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I stood. Hells, my body was different. More meat lined my bones, and pierced in my lips was a bone stud that hadn’t been there before. Tattoos of runes marked each of my fingers, and cords of golden hair hung down to my waist.

I was me, but . . . not at the same time.

I slowly drifted to the injured woman’s side. She held out a leather pouch, hand trembling.

“It is a curse. We should destroy it.”

“It must remain to restore this land one day.” I lifted my chin. “Your path of fate is opening, as it is doing in Northern realms. As it will someday do in the isles of fae.”

“I don’t see how this ends for our Eastern realms. Those kingdoms in the North, the South, the West, they will be overtaken should they win the ring.”

I offered a gentle smile. “Trust that there is a path in play that will lead to united lands once again.”

“Our people will be destroyed.”

“No. This ring will be found and lost many times by your folk, but somedayshewill bring an end to this pain. It will restore the true fated crown of this land.”

Recollection sparked in a truth so few of us knew. This moment was a time in the past of the Eastern regions when the bloodline of a first family of memory queens battled with a second bloodline that wanted the power.

This was the queen who’d lost to hateful wars, but there was a tale written here. In distant turns, a woman from the first family’s line would take vows with a man from the second. They’d fight to restore the crown. They’d fail.

But from that union would come a daughter. A girl who’d find a boy of shadows, and together they’d pick up this fated fight again.

“It is our damnation to remain in constant battles over that cursed ring.” Tears burned in the woman’s eyes when she stared at the pouch. “It has destroyed me, my armies. I know I will not live long. Already I hear the call of the Otherworld.”

She pulled back the hand she kept pressed to her side. Dark blood fountained from a deep wound. Her thin lips twitched in a tentative smile. “I do not wish to see memory manipulators on the throne, but . . . I have failed.”

“There is no failure. You have walked a path of pain through this battle. Their victory is but a small moment, a step toward the fated end.”

She closed her eyes and stumbled. Stefan wrapped an arm around her, holding her steady. “I yearn to rest. They made him forget me. They robbed me of my heart.”

“You will dine together in the hall of the gods.”

“I pray you are right. About it all.” Her voice was fading.

Stefan eased the woman to the ground, and I placed a hand on the side of her head. Never had I been a memory sharer, but somehow I knew she would see into the future memories of the bleeding Norns.

It was the gift of the ring, of the queens of the Eastern realms, to garner bits and pieces of past, present, and future memories from the damn Fates themselves.

She’d see my Shadow Queen. She’d see the future of her kingdoms united with a thieving king made of shadows at her side. She’d see the end of this fight she never wanted.

“I see it. The end.” With a trembling sigh, she blinked through tears. “May the gods protect them.”

“They will know what happened here,” I whispered. “They will make your fight worth every drop of blood.”

“Will I see him in the Otherworld?” She looked at me, her bright green eyes desperate. “Will I see Sindri at the table of the gods at the dawn?”

Sindri—her mate. How I knew it, I wasn’t certain, but I nodded. “He is already free of this world and saves your place beside him.”

Her breaths rattled. “May the fated queen have the fiercest devotion of heart.”

She let out a long breath, and never took another.

I brushed her hair off her brow, blinking through the sting in my eyes, and whispered. “The queen of your blood has every ounce of devotion. I promise.”

When I turned to walk away, I stumbled, landing on my knees, but I was no longer kneeling on frosted earth. Instead, much like it had been in the Night Folk palace, now I knelt before a wooden throne, a cruel-eyed man glaring down at me.

In his hand was the queen’s leather pouch. He unlaced the top and tossed the contents onto his rough palm.