Selene"s twenty-third and final death came a week after her decision to leave the Refuge.
The sharp pains tearing at her tissues, subsiding for a time, returned with fresh cruelty one night, sending her writhing and whimpering upon her mattress, the sheets knotting themselves around her burning limbs. She refused to call Ondo to beg for pain relief or sympathy. Eventually she found sleep, unconsciousness at least, but instead of release she fell into confused fever-dreams that left her sweating and panting, unclear about what was real and what was in her head.
She lay on a bed of bones, their shattered fragments digging into her flesh. She was back on Maes Far, the version of it she"d glimpsed from Ondo"s captured images, a world of dust and grey-brown ruin. A black sun shone overhead,
