Page 56 of The Girl Who Fell Through Time (To Fall Through Time #1)

Careful not to wake him, she tiptoes back out.

“Right,” says Ariella, arms now firmly on her hips. “Food. Then bath. Then rest.”

“Has the Duke—”

“He’s in the wind,” Ariella informs her. “There’s a warrant out for his arrest, obviously. He’ll never be able to show his face in society again. I hope he crawls away to a hole and dies. ”

Selene wants that too, but she also wants to know he’s gone. She doubts the wound Soren inflicted was fatal. Her hands tremble, remembering the weight of the pistol in her grip. She wishes she’d hit him.

But she cannot—will not—worry about that now. The Duke is gone. She’s alive, Dorian’s alive. She refuses to be ungrateful.

With nothing else to do until Dorian wakes, Selene sits down and eats.

The meal is simple but warm, and though she barely tastes it, she forces herself to eat.

The bath is even better. The heat soaks into her aching muscles, loosening knots she hadn’t realised were there.

She scrubs away the grime of battle, the traces of sweat, the lingering scent of smoke and steel.

At some point, her hands begin to shake, but she clenches them beneath the water until it stops.

By the time she returns to bed, she is bone-weary.

Selene sinks into the pillows, exhaustion pulling at her limbs. The horror of the past days begins to ebb, leaving only the quiet relief of survival. It still doesn’t feel real. That she’s here, that Dorian is here, that they made it through. The weight of it settles over her, warm and grounding.

Rookwood arrives sometime later, knocking lightly before stepping inside. “You look better,” he says.

“I must have been in a dreadful state, then.”

“Oh, absolutely. Positively ghastly.” But there’s fondness beneath the teasing. He holds up a tray. “I brought you soup.”

It’s the most delicious soup she’s ever eaten, and she’s not sure if that’s because it’s Rookwood’s or because she’s just so hungry. She inhales the entire bowl and half a loaf of bread.

Rook disappears to get more.

Soren follows soon after, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. “Don’t get kidnapped again,” he says, as if it’s that simple .

“I’ll do my best,” Selene replies dryly. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

“I’m sorry that I missed.”

“I hope you get another chance.”

“Me too.”

He nods once, sharp and satisfied, then disappears down the hall.

Aunt Elizabeth is the last to visit, settling at Selene’s bedside with a gentle smile. “You gave us all quite the fright,” she murmurs.

“I know,” Selene whispers. “I’m sorry. Especially so soon after Dorian—”

Elizabeth shakes her head. “No apologies, my dear. Just… be well.” She squeezes Selene’s hand, and Selene’s throat feels tight. For a moment, she wishes it were her own mother here, rather than someone else’s, but the sadness passes quickly. Someone is with her. Someone cares.

A shift of weight in the next room. A stirring breath.

Dorian.

Aunt Elizabeth shakes her head. “I don’t fully understand what’s just happened here these past few days,” she says, “but then, this is an odd household. Sometimes, I think it’s best not to ask questions. You and Dorian though… I think there’s a few things you still need to talk about, isn’t there?”

Selene nods. “There is.”

Aunt Elizabeth rises. “Then you best get to it. I’ll be back tomorrow to take tea… unless, of course, you’re too busy.”

Selene’s cheeks heat with the implication, not helped in the least by Elizabeth’s knowing smile.

Selene forces herself to stay seated until the door is closed, but she leaps up as soon as she’s gone, moving into the receiving room and to Dorian’s door just as it opens.

He’s standing right there, barely upright, looking just as desperate for her as she is for him .

She launches at him.

He stumbles back, catching her instinctively, arms wrapping tight around her. For a long time, they just hold each other, neither speaking, neither moving. His breath is warm against her hair, his heartbeat steady under her palm.

“Are you all right?” he breathes into her hair. “He didn’t hurt you?”

Selene shakes her head. “I’m fine.” She pulls back, cradling his face in her hands. “You?”

“Feeling much better,” he tells her. “Still a little unsteady—do you mind if I sit down?”

Selene doesn’t respond. She drags him to the bed and pulls him down against the mattress, lying against his chest, an arm around his waist.

“This… this also works,” Dorian murmurs.

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 like this, 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 is Dorian, 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 is why ?”

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 knew exactly what 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…

se veral 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 that Selene 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…”