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I lay in bed, my heart hammering as the last fragments of a nightmare faded. Predawn light streamed through the windows, casting unfamiliar furniture in pale light. For a moment, I couldn’t remember where I was or who I was supposed to be.

Sophie Matthews, librarian with a tragic past? Luna Sofia Teresi Athanasiou, High Queen of the House of the Moon? The line between those identities felt worn thin in places where my past bled into my present.

I slipped from beneath the sheets, careful not to wake Bastian. His face looked younger in sleep, the burden of fearing what we had unleashed within him absent. Part of me wanted to curl back against his warmth, to pretend we were just two people who’d found each other amid the chaos of our lives.

The aged wooden floors creaked beneath my bare feet as I crossed to the dresser to retrieve undies and a fresh oversized sleep shirt. I never slept well when naked, feeling too vulnerable, too exposed. I headed into the bathroom to pee, and as I washed my hands, I studied my reflection. The face in the ornate mirror was both foreign and familiar—eyes brighter, skin luminous from regular feeding, but with fatigue lingering beneath. I looked like my mother. The realization made my heart ache, squeezed between a vice of grief and anger.

“Is this what you wanted?” I whispered to her ghost, though I knew she couldn’t hear me. Veris had made sure of that when he burned her remains and scattered her ashes. She had known. About the attack. About her death, and Amaya’s. That I would flee, that Javier would be my protector, my Prime Consort. But had she known more? Had she known the extent of the suffering she was perhaps not causing directly, but allowing? “Was it worth it?”

Huffing a silent, bitter laugh, I turned my back on my reflection and crossed my arms over my chest, leaning back against the edge of the counter. “I hope you’re happy,” I muttered, tapping one finger against my arm.

After standing there for minutes, silently fuming at my dead mother, I released a heavy sigh. There was no way I was getting back to sleep now. I reached for the long silken robe hanging on the back of the door and tossed it on over my sleep shirt before sliding my feet into slippers. I needed air. To walk. To think alone. A rarity for me these days.

Including this morning, it turned out. Micah was already in the herb garden when I reached it, reading on the stone bench beneath an ancient rowan tree, its branches laden with clusters of bright red berries that seemed to glow in the early morning. The predawn light cast weak shadows across the ancient stone paths, making everything look slightly washed out and just a little ancient. He looked up at my approach.

“Shouldn’t you be resting up for your important meeting with the elementals?” he asked, closing the leather-bound book on his lap, its pages yellowed with age.

“That’s tomorrow,” I said automatically.

Micah glanced at the brightening sky to the east. “It is tomorrow.”

I froze, mentally tallying days and nights and events, and my eyes widened when I realized he was right. Ambassadors from the House of the Stars would be arriving today, and I had no idea what to say to them or what to do for them or how to be around them. At least Isador had taken care of Marie’s confession , clearing the Moon Sanctuary’s resident elemental after Gavin locked her up under suspicion of betrayal. When they asked me if I was holding any of their people prisoner, I could honestly say I was not . So that was a plus.

“You’re making that face again,” Micah said.

I pressed my lips together and tucked my chin. “What face?”

Micah coughed a laugh. “The someone-shoot-me face, though now you just look constipated.”

I guffawed and closed the distance between us, but I hesitated before sitting. “Can I?”

“It’s a free country,” he said, setting the book on the bench beside him and scooting closer to the edge. “I suppose…wherever we are.” He gestured to the empty space, his lips twisting into a wry smirk. “Unless you want to become a vampire.”

Groaning dramatically, I settled beside him. For a moment, neither of us spoke. The early morning felt unnaturally still and quiet, though maybe that was just because the silence between us was so incredibly loud.

I sucked in a breath. Held it. Mentally debated what to say. “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” I began, spinning the moonstone ring on my finger—this remnant of my mother, this symbol of the legacy I was still learning to bear. “About wanting the First Rite.”

“You don’t have to explain why you said no,” Micah replied, his voice carefully neutral. His fingers tapped a restless rhythm against his knee. “I get it. I’m too young. Too human. Too—”

“Too important to risk,” I interrupted softly.

His eyes, when they met mine, held a depth of understanding that startled me. He’d always been perceptive, but there was something else there now—something that recognized the weight I carried.

“It wasn’t a permanent no,” I continued. “Just a ‘not now.’” I swallowed against the tightness in my throat. “The First Rite isn’t just dangerous in the sense that I could easily screw it up and kill you, because, you know, I’ve never done it before.” I shrugged. “I could get it right, or mostly right, or just kind of right, but the outcome—whether I get it right or wrong or somewhere in between—is irreversible. And I’d never forgive myself if I damned you to a tormented immortality because I wasn’t strong enough or skilled enough to guide you through the First Rite properly.”

A night bird called from the tree overhead, and I looked up.

When I glanced at Micah again, his expression was pensive. “I know you think I rushed into asking,” he said, “but I’ve actually been thinking about it since the attack in that basement. When that shifter tackled me—” His voice caught. “I saw how quickly things can change. How vulnerable I am like this. I’m scared, Sophie,” he admitted, his voice barely audible over the rustling leaves. “Not of dying, exactly. But of not living long enough to understand where I come from.” His gaze drifted toward the sky, lightened to a peachy gray. “I’ve spent my whole life not knowing who I really was. Now that I finally do, I can’t—” His voice cracked. “I can’t lose you—and Wes.” He waved a hand half-heartedly at the Moon Sanctuary. “All of this.”

The raw honesty in his words broke something loose inside me. For decades, I’d hidden behind masks—frightened girl, agreeable teen, cautious librarian, reluctant queen—each one a shield against vulnerability. But Micah deserved better than my carefully crafted half-truths.

I reached for his tapping fingers, covering his hand with mine. “When I gave you up,” I whispered, “it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Harder than losing Wes. Harder than running from Veris’s assassins or figuring out how to survive without Javier.” The admission scraped my throat raw. “I did it because I thought you’d be safer without me.”

He turned his hand beneath mine, his fingers curving around mine in a gesture that made me mourn all the hand-holding I’d missed during his childhood. “Maybe it was always going to end up this way, with the three of us together, here,” he said. “Maybe some connections can’t be severed, no matter how hard the world tries.”

I smiled faintly. “You sound like Wes. The eternal optimist.” I swiped away a tear that snuck past my lashes. “I just—I need you to understand that I’m not refusing the First Rite altogether. I’m waiting because I need to be ready.”

Micah studied me with those eyes that were so like Wes’s it hurt. “I know. I get it. But I need you to know that I’m ready when you are.”

We sat together as the sky lightened further, the elementals’ approach drawing ever nearer. But for this moment, in the quiet herb garden with Micah’s hand in mine, I was simply a mother, terrified and determined to protect her child.