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T he combined house sigil representing all three immortal Houses with a sun, crescent moon, and stars inlaid into the marble floor of the entryway shimmered at Isador’s touch. A moment later, it vanished, revealing a narrow stone staircase spiraling down into darkness. Silver sigils in the curved descending wall flared to life, marked with various accent colors that pulsed gently, almost like the Moon Sanctuary had a heartbeat.

“These chambers were created by Selene herself,” Isador said. “Only those accepted by the goddess may enter—queens and their bound consorts.” She started down the winding stairs, her long bohemian skirt trailing behind her like a queen of old. “Come now, child,” she commanded, her use of child to address me throwing me off now that she had recovered from her imprisonment and appeared no older than me.

I glanced at my consorts, standing around the newly exposed passage in the floor. Javier was on my right, his body still as he assessed the staircase for hidden dangers. Bastian stood close to my left, his amber eyes scanning the darkness. Ash and Thane waited on the far side of the opening, steady as always.

The first step down felt like crossing a threshold into some unknown realm. Power thrummed through the stone beneath my feet. My fingers trailed along the wall, feeling a surge of energy every time they crossed one of the sigils left by countless queens before me.

The staircase ended in an arched doorway that opened into a vast circular chamber that stole my breath. Above us, the domed ceiling mirrored a starlit sky, centered on a crystalline sphere glowing like a captured moon. Silver sigils marked with blood-red laid out the moon phases in a large circle on the stone floor. The walls were covered in a single, seamless black mural that depicted Selene, Helios, and Eos facing off against the Shadow King, their immortal warriors clashing with the shadow scourge.

“Welcome to the Selenarium,” Isador said. “This is where you’ll learn to truly harness your power as High Queen.”

I stepped across the circle formed by the crimson sigils, and the crystal moon overhead pulsed brighter. The air felt thick with centuries of accumulated magic. Sensing the tension from my consorts, I glanced back toward the archway. Ash and Thane scanned the walls while Javier’s attention remained locked on me. Bastian, however, seemed to be caught in an internal struggle. His eyes were squeezed shut, the tendons in his neck bulged, and his hands curled into tight fists. Energy rippled beneath his skin, making a faint golden light writhe under the black surface of the tattoos visible on his arms and neck.

“Bas?” I asked, quickly crossing to him. I raised my hands to his face, and the instant my skin touched his, a shiver of power washed over us both. His tattoos flared gold, then settled back to their usual black, and he visibly relaxed, bowing his head.

“Uh, Isador,” I said, glancing toward my mentor. “What was that?”

“It would seem you had to beseech the goddess to welcome the chosen of Helios into her space. Not even your consort bond could override his primary allegiance, at least in the goddess’s eyes.” Isador studied Bastian from across the chamber. “Your tattoos, boy–how did you come by them?”

Bastian still seemed dazed by whatever had just happened, so I answered for him. “They just appeared,” I said. “It started when he was a baby, and the markings grew as he did.”

Isador’s eyes narrowed as she scanned Bastian from head to toe, like she was only truly seeing him for the first time right now. “Hmph,” she grunted and held out one hand, beseeching us farther into the chamber. “Come along, now. Let us begin.” She retrieved a familiar vial from the pocket of her skirt.

My stomach clenched as I recognized the blood tincture–only this vial had to contain Gavin’s, not Javier’s. Just seeing it made my chest ache with his absence, that empty space in my newly formed harem like a phantom limb. Would I ever be complete? Or was I destined to always be missing some part or other of my heart?

“This will help you access your full strength. You’ve communed recently enough with the others,” Isador explained. “Then we’ll ask the goddess to bless your bonds with your consorts. If the ritual is successful, we’ll see a projection of your heart sigils within the ritual space, allowing us to measure the strength of your existing bonds and ensure their long-term viability.” Isador directed me to stand in the center of the chamber, directly under the crystal moon.

I licked my lips and approached, Bastian’s hand in mine. “How, exactly, do I do that?”

“You use your will to call forth the bonds,” Isador said, taking Bastian’s hand from mine and exchanging it for the vial of blood tincture. “You pull the bonds out of the spirit realm and into physical reality.” Isador guided Bastian to stand on the full moon sigil. “And if the goddess approves, she’ll grant you the power to temporarily make the invisible visible.”

A lump lodged in my throat. “I’m not good at controlling my Will,” I confessed.

Isador smiled mysteriously, leaving Bastian behind and heading for Ash. “Of course you aren’t.” She guided Ash to stand on the waxing gibbous moon sigil. “Which is why we’re down here in the Selenarium, where the goddess can help guide your power.” She approached Javier next, moving him to the new moon sigil. “But you must learn this most basic diagnostic ritual.” She made her way toward Thane. “It’s necessary for both your safety as well as that of your consorts, and it’s essential you become comfortable communicating with the goddess.” She moved Thane to the waning gibbous moon sigil, effectively dispersing my consorts evenly around me.

“Now drink,” she said, turning to me. “And let us begin.”

I uncorked the vial with trembling fingers. The instant Gavin’s blood tincture touched my tongue, completely scrubbed of his usual spiced chocolate flavor, power surged through me like electricity. The crystal moon blazed brighter, and the sigils on the floor flared.

“Now,” Isador said, “feel your connection to these immortals. Sink into the bonds. Wrap them around your hands like ropes. Hold them tight. And once you have them, pull them to you.”

I glanced at each of my consorts, uncertain about my ability to do what was necessary. With this. With saving Gavin. With protecting my son or ending this war or fending off the Shadow King or, well, with pretty much everything.

Releasing a resigned sigh, I closed my eyes and focused on my sense of my consorts around me. On their emotions, the shapes of their thoughts, their steady support and unwavering confidence and hopeful expectation. On their love. On their fear.

I reached out, mentally and physically, actually raising my arms. I felt the bonds coiling around my hands. I curled my fingers, gripped them tight, and pulled.

The consequences were immediate and horrifying. Thane groaned, and my eyes snapped open as his body went rigid, his muscles locking as he crashed to the ground, apparently paralyzed by whatever I had done. Through our bond, I felt his terror—not of me, but of being trapped again, helpless.

Ash dropped to his knees, his hands out in front of him, as he searched blindly, all senses stripped from him. “Thane?” he called out, panicked. “Sophie?! THANE!”

“Shit, Soph!” Bastian gasped, his form blurring as he shifted uncontrollably—first panther, then raven, then bear, his bones cracking and reforming as the shifts tore through him too quickly for the magic in his blood to keep up. Pain sliced through our bond like razor wire. His amber eyes, usually warm with devotion, clouded with feral ferocity as he lost control of his own body.

“BASTIAN!” I cried, but he couldn’t hear me anymore.

The transformations accelerated, his body no longer settling into any shape. Fur sprouted and receded, feathers burst from skin only to dissolve into scales. Limbs stretched and contracted, his face elongating into muzzles, then snapping back to human features distorted with agony.

The forms began to merge—panther’s claws extending from human hands, raven’s wings erupting from a torso covered in gilded scales. His pupils split and multiplied, amber bleeding into gold that glowed with an ancient power that didn’t belong to Bastian at all.

What emerged was a chimera of impossible parts. Through our bond, I felt his consciousness fracturing, the part of him that was Bastian drowning beneath animal instinct and something older, something that felt like sunlight and the wild heart of the forest.

The creature that had been Bastian threw back its head, now crowned with curved horns that glowed like heated metal, and roared. The sound carried harmonics that shook the stones beneath our feet. The sigils flickered, responding to a power they hadn’t been designed to contain.

He lunged for me, rage in those inhuman golden eyes.

Javier moved with preternatural speed, intercepting Bastian. They crashed together, Javier’s body absorbing the impact of claws that left deep furrows in his flesh. Bastian’s raven wings unfurled, thrashing wildly.

“Control it, Sophie!” Isador barked. “You pulled forth their greatest fears, not their bonds. Release them!”

But how could I when every instinct screamed for me to flee? To hide. To stop the ritual and run away and abandon it all, because that would be better than this, than trying and failing and having to face the proof that I truly wasn’t enough.

Bastian’s monstrous form thrashed against Javier’s restraint. I had no idea how Javier remained relatively unaffected by the ritual—maybe an extension of his Prime Consort immunity to my Will—but I was so incredibly grateful for it nonetheless.

Through our bond, I felt Bastian’s terror—not of me, but of himself. Of being trapped in a form he couldn’t control, of the ancient wildness threatening to consume him. If I let go, if I released him as Isador instructed, he feared he would be lost forever.

“I can’t,” I choked out. “I’ll lose him!”

Panic surged to life within me like a miniature version of Bastian’s beastly form. I would lose him, just like I’d known I would. Like I’d lost everyone I ever loved. My mom. Amaya. Javier. Wes. Micah. Gavin. I’d known this would happen. I had known . I hugged my middle, sobbing as I attempted to hold myself—and Bastian—together.

“I lose everyone,” I whimpered.

“You won’t, Soph,” Wes said, his voice echoing through me as he wrapped his arms around me, cocooning me in his ghostly essence and sending tingles over me from head to toe. “You won’t lose him, and you didn’t lose me. I’m right here. Javier is right there. Amaya is upstairs with Micah, who is here with you. Gavin is waiting for you. You didn’t lose us, Soph. We’re right here. ”

I wailed, feeling like preemptive grief would tear me apart.

“Listen to your spirit, Sophie,” Isador said, pacing around the perimeter of the ritual circle. “He speaks sense.”

“You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for, Soph,” Wes said. “You can do this.”

Isador’s voice cut through the chaos. “If pulling on the bond doesn’t work for you, then you must find another way, Sophie. Your power flows from connection, not dominance. Use that. Use your love for him. For all of them.”

Her words sparked something within me—a deep, instinctive understanding. The way each communion with my consorts strengthened our bonds through mutual surrender.

Taking another breath, I closed my eyes and reached for the bonds linking me to each of my consorts. Instead of pulling on those ephemeral cords, I imagined wrapping them around my body, visualizing my consorts binding me as I had bound them.

The connections felt wild and primal—like trying to hold lightning in my bare hands. Beneath the chaos, I sensed my consorts’ desperation, their silent pleas echoing through our bonds. Javier wasn’t unaffected after all; rather, his greatest fear was losing me, and if he released Bastian, he believed he would.

“Please,” I whispered, surrendering to those bonds, to those cords now wrapped around my trembling body. I focused on Bastian’s bond first, the cord connecting us bright and golden like captured sunshine. I pictured him as I’d first seen him in the library—quiet and intense with those Clark Kent glasses he’d worn in a vain attempt to blend into the human world.

The crystal moon flared blindingly bright, cutting off my words. Suddenly, I wasn’t just sensing Bastian’s inner torment; I was living it. His memories crashed over me like a violent tide, drowning me in his past.

I saw through his eyes as his mother’s shift went wrong, her form contorting beyond natural limits. Her spine snapped and reformed, her beautiful face stretched into something unrecognizable. I witnessed her humanity being consumed heartbeat by heartbeat, recognition fading from her eyes until she no longer knew her own son. I felt Bastian’s raw grief as his father, King Veris, ordered her tossed through a portal to the drowned city, Atlantis, neither human enough to live among them nor animal enough to be released into the wild. An abomination . Unfit to live.

In a blink, I was back in the Selenarium. I staggered under this revelation, tears streaming down my face. Bastian knelt nearby, Javier holding him upright, both men panting from exertion.

I didn’t know what had happened to Bastian’s mom, but I could only assume Veris’s sentence had meant death for her. Much as I wanted to ask, needed to know, the unexplored bonds called to me, luring me from my heartache.

I focused on another cord—this one ice blue and shimmering with iridescence. The connection pulled me under like an arctic current, and suddenly I was Ash—mortal, human, kneeling in the shadow of a stone church beside a freshly covered grave marked with a small wooden cross. I felt the weight of the tiny carved shield and spear in my hands, meant for fierce little Freya, who would never grow old enough to hear tales of shield-maidens by the hearth fire. The plague had swept through our village like Odin’s wrath, stealing Ingrid’s and our child’s breath in the same night while I sat helpless beside their bed, first praying to ancient gods, then to the White Christ when the old ones remained silent. The priest had permitted the small wooden offerings despite their pagan origins—a final kindness for a grieving father. At least they had gone together; my sweet Ingrid would never know a world without her baby in it.

The memory shifted, and I was able to pull myself partway out, separating myself from Ash as he watched Thane lunge through the graveyard portal mere days ago, sacrificing himself to save us from the shifter bearing a grenade. I felt the scream building in his chest, the soul-deep desperation as he lunged forward, only to be restrained by Gavin’s iron grip. He couldn’t lose someone again, not after centuries of carefully guarding his heart against precisely this agony.

My breath caught as I understood. Ash didn’t fear physical pain or even death—he feared loving and losing, he feared helplessness, a cycle he had endured first as a mortal and then throughout his immortal existence. Yet still he opened himself, still he loved, still he fought to protect what was his, first Freya and Ingrid, then Thane, and now me.

I met Ash’s tortured gaze, a moment of perfect understanding between us that fed our bond, strengthening it. But still, I wasn’t done.

I focused on another cord—this one a deep, sea green that pulsed like ocean depths. The bond thrummed, and I plunged into darkness. I was Thane, still human, working in the fields under a merciless sun when a pale hand selected me from among the other slaves. “This one,” a woman’s voice said, cultured and cold as winter frost. “Bring him to my chambers.”

Night after night, humiliation and pain. The mistress of the plantation used my body for her pleasure while treating me as less than human. Her nails digging into my flesh, drawing blood like she was marking livestock. Her punishment when I failed to perform to her satisfaction—the lash, the hunger, the isolation. The helpless rage I swallowed until it became a poison in my veins.

The memory twisted, and I clawed away, watching Thane run after killing his mistress in self-defense rather than experiencing it firsthand. I watched as he was caught, tortured, and left standing with a rope around his neck as his attackers were slaughtered. I watched as a dainty woman picked her way through the crimson mud, hulking shadows surrounding her. “You’re very pretty,” she said, her voice like a song. “Do you want to live forever?”

Decades passed in a heartbeat—different queens, different masters, but the same sense of powerlessness, of being valued only for what his body could provide. Until Ash. Until someone looked at Thane and saw a person, not a possession.

Then the Sun Keep—the endless darkness, the hunger, the return of that helpless rage as he was once again reduced to a resource to be drained, a body to be used.

I gasped, my knees buckling as the weight of his trauma crashed through me. “Never again,” I vowed, my voice breaking as I reached toward where Thane knelt. “ Never .” The promise vibrated through our bond, strengthening our connection.

I focused on another cord—blood-red and scorched along the edges. This one felt ancient, weathered by decades of pain but somehow unbreakable, like a scar that refused to fade.

Suddenly I was in Javier’s head, but I had a better idea of what to expect, and I was able to keep some distance between myself and his memory, observing his past instead of living it. I watched him, a young boy with skinned knees running through the halls of this very sanctuary, a dark-haired girl laughing beside him. Diana—my mom—radiant even in childhood. I sensed the fierce protectiveness he felt for her, how he loved her, a sister in every way but blood.

The memory shifted to a teenaged Diana weeping in his arms after her mother announced she would need to choose her consorts soon. “I don’t want to,” she whispered, her tears soaking through his shirt. “I don’t want to be bound to anyone . I want to choose my own path.” Javier’s conflicted emotions—the relief that she didn’t want him in that way mixed with fear for her future, his determination to stand beside her, to serve her, regardless of the cost to himself. For service to a High Queen required complete devotion. He couldn’t join another queen’s harem and also serve his dearest friend.

Then Diana, older now and crowned as High Queen, her eyes heavy with knowledge as she told him, “I want you to be Prime Consort to the next High Queen, when the time comes… When I’m gone. Let this be your last act of service to me, my old friend.” The shock, the honor, the confusion. “Why not Gavin?” he had asked. “He’s the stronger guardian. The strongest in centuries.” Diana’s mysterious smile, tinged with sadness. “Because she will need your experience more than she will need his strength.”

Then decades of torture in the Sun Keep, with his only anchor the tenuous connection to me. The overwhelming guilt that he had failed Diana. The bone-deep fear that I would never fulfill the destiny my mother had foreseen for me—a destiny that required sacrifices he now understood too late.

A sob tore from my throat. “She knew,” I whispered, horrified by the confirmation. “She knew what would happen to all of us.” The revelation gutted me, but our bond pulsed with renewed understanding, with shared grief for the woman who had brought us together.

But still, I wasn’t finished. One last cord called to me, shimmering and liquid like pure quicksilver. It sucked me in, tearing me away from reality with such violent urgency that I barely had time or forethought to separate myself from Gavin as I crash landed in his memory.

Dazed, I watched a beautiful vampire queen with deep gray eyes lifting a baby—Gavin—to the moon. “My son will serve the next High Queen,” she proclaimed, her voice ringing with a prophetic power that made the air itself tremble. “The goddess has shown me this truth.”

I witnessed his training, his endless preparation for a role he hadn’t asked for but had never questioned. His First Rite, when he became undead, and his Second Rite, when he ascended to guardian status, his amplified strength and power exceeding all predictions. The weight of expectation and disappointment crushed him as he watched other guardians find their queens and accept their bonds while he waited and trained, always training. A lifetime of purpose without fulfillment.

And then, the news he had awaited his entire existence. High Queen Diana had given birth to a girl, then another. His nervous excitement when his mother brought him to the Moon Sanctuary to meet Diana’s daughters, his uncertainty when he beheld a little girl and a baby and was asked if he felt a connection to either. To a child? To a baby? He felt passing affection, as anyone would toward children, but nothing more. “Wait until they’re older,” his mother told him. “When they come into their power, you’ll know.”

And then, the devastation. Coordinated attacks against queens all over the world, including the High Queen and her daughters. Including his mother. His past, his future, gone in a single moment that left him hollow and purposeless.

He fought back that night, clearing the Moon Sanctuary of all shifters, dealing with the horrific aftermath, and in all the nights that followed, he devoted himself to hunting down stray queens. To saving as many as possible to make amends for those he couldn’t protect. For the ones he had failed. For his mother. For Amaya. For me.

And then, the miracle he had stopped allowing himself to hope for—his queen was alive! His Luna. How difficult it had been for him to remain calm when he wanted to shout his joy to the heavens. How it had torn him apart to let me go while he remained behind in that cell, divided between the mission he had devoted himself to for decades and the queen he had given his life to serve.

Before I drew back into myself, I caught a glimpse of Gavin in his cell in the Sun Keep, huddled in the corner much as Javier had been when we found him. He looked up, his eyes glinting silver in the shadows, a flicker of recognition lighting his gaze.

“Sophie?” Gavin rasped, my name on his lips a prayer.

“I’m here,” I whispered, reaching for him across dimensions I didn’t understand. But just as my fingers brushed against his cheek, Gavin and his prison cell faded like the morning mist, leaving only the echo of his voice in my mind.

The crystal moon flared brighter, then dimmed to the darkness of a new moon. In the next heartbeat, power exploded out of my chest, making my back arch and my hair float around my head like I was under water. Sigils hovered around me, suspended by the cords binding me to my consorts.

I stared in wonder, tears chilling my cheeks as an otherworldly wind blew through the chamber. These were my consorts’ sigils, the marks they had left on my heart when we bonded.

As I saw not what I had created, but what my consorts and I had created together, I understood: a queen’s power– my power–wasn’t just about what I could do to others, but what I would allow them to do to me. True strength lay in vulnerability, in the courage to let someone else in. In choosing when to fight and when to surrender.

“Incredible…” Isador moved around the outside of the ritual circle, closely scrutinizing each sigil. “Absolutely remarkable…”

My head pounded as the crystal moon’s light intensified once more, and the glowing sigils and bond cords faded away. My body suddenly felt icy—the same chill I’d felt after the vision of the Shadow King. I swayed, suddenly dizzy.

“Sophie!” Javier caught me before I hit the ground, cradling me against his chest.

Through half-closed eyes, I saw the others huddle in close around us. Wes hovered nearby, and Isador approached, finally crossing the ritual circle created by the crimson sigils.

“No, Javier,” Isador said. “No blood. She must find her way back from this on her own, or the pathways of magic won’t set right within her.”

Isador’s expression was guarded as she studied my face. “Your bonds are fully mature, a process that usually takes many years of communions between queen and consorts.” She bowed her head, her first true show of respect toward me. “The goddess touches you more strongly than I expected, my queen. This changes how we will proceed…when you’ve recovered.”

Exhaustion dragged at me like chains, pulling me into darkness. As consciousness slipped away, I felt a presence, vast and ancient. Watching. Waiting.

Whispering, “ Soon…”