In the morning sun, Selene’s figure looked like a wraith carved from the place where light went to die.

She stood at the rooftop’s edge without trembling beneath the violent wind, hair moving in slow strands around her face, her form wrapped in darkness so dense and elegant that the sunlight did not touch her so much as negotiate with her presence and lose.

The gold and yellow rays poured across the rooftop, across the glass, across the stone and steel, but when they reached Selene, the shadows around her drank the sun and all arrogant brilliant gold rays greedily and offered nothing back.

And it was not only the light the darkness fed upon but even the hungry storms of the wind died at her too.

The murderous gusts came screaming across the rooftop with every intention of peeling flesh from the bone as they tore at Eira’s hair and shoved at the air itself like a bully testing the world for soft spots, arrived at the edge of Selene’s shadow and simply... stopped not merely in deflection but completely wallowed.

The darkness pooled at her feet drank the gale the way it drank the dawn, gulping each howling gust down into some lightless throat and giving nothing back, not an echo, not a stirred strand of that slow-moving silver hair.

The storm raged a hand’s breadth from her and went hungry there.

Her dark hair drifted as though she stood in a windless cathedral built of her own absence, and the air around her held the strange drowned hush of a held breath, while two paces away the wind kept up its tantrum and pretended, loudly, not to be afraid.

Even the storm, it seemed, had learned to mind its manners near the holder of the Seed of Ending.

If anyone looked closer... Selene had no shadow of her own.

Just like Eira, she cast none despite standing beneath the vibrant morning. But where Eira’s lack of shadow came from her fairy nature and absence from the rest of the world but those she allowed to see her, Selene’s was different:

The endless shadows she commanded devoured even the idea of a shadow beneath her feet.

What could possibly follow her when darkness itself already knelt at her side?

What a presence she had become!

Even Eira, who was rarely impressed unless something had either broken reality or insulted her creatively, found herself amazed by what the Seed of Ending had done to Selene and her Eternal Shadow Bloodline...

...it had not merely strengthened her but had evolved Selene’s lineage beyond the limits written into its original shap and dragged it closer to something older, colder and far more absolute:

Selene was closer now to touching true darkness itself.

And true darkness would laugh at the child called sun.

Selene’s eyes remained on the horizon, her expression was calm and sadly almost distant watching her mom and Diana from afar. "Maybe Phei’s grandmother is hiding something up here she does not want—"

"Oh..." Eira chimed in immediately, lifting one tiny hand. "That is not what I was asking at all."

Selene glanced at her.

"I know exactly what the deal with the Empress is," Eira continued, waving the matter away with the dismissive authority of someone who absolutely loved knowing more than she explained.

"It was a rhetorical question. Humans and their roofs are not the important part right now."

"Then what is?"

"What do you think about my deal?" Eira turned fully toward her, eyes bright. "You see, if you help us on this, Phei’s—"

"Oh, about that?"

Now it was Selene’s turn to speak, and she did so with the immediate solemnity, she clearly misunderstood how short answers worked.

"Of course I will help him. I would do anything for Phei. He is not only my man, but he took care of my mother when I could not. He loves her as his own mother, protects her, worries about her, and even when he has no obligation to us, he treats her as someone precious. And his family also saved—"

She stopped herself.

The wind rushed past them.

It did not, of course, rush past Selene. It arrived at her edge, thought better of its ambitions, and was quietly devoured.

Selene turned slowly and looked at Eira and said shyly: "A simple yes would have sufficed, wouldn’t it?"

Eira nodded with shameless delight at how cute Selene was sometimes. "Yes."

Selene’s expression went flat.

"But I love it when you and Maya ramble," Eira added, laughing softly. "It is beautiful. Is that why Phei is attracted to both of you? Because you are both the same?"

The darkness around Selene thickened.

If not for that veil of shadow shrouding her whole being, Eira would have seen the pink rising over Selene’s cheeks. But then again, Eira did not need to see things to know them.

’Embarrassment has a flavor. A tiny, adorable one.’

Selene hmph’d and looked away. "I am not at all like that Maya."

"Oh, darling," Eira said without a drop of sympathy, "you are not at all like her. She is bad news."

Selene’s head turned back with eyes narrowed.

"Just because Maya can see you, that makes her more dangerous?"

"Cute," Eira said.

Selene’s gaze sharpened.

"It would have been cute if it were that simple," Eira continued, and for once her voice lost a little of its playfulness. Not all of it, obviously. That would have required maturity, and maturity remained a tragic disease Eira had avoided with heroic discipline.

"You can see me because I showed myself to you. That is the difference. I lowered the veil, stood before you, let your senses reach me. Before that, even with your new powers, you would not have caught me so easily."

Selene said nothing.

"Maya," Eira said softly with a shiver, "has been seeing me from day one."

The wind screamed across the rooftop between them.

Eira’s expression darkened with thought. "She did not reveal it immediately. No, that would have been too simple and merciful, and apparently everyone around Master has decided to become a walking headache with beautiful hair. It was only later, when she was alone in the bath, that she told me she could see me."

Selene’s brows drew together. "Only True Gods and above can see you normally, right?"

"Yes."

"Then Maya is—"

"No." Eira shook her head. "That would be too easy. She is not simply a True God hiding in a soft dress, and before you ask; it is not some crude all-seeing ability either. If it were only that, I would have understood that by now. Her perception is not looking. It is more like..." Eira paused, searching for the right word and clearly irritated that language had chosen this moment to become poor. "Recognition? Like she stand above everything below the skies..."

Selene’s shadow stilled.

"She does not see me because her eyes are strong," Eira said. "She sees me because something in her already knows where I am supposed to be and I am below her real perception."

Selene looked away toward the endless lake, toward the river bending like a silver serpent through the island, toward the forest standing in ancient silence beneath the merciless morning.

For a moment, even the wind seemed to scrape around her instead of through her, cautious of the darkness that gathered at her feet — though by now that was less a moment’s mercy than simple policy.

The storm had stopped trying.

Everything that touched Selene’s shadow had eventually learned the same lesson: there was no passing through.

There was only being kept.

"Maya is much more than she looks," Eira said. "Much, much more."

Selene’s lips pressed together.

Jealousy and concern were ugly little twins, and both moved briefly behind her eyes before the shadows swallowed them.

She was not exactly fond of Maya; that much was obvious...

Perhaps because Maya stood close to Phei in a place Selene wanted. Perhaps because Maya was soft in a way Selene did not trust. Perhaps because every girl who loved Phei looked at every other girl and performed complex emotional arithmetic while pretending not to.

’Truly, romance is a battlefield, except everyone, around Master wears better clothes and calls the wounds... feelings.’

Selene finally exhaled.

"So," she said, voice quiet beneath the wind, "when is this heist?"