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I stood in an ancient forest clearing beneath a blood-red moon. The ground beneath my bare feet felt raw, alive with memory that both was and wasn’t mine. Bodies littered the earth—human and something other—while survivors ringed a central point, their skin marked with grime, open wounds, and dried blood. The air itself was saturated with power that burned my lungs.

“ The truth lives within you. Remember .” My mother’s voice whispered through me, as integral a part of me as my own heartbeat. The words settled into my bones as a smoky darkness poured from a tear in reality—not just shadow, but something that consumed light itself.

Creatures with too many limbs and eyes that burned with hunger spilled forth, led by a presence that made my soul recoil. Not fully formed, more concept than being. Hunger given form. Malice made manifest.

I wanted to run, but I found myself rooted in place. Three luminous figures faced the tide of darkness—one shining like captured moonlight, one blazing like the sun, one glowing with the gentle radiance of scattered stars. Their combined light merged, flaring so brightly it hurt to look directly at them. Yet I couldn’t turn away. They moved among a gathered crowd, their chosen people. They touched the foreheads of their chosen, who fell to their knees as divine power transformed them.

The silvery figure’s touch left crescent marks that shimmered beneath the skin of her chosen, covering one side of their faces. The golden one’s touch ignited a primal fire, something that could shift and change within its host. The third’s touch called forth the elements and bound them to her chosen’s will.

My breath caught as understanding dawned. I was witnessing the birth of the three immortal races. The first vampires rose with silver light coursing through their veins. The first shifters roared as golden power reshaped their flesh. The first elementals wove the very air into protective barriers, shielding them all from the corruptive shadow.

The scene blurred, time accelerating.

The combined forces drove back the shadow, sealing the breach with magic that cost many lives. The three radiant figures grew dimmer, giving more and more of their divine essence to their chosen, each sacrificing something essential to secure victory.

“ Remember ,” my mother’s voice echoed again as the scene shifted.

A grand chamber materialized around me, filled with representatives from all three Houses. Peace, briefly, before the shadow crept in, bringing arguments and accusations. A shifter losing control, transforming into something monstrous that tore through vampires and elementals alike. More shifters following suit, consumed by mindless bloodlust that turned their eyes and hearts black.

A vampire and an elemental stood together, hands joined as they wove moonlight and starlight into a pattern that resonated within my blood. The curse. The reason for the war between vampires and shifters. The reason Veris had killed my family. The magic wrapped around the shifters, settling into their blood, their bones, their souls.

The curse wasn’t a punishment but a protection—for the shifters as much as for everyone else. Their golden light had been tainted by the shadow, and they were losing themselves to the corruption. Muting their power also stifled the shadow’s hold. But it couldn’t stamp it out altogether.

A heaviness settled in my chest. So much of what I’d been taught was incomplete, history reshaped by those who survived to tell it.

“ Remember .” The vision shifted again.

The Moon Sanctuary materialized, centuries ago but recognizable in its bones. A queen with my mother’s eyes stood in the Selenarium, surrounded by seven kneeling consorts, channeling so much power that moonlight broke through her skin like light through the holes of a sieve. It was too much. It was consuming her and her consorts. But it had to be done.

Beyond the sanctuary walls, the shadow had gathered once more, toxic and corrosive, assaulting the barrier between worlds. She and her consorts gave their lives to buy time for the next High Queen—my mother—to find a way to defeat the shadow once and for all.

“ Remember .” Another shift.

The new scene was so familiar it made my heart weep. The night of the massacre. My mom kneeling before my sister and me, her eyes filled with terrible knowledge and love so fierce it burned.

Tears streamed down my face—not just for what had been lost, but for the burden of being the one who remained. For the weight of living when so many had died. The vision offered no comfort, only shifting again while my heart shattered.

“ Remember .”

The final scene emerged from a swirling mist. Seven thrones in a circle, five occupied by shadowy figures I recognized as my consorts, two empty. Beyond them loomed a presence of such immense hunger that I recoiled instinctively. A silver cord stretched from my heart to each occupied throne, then split, branching out to shield us in a complex weave. But the empty seats created gaps in the protective sphere—gaps through which darkness seeped like poison.

“You must fill the seats. Complete the circle,” my mother said, suddenly beside me. “Choose correctly, and you can end this once and for all. Choose wrong, and the barrier will fall, and the shadow will consume the world.”

“What does that mean ?” I asked desperately. “Fill the seats? With who? Choose who ? How do I know who to choose?”

My mom pointed to one of the empty thrones, this one made of some otherworldly material that swirled with a cosmic nebula. “That seat is for an elemental. I don’t know who.” She pointed to the other empty throne, seemingly made of iridescent mist. “This one belongs to one who was once of this world, but no longer is.”

“What—” I looked from her to the thrones and back. “What does that mean?”

She offered me a sad smile, an apology. “I wish I could tell you more, but that’s all I know. I’m sorry.”

The vision began to dissolve as my mother’s form grew more transparent. I lunged forward, trying to grasp her fading essence, and though the scene continued to fade, she remained.

She raised a transparent hand to the side of my face, her touch tingling. “I’m so sorry, my shining girl. The moment you were born, I knew. You shone so brightly. You were the one we had been waiting for. The culmination of so much time and power and sacrifice. The return of what once was.”

Her form faded, consumed by the moonlight that had birthed the vision.

“Mom, wait!” I cried, my voice breaking as I reached for her desperately. “I don’t understand! Please—”

The moonlight intensified until it was blinding, washing away the last fragments of my mom and the vision.

“ Remember ,” she whispered one final time.

Everything went white.

When my vision cleared, I knelt by the pool in the center of the circle, chest heaving, dazed by the whirlwind vision and wrung out from channeling all that power.

Isador stared at me from across the pool, her composure shattered. “The past queens have never—” she began, then stopped herself, swallowing whatever revelation had nearly escaped. “What did you see? What did they show you?”

But before I could respond, my consorts broke through the moonlight barrier as it dissipated and converged around me. Javier dropped to his knees in front of me, his hands frantic as they moved over me, checking me for harm. Thane knelt on my left, Ash on my right, both capturing a hand, weaving their fingers through mine. Bastian settled behind me, those gold-dusted black wings he had revealed the other night flaring out, then wrapping around us all even as his arms curled around my middle.

Their combined touch grounded me, pulling me back from a precipice I hadn’t realized I’d been teetering on. And their blood, when it touched my tongue, revived me, reminding me I wasn’t just a conduit for power. That I wasn’t just a queen. But that I was a woman—their woman—and I was loved.