Secrets of Selene- N.M.

Selene, then known as Vivianne, knelt beside the straw mattress, her small hands trembling as she wrung out a damp cloth and pressed it to Elias's burning forehead. The room was cold, but her brother's frail body burned like a furnace, his breaths coming in shallow, rattling gasps.

"Elias," she whispered, her voice breaking as she smoothed the damp cloth over his sweat-soaked hair. "You need to fight. Please... just a little longer."

Elias's eyes fluttered open, dull and glassy, but they found hers with startling clarity.

His cracked lips curved into a faint smile, one that made her heart shatter. "You're doing too much again, Viv."

"I'm not doing enough!" she snapped, her voice trembling with desperation. She bit her lip hard, fighting back the tears threatening to spill. "You're all I have, Elias. I have to save you."

The fever had already claimed their parents, leaving the two of them alone in a world that didn't care if they survived.

Vivianne had done everything—stolen herbs from the healer's shelves, worked herself to exhaustion fetching firewood for a loaf of bread, and whispered prayers to gods she'd stopped believing in.

When the healer had refused to help, she'd knelt in the mud outside his door for hours, crying and begging. When food was scarce, she'd gone hungry to make sure Elias had enough. And when the cold winter nights crept into their tiny home, she'd wrapped herself around him to keep him warm, ignoring the way her own body shook with the chill.

She would have done anything for Elias. Anything.

"Viv," he rasped, his hand reaching out to grip hers. His small fingers were ice-cold against her skin, his touch weak but deliberate. "It's okay. You don't have to keep trying so hard. You've done enough."

"No," she choked, shaking her head violently as tears spilled freely down her cheeks. "It's not enough! It'll never be enough until you're better."

But deep down, she knew. She could see it in the dullness of his eyes, hear it in the ragged sound of his breaths.

Elias smiled again, softer this time, and it broke something inside her. "You're my little sister," he murmured. "You were always enough."

That night, as the first light of dawn seeped through the cracks in the walls, Elias's breathing slowed. Vivianne stayed by his side, holding his hand as his chest rose and fell one last time.

When he was gone, the silence in the room was deafening. She sat there, numb and trembling, staring at his lifeless face. Her brother. Her family. Her everything.

Vivianne would have burned the whole world down for him. She would have torn the earth apart, brick by brick, to keep him alive.

But sometimes, even that wasn't enough.

And at ten years old, Vivianne learned what it was to be truly alone.

Selene gasped awake, her chest heaving as her surroundings snapped into focus.

The compound's familiar, dim lighting came into view, and she realized she was lying on one of the couches in the main hall. Her neck ached, the sharp, residual pain a reminder of how it had been snapped.

Marcel's words rang in her head like a bell she couldn't silence:
"What I see is someone who's never had anyone to lose. Someone who doesn't understand what it's like to love someone so much that you'd burn the whole world down for them."

How far from the truth he was.

Selene stared at the ceiling, her chest tightening as fragments of her past flickered in her mind. Elias's pale face, his cold hand in hers, the emptiness that followed his last breath—it all came rushing back. She did know what it meant to lose someone. She knew what it was like to love so fiercely that she'd destroy everything if it meant saving them. But sometimes, no matter how much you burned or sacrificed, it wasn't enough.