walking, though she does not remember how. Hands touch her arms, guiding her through corridors she should know like the back of her hand, but everything is a blur—faces blending, voices merging into one low, humming noise.

She is breathing, but each breath is thin, too shallow. Dorian’s blood is still burned into her vision .

Then the door shuts behind her, and she is in her bedroom, surrounded by too many people.

“My lady, you must sit.” A maid—not Marta—presses a glass of something into her hands. “Drink. It will calm your nerves.”

Another voice: “Shall I fetch the physician?”

More voices, more questions, but none of them are the ones she wants to hear.

“What happened?”

“Did you see anyone?”

“Where did the bolt come from?”

“Do you think it was an accident?”

Selene grips the glass tighter. No. No, it was not an accident.

“Was it aimed at you?”

Her breath catches.

She knows. Of course, she knows.

But how can she say it? How can she explain that this was not just a stray shot, not a random act of violence, but him —the Duke, reaching for her even now, though she is no longer his?

She says nothing.

Soren, standing rigid in the corner, intercepts most of the questions on her behalf, his expression as tense as a soldier’s. Only a single shot. A single wound. No, she didn’t see anything. No, Lady Nightbloom has no enemies. Neither does her husband.

Eventually, one by one, the others leave.

Marta remains.

The silence is heavy. It weighs on Selene’s shoulders, in her lungs, pressing against her ribs.

Marta moves towards her, hands gentle as she begins undoing the fastenings of Selene’s gown. Selene doesn’t resist, though she feels hollow, distant from her own body. The fabric slips from her shoulders, pooling at her feet like liquid moonlight.

She watches it for a long moment.

Then, in a voice hoarse from screaming, she says, “Find Dorian’s jacket.”

Marta hesitates. “My lady?”

Selene swallows. “Please.”

Marta studies her, then nods. “I will bring it to you.”

She disappears through the door, leaving Selene alone, standing in her underclothes, cold despite the warmth of the room.

She exhales. Closes her eyes.

And waits.

Eventually, the door creaks open, and Marta steps inside, quiet as a shadow, carrying a folded bundle of dark fabric. A small wooden box is tucked under her arm.

“I brought the jacket,” she murmurs. “And a sewing kit.”

Selene exhales slowly, as if she has been holding her breath all this time. She steps forward before Marta has the chance to set it down, snatching it from her hands. It is still damp.

“They tried rinsing out the blood,” Marta says carefully. “But it’s stained. It’ll never come out entirely.”

Selene’s fingers tremble as she spreads the jacket across her lap. The fabric is torn, the edges jagged where the bolt had ripped through. It is worse than she imagined, worse than she remembers.

Her fingertips brush over the cut.

Dorian had been wearing this. Dorian had bled through this.

She coils her fingers into fists.

Then, with slow deliberation, she opens the sewing kit.

“I can do that, my lady—”

Selene shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I need to.”

If she can fix nothing else, she will fix this .

She snips the frayed edges, first, makes the tear longer so she can fold it.

A clean scar. She threads a needle with steady hands— steadier than they have any right to be —and brings it to the torn fabric.

Each stitch is small, precise. She weaves the pieces back together, pulling the thread tight, binding the wound of the fabric as if it is flesh she can heal with careful hands alone.

Marta does not speak, only watches as Selene works.

The room is quiet save for the whisper of thread through cloth, the soft, rhythmic pull of the needle.

Selene does not stop until the tear is closed. Until she has made it whole again.

Only then does she allow herself to breathe.

Marta leaves at Selene’s insistence. She pretends she’s going to sleep, but she knows she won’t.

She can’t sleep until Dorian returns. She knows that he isn’t badly hurt, that he’s just answering questions and having his wound seen to, but she won’t be happy until he’s back.

She sits by the window, sipping wine. The moon overhead taunts her.

It’s almost dawn by the time the door opens again.

Dorian enters the room and closes the door behind him. The latch clicks, and Selene is on her feet in an instant. She launches across the space between them, throwing her arms around his neck and pressing herself against him, burying her face in his shoulder. Her fingers grip the back of his shirt.

“You’re all right?” she breathes, voice trembling.

Dorian stiffens for half a second, caught off guard, before his arms finally settle around her. His touch is careful, tentative, as if unsure whether to return the embrace or hold her at a distance. But then he exhales, his grip firming, drawing her in.

“I am,” he murmurs. His voice is steady, but there’s a flicker of something beneath it—relief, maybe. “You?”

Selene nods against him before pulling back just enough to look at him. Her fingers seek out his arm, skimming over the fabric until they find the bandage. Her lips part, her brows furrowing.

“It’s fine,” he insists, covering her hand with his. “It’s nothing.”

But it wouldn’t have been nothing if the archer’s aim had been better. It wouldn’t have been nothing if the arrow had found his chest instead—if it had stopped his heart.

My fault, my fault. All my fault.

A sharp breath escapes her, and suddenly, hot tears spill over. She presses her lips together, shaking her head, her grip tightening on his sleeve.

“Selene,” Dorian whispers, brushing his knuckles against her cheek before cupping it fully in his palm. His thumb sweeps over her damp skin, gentle, grounding. “It’s all right. I promise.”

“You could be dead.”

“But I’m not.”

“This is my fault.”

His brows draw together. “No, it isn’t—”

“No, no, you don’t understand.” Her voice breaks, raw with urgency. “The Duke did this. The Duke tried to kill you—”

Dorian’s expression hardens, but his hands remain gentle. “Even if he had, that still wouldn’t be your fault.”

“I should never have married you!” Her fingers tremble as she pulls away, but Dorian catches them before she can retreat too far. He lifts her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to the back of it—light, steady, reassuring.

“Selene,” he says, gaze locked onto hers, unwavering. “I don’t regret it, and I hope you don’t either.”

Her breath shudders. “I’ll regret it if you get hurt,” she whispers. “What if he tries again?”

Dorian hesitates, weighing his next words.

“I’m hopeful still that it was just some unfortunate misunderstanding,” he says at last, though there’s doubt laced in the words.

“The Duke was present in the ballroom at the time, and I don’t see why he’d have tried to kill me because of our earlier altercation—”

“That’s not why,” Selene says softly.

Dorian studies her, his brows lifting slightly. “What other reason could he have?”

Selene swallows hard. Her fingers twitch in his grasp.

“I didn’t tell you the whole truth when I asked you to marry me,” she admits, voice barely above a whisper.

“I… I learned that the Duke wanted to marry me to gain control of my grandmother’s estate.

I don’t know why, but—but it’s clearly important.

Enough that he still wants to marry me. Enough that he’d hurt you to…

” She can’t get much more out. She’s sobbing too hard to make any sense.

Dorian holds her face in his hands, thumbing away her tears, but they’re coming faster than he can stop them. She’s finding it hard to breathe again, she’s finding it hard to—

Dorian’s mouth collides with hers, and suddenly all thoughts vanish. The kiss is gentle, but not soft. There’s a hardness to his mouth, an absence of care or perhaps an overwhelming abundance of it. She’s never been kissed like this before. She can’t explain it.

Dorian pulls back. Her sobs have stopped.

“Sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have… we shouldn’t…”

“Yes,” Selene whispers, finally finding her voice. Her hands are curled against Dorian’s chest. “ Probably… probably a terrible idea…”

She grabs his shirt and steers his mouth back to hers. Dorian moans into her, and suddenly his hands are roaming her back, pawing against the thin fabric of her nightgown, grabbing her thighs. His lips move from her mouth to her neck, winding her hair around his hand to grant him easier access.

She grabs the back of his head and forces him to kiss her again. She doesn’t want his mouth anywhere else—not yet. She wants him against her, his breath her own.

Kiss me, Dorian, she wants to cry.

She’s an earthquake in a fabric shop, an explosion of colour, unspooled and unravelled. Sensation glides across her body. His hands are silk and fire. They’re moving across the room, stumbling towards the bed. Her fingers seek beneath his shirt, stroking the smooth, hand panes of his stomach.

Gods, he’s wonderful.

Dorian hesitates when her hands toy with his trousers. “We—we can’t,” he says. “We shouldn’t—”

“You said that before,” Selene tells him. “But I’ve quite forgotten the reasons why.”

Dorian laughs, pulling away. He kneels at the foot of the bed.

“You’ve been drinking,” he reminds her, which, yes, she has, but she felt sober enough when he started kissing her.

“And you’ve been through a shock. You may not be thinking clearly.

I don’t… I don’t want you to regret this in the morning. ”

There’s a certain sense to his words, but Selene doesn’t want to give them weight. In this moment, she’s never been more certain of anything.

Will that change, in the morning?

But then there’s the other thing, the thing he isn’t saying, probably because he doesn’t want to offend her. If they do this, they can’t go back. They will be husband and wife for real .

But what if that’s what I want? Selene wonders.

She looks at Dorian, kneeling so close to her, all soft sweetness.

What if it’s not about what she wants? What if it’s about Dorian, not wanting to be shackled to a woman he didn’t choose?

She’s still not forgotten the name he whispered in the dark.

He only kissed her to stop her from crying. She was the one who kissed back. Perhaps he’s just lonely and frightened too, desperate for someone—anyone—to hold onto in the dark.

“Right,” she says finally.

Dorian climbs to his feet and moves towards the chair by the window. Selene grips his sleeve before he can move too far away.

“Stay,” she whispers. Her fingers tighten around his sleeve. “Sleep here. With me. Just… just next to each other. Just for tonight.”

She isn’t sure what compels her to ask. Maybe it’s the fear still curling in her chest, the lingering weight of almost losing him. Maybe it’s the way his arms felt around her just now—steady, warm, safe. Whatever it is, she doesn’t want him to leave her side tonight.

Dorian blinks, caught off guard. “Selene, I—”

“Please.”

For a moment, Dorian simply studies her. Then, with a quiet sigh, he nods.

“All right.”

He hesitates only briefly before moving towards the bed. Selene releases his sleeve, stepping back to give him space, and she climbs in first, shifting over to make room.

Dorian sits on the edge removing his boots and glasses, then lowers himself onto the mattress, lying on his back with a careful exhale. There’s still a small space between them, and he makes no move to close it. His warmth invades the gap between them.

The room is quiet but for their breathing, and slowly, slowly, the tightness in her chest begins to ease.

“Goodnight, Selene,” Dorian murmurs.

She closes her eyes. “Goodnight, Dorian.”