Chapter Four: The Breaking
The fashion show had been planned for weeks.
Selina had designed it as a celebration—a reveal. The collection was called "New Beginnings,"
and every piece was meant to tell the story of transformation, of becoming something more than you were before. The finale piece was a flowing gown in shades of dawn: rose gold bleeding into soft lavender, with embroidered details that looked like tiny painted brushstrokes.
It was meant to be worn while she announced her pregnancy.
Lyon had approved the plan three days ago, his eyes bright with excitement and terror. "Are you sure?" he'd asked. "Once we do this, there's no going back. Everyone will know."
"I'm tired of hiding," Selina had said. "Aren't you?"
"Exhausted," Lyon had admitted, and they'd sealed the decision with a kiss.
But that was before Lyon had stopped answering her messages. Before he'd missed their planned meeting yesterday. Before the terrible silence had stretched from hours into a full day, and Selina had started to worry that his family had succeeded in changing his mind.
Now it was the evening of the show, and Lyon still hadn't appeared.
Selina stood backstage, her hands trembling as she adjusted her own gown—not the rose-gold finale piece, not yet. That would come later, after the other models had walked. For now, she wore a simple sheath in deep emerald, elegant but understated.
Her hand kept drifting to her stomach, which had just started to curve slightly. In another month, it would be obvious. But tonight, she could still hide it if she chose.
Maybe she should hide it. Maybe Lyon's absence was a message in itself.
"Miss Thrane?" One of the assistants appeared at her elbow, holding a long white box tied with black ribbon. "This just arrived for you. A gift, the messenger said."
Selina's heart leapt. "From whom?"
"He didn't say. But there's a card."
Selina took the box with shaking hands. The card was thick, expensive paper embossed with the D'Lyrandar family crest. She opened it, hope and dread warring in her chest.
The message was brief, written in an elegant hand she didn't recognize: "Selina—I'm sorry. I can't do this. I thought I was strong enough, but my family is right. This is too complicated. Please don't try to contact me again. Consider this a parting gift. —Lyon"
The words blurred as tears filled Selina's eyes. No. No, this couldn't be real. Lyon wouldn't— he'd been so happy about the baby, so determined to make it work.
But the crest was real. The handwriting, though unfamiliar, was confident and final.He'd changed his mind.
With numb fingers, Selina untied the ribbon and opened the box. Inside, nestled in tissue paper, was a single rose. It was exquisite—deep crimson petals that seemed to glow with an inner light, stem perfectly straight, leaves a vibrant green.
It was the most beautiful rose Selina had ever seen.
She reached for it without thinking, her mind still reeling from the letter. Her fingers closed around the stem— Pain.
A thorn had pierced her thumb, so sharp she barely felt it at first. Just a pinprick, a tiny spot of blood welling up.
Then the magic hit.
It crashed through her like a wave of ice, foreign and malicious and specifically crafted. Selina gasped, dropping the rose as she recognized the spell. Not a simple enchantment. Not even a curse, precisely.
This was targeted magic. Blood magic. The kind that required knowing exactly what you wanted to destroy.
"No," Selina whispered, her hands moving to her stomach as the pain began. "No, no, no—"
The cramping started low, a twist of agony that made her double over. She could feel the magic working, unraveling the delicate beginnings of life inside her with surgical precision. This wasn't an accident. This wasn't a side effect.
Someone had enchanted that rose specifically to make her miscarry.
"Miss Thrane!" The assistant was at her side, alarmed. "What's wrong? Should I call a healer?"
"The rose," Selina managed through gritted teeth. "Don't touch the rose. It's cursed."
But it was too late for warnings. The damage was done.
The pain intensified, waves of it that left Selina gasping and shaking. She could feel it happening, could feel the tiny spark of life that had been her baby—hers and Lyon's—flickering and fading. Could feel the magic doing exactly what it had been designed to do.
Tears streamed down her face. "Please," she whispered to no one, to the universe, to any god that might be listening. "Please don't take this from me."
The universe didn't answer.
Around her, chaos erupted. Someone was shouting for a healer. Someone else was trying to move her to a couch, but Selina couldn't move, couldn't do anything but curl around the pain and the loss and the terrible certainty that everything was falling apart.
Through the haze of agony, one thought crystallized with perfect, awful clarity: Lyon hadn't sent that rose. The handwriting had been wrong. The words had been wrong.
Everything about that message had been a lie designed to make her lower her guard, to make her reach for the rose without checking it for magic first.His family had done this.
They'd taken her baby. Their grandchild. They'd murdered it with magic and a forged note, and they'd probably done something to Lyon to keep him away, to prevent him from being here to protect her.
The realization should have made her angry. Should have filled her with rage.
Instead, Selina just felt broken.
The show, of course, could not go on.
The audience was told there had been a medical emergency, nothing serious, please enjoy the refreshments and the preliminary pieces on display. Selina was whisked away to a private room where a healer confirmed what she already knew.
"I'm so sorry," the healer said, her voice soft with genuine sympathy. "The miscarriage is complete. There was nothing I could do—the magic was too specific, too powerful. Whoever created that curse knew exactly what they were doing."
Selina nodded numbly. She'd known. From the moment the pain started, she'd known.
"You'll need to rest," the healer continued. "Both physically and magically. This kind of trauma...
it takes time to recover from."
"Thank you," Selina whispered, though she wasn't sure what she was thanking her for.
After the healer left, Selina sat alone in the dim room, her arms wrapped around her empty stomach. She should call someone. Her mother, perhaps, though that would mean admitting failure. Her friends from the theater, though none of them knew about Lyon.
Lyon.
Where was he? Was he even aware of what had happened? Or was he somewhere, believing his own family's lies, thinking that Selina had betrayed him somehow?
The door opened. For a wild moment, Selina's heart leapt with hope. But it wasn't Lyon.
It was one of the show organizers, looking uncomfortable. "Miss Thrane, I'm terribly sorry to disturb you, but... there are photographers outside. Someone leaked that something happened, and they're demanding to know if you're ill."
"Tell them I'm fine," Selina said automatically. "Tell them... tell them it was just exhaustion. The stress of the show."
"Of course. And the finale piece? The dawn gown? Should we—"
"No." Selina's voice cracked. "The show is over. Pack everything up. Send everyone home."
The organizer hesitated. "Miss Thrane, I know this is difficult, but we have investors, commitments. Perhaps if you just walked out for the finale, even for a moment—"
"I said no!" The words came out sharper than Selina intended, loud enough to make the organizer flinch. "The show is over. There is no finale. There's no new beginning. There'snothing."
She was crying again, helpless tears that she couldn't stop. The organizer mumbled something apologetic and fled, leaving Selina alone with her grief.
She'd lost her baby. She'd lost Lyon—not to his family's pressure, but to whatever they'd done to keep him away. She'd lost the future she'd been building, the life she'd dared to dream about.
All she had left was the pain and the terrible, echoing silence where Lyon's voice should have been.
Selina left the venue through a back entrance, using a glamour to hide her tear-stained face.
She couldn't face the photographers, couldn't answer questions, couldn't pretend to be strong when everything inside her was shattered.
She made it home on autopilot, her body moving through familiar motions while her mind remained trapped in that moment of pain, that instant when she'd felt the life inside her flicker and die.
Her apartment felt too empty. Too quiet. She could see Lyon everywhere—the studio where he'd painted her, the kitchen where they'd cooked breakfast together, the bedroom where they'd slept tangled in each other's arms.
The bedroom where they'd laughed about baby names and argued playfully over whose eyes their child would inherit.
Selina collapsed on the floor, her back against the bed, and let herself break completely. She sobbed until her throat was raw, until she had no tears left, until the first gray light of dawn began to creep through the windows.
She must have dozed at some point, because she woke to knocking at her door.
For a moment, hope flared. Lyon. It had to be Lyon, finally free of whatever spell or trap his family had used, coming to find her.
But when she opened the door, it was her nan.
Selina's grandmother was ancient, a witch of such power and knowledge that even Selina's mother deferred to her. She rarely left her cottage in the countryside, and she never visited Sharn.
Yet here she was, standing in Selina's doorway with eyes full of sorrow and understanding.
"Child," her nan said softly. "I felt the magic. I came as soon as I could."
That was all it took. Selina fell into her grandmother's arms and wept like she had when she was small, when the world's hurts could still be soothed by an elder's embrace.
This hurt, Selina knew, would never fully heal.
But at least she wasn't alone.