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I couldn’t run any faster to the throne room. In actuality, it took me only a few minutes, but panic made the halls grow longer with each stride. An attack? Here? In Biringan City?

When I burst through the doors, I found Elias standing near my throne. He held himself with one arm and the other he used to cup his chin, his expression grave. He was talking with a couple—a woman with long red hair and a man with blue curls—and I let out a gasp.

I froze. My heart plummeted like an iron weight.

It was the couple from my dream.

But…but how?

I’d never met them before, and yet here they were. And I thought…I thought I’d killed them. I could remember how it felt to tear into flesh, to rip muscle and break bone. But it had been just a dream. It couldn’t have been real.

Then I noticed the blue-haired man had a large gauze pad pressed against his cheek. Already blood was seeping through in a long gash as if he’d been clawed. The red-haired woman also looked badly injured. She had a cloth wrapped around her shoulder, a horrible cut tearing her from clavicle to under her arm. Tears shone in her eyes.

Elias’s gaze landed on me when I came in, his mouth pressed into a hard line, then turned back to the couple.

“Please,” he said to them. “Tell me again so I’m not misunderstanding. What happened exactly? Leave no detail out.”

The couple held each other’s hand, squeezing tightly, both of them trembling.

“Sir, I know it sounds unbelievable. But there’s no mistaking what attacked us,” the man said.

“A manananggal,” the woman cried. “It was horrible.”

“A manananggal?” Elias stared at them, eyes wide, alarmed. His wrinkles became more defined, as if he’d aged a hundred years. He was afraid.

“It looked like a woman with long black hair and claws!”

The man continued in a rush. “And her mouth…it was full of fangs! And she had wings like a bat. She swooped down from the roof and killed one of our goats. She tore it to pieces, and we fled.”

The woman nodded vigorously.

Elias shifted nervously and glanced at me again before saying, “We haven’t had a manananggal attack in this region for thousands of years. Are you certain it wasn’t an amalanhig or some other aswang?”

“No! There was no mistaking it! It was a manananggal!” the man said, sounding desperate to be believed. He closed his eyes and clenched his free hand into a fist; he was still shaking. “She—she didn’t have the lower part of her body.”

My insides went cold, like I’d been dropped in ice. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think.

Was my nightmare real? Was this…was this my fault? How? How was any of this possible?

I think I made some kind of sound because the couple turned. When they saw me, they each immediately dropped to one knee and bowed their head. “Your Majesty,” the woman said, her voice thick.

I blinked. My eyes burned at the sight of their wounds. Had I done this? Had I hurt these people?

Elias came to me, took my hand, and guided me to my throne. I think he realized I might faint, because he sat me down. The couple stood before me, somber and ashen-faced, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

Did they recognize me? I didn’t think so. They only knew me as their queen. But I knew them. I’d seen their faces last night, seen the terror in their eyes as I got close, smelled their horror, heard the fear pulsing in their hearts. I had intended to kill them. I’d wanted to kill them. I was going to puke.

The woman explained, “I didn’t want to believe what we saw, either. My grandmother used to tell us stories about the wild ones, and it’s exactly like what she said! Bloodshot eyes and everything!” The woman sounded like she was on the verge of tears. Recalling what happened seemed to be causing her distress, and the man held her.

“You have to believe us,” he said, his voice ragged. “Please.”

I was still too stunned to speak, but Elias didn’t need me to. “Of course. We believe you. Sir Lucas!” Elias called.

I dropped my head when I heard the opening doors and the steady clip of Lucas’s boots on the marble floor. I was too numb to do or say anything.

“Yes, sir?” I heard Lucas ask.

Elias instructed him to go back to the couple’s home, to survey the damage and search for any clues as to the feral manananggal’s whereabouts. Their conversation turned into a low drone in my ears, a steady hum, and my vision tunneled. I could still feel skin tearing, still hear the screams, still taste the blood sliding down my throat. What was happening to me?

I felt a firm hand on my shoulder, and I looked up at Elias, who stood tall at my side. Lucas had long gone.

“We’ll do everything in our power to ensure this won’t happen again,” Elias said to the couple.

“Thank you, my lord,” the man said, and then to me, “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

I almost burst into tears. I just looked at them, speechless, and wanted to say something, but words failed me.

Elias stepped toward the couple, gesturing to the door. “Please, see our healers and tend to your injuries. You have the throne’s full attention.”

The couple left, holding each other.

When the door closed, it felt like all the air in the room had left with them.

I covered my face and shut my eyes tight, hoping I would wake up from this nightmare.

Elias let out a long sigh and said, “Do not be afraid, MJ. A wild manananggal is nothing to be alarmed about. We’re lucky no one else was hurt.”

“I’ve seen manananggals here, in Biringan, but…I don’t know much about them. What are they exactly?” I had to know, even if it terrified me.

“There are some that live here, yes, but there are wild ones that plague remote areas. Those are terrible creatures that prowl the night, attacking couples and drinking their blood. You might be more familiar with its cousin, the vampire. But wild manananggals are far more rare, and we don’t know how they come to be. Like I said to the couple earlier, we haven’t had an attack in this region for thousands of years. Manananggals sever their lower halves, leaving them behind when they transform to hunt. They feed on flesh and blood, often leaving a bloody trail in their wake. They reattach themselves to their legs before sunrise, and turn human once more.” Elias softened when he saw the terror on my face. “Please, MJ, don’t worry. We’ll get it sorted soon enough.”

Growing up in the human world, of course I knew vampires, but vampires in human folklore didn’t detach their lower halves and fly. A manananggal sounded way worse. Of course I was afraid. Last night hadn’t been a nightmare. What if I was turning into this thing? What if it happened again? What if I killed a person instead of a goat next time?

What if I told Elias? I knew he loved me like a father, but would he still love me after this? I wanted to believe he would, but doubt kept my mouth shut. I just looked at him and tried not to cry. He patted me softly on the shoulder. He thought I was afraid.

I was, but not for the reasons he assumed.

It all seemed so impossible, but I knew it was true.

It was real.

I was a monster.

The moment I left the throne room, I went to my bedroom, closed the door behind me, crouched to the floor, and silently sobbed into my knees. I wasn’t sure how long I stayed that way, but by the time I was done, some of the flowers had fallen out of my hair, my eyes felt puffy, and the skin on my cheeks was tight with dried tears.

I stood up and went to my vanity to check if I could see anything different, but my own face peered back in the mirror.

I stared at myself and tried to imagine a manananggal. That couple called her— me —hideous, with a mouth full of fangs and bloodshot eyes. I ran my tongue over my teeth and found none of them feeling particularly sharp, simply normal. My eyes, blue as a cornflower field, were only red from crying. This morning Jinky had twisted my hair up into a diadem of small flowers, turning me into the picture-perfect image of a queen, but on the inside, I knew what I really was: a monster.

I didn’t know how long I could keep this secret. I felt fine now, but I knew there was something dark and horrible lurking inside me, waiting to come out.

I gripped the vanity table as I lowered my head and closed my eyes, trying to think.

Elias didn’t know where a manananggal came from, how it was created, but how was I turning into one? What if it was a curse? What if a mambabarang had put a spell on me? I could only guess. It was hard to wrap my head around any of it—the waking nightmare, the transformation, the bloodlust. How did I sever my lower half at night? I didn’t remember doing anything like that, so perhaps it was like sleepwalking. I wouldn’t even know it was happening until it was too late.

Maybe I could chain myself to my bed at night so I couldn’t escape. I would absolutely have to lock and bar the windows and, especially, the door. Except I could fly. Would that be enough to stop me?

I looked at my hands, inspecting them in the light. In my cuticles were trace amounts of something dark brown. I scraped it away with my nail and knew, with a sinking feeling, what it was: dried blood. And then I remembered the way my claws tore into the goat’s rib cage and scooped out its heart. The human side of my mind had stopped the manananggal from hurting those people somehow, but how long would that last?

The most horrifying part was that the blood had tasted so good . It had satisfied some animalistic need in me to consume. I knew I’d want more and soon.

I didn’t know how to stop it or whom to turn to for answers.

I had already invited Qian to Mount Makiling; I couldn’t back out of that now. But if I transformed while I was there, I could be seen, or I could hurt someone. He was a famed monster hunter; of course what was happening to me would only complicate things. Would he understand, or would he try to kill me? Then again, maybe he’d encountered something like this before. Maybe he would know what to do. But could I risk it?

The last thing I wanted to do was tell anyone what was happening to me. Not even Nix. I didn’t know how anyone, even my best friend, would react to me turning into a monster.

One thing was for certain: I had to find a way to stop this from happening again. Now. Before it got worse.

I lifted my head to face the mirror again. There I saw what the couple had seen. Bulging red eyes; a wide, lipless mouth; gums receding from rows of fangs; gnarled hair plastered against my skeletal face. But I blinked, and the visage was gone. It was just me.

I backed up, heart pounding, and wiped the tears from my cheeks.

I would not let this be a death sentence. I was going to find out what was going on, and I was going to stop it.

The only place I could think of to find any information on manananggals was the palace library. It was so massive, it was practically an institution. It had one of the largest collections of books, official papers, and treaties on this side of the world, let alone Biringan City, as well as all historic, scientific, and ecological records. Academics from BANA often came here to complete dissertations or find articles for research.

The size of the library rivaled the ballroom, with which it shared a wall. Grand oak shelves stood like monuments under circular stained-glass windows, cutting the stormy daylight into color. An encanto had hundreds of years to live, and still I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to read all the books that were housed here. One would need a ladder to reach the very top shelves by the ceiling, high as a cathedral’s. But everything was quiet, and the echoes of my heels clacking on the marble floor seemed to stretch for miles. I got the sense that I was the only person here. Good. I didn’t want anyone to ask what I was doing.

Toward the rear of the library was the natural sciences wing. Inside, hundreds of animals of Biringan that had been stuffed and mounted leered at me from pedestals and walls. I tried not to look at them because they gave me the creeps. Everything here smelled musty and old. I didn’t want to linger any longer than I had to, so I found the book as quickly as I could.

The tome was on a high shelf. It was large and heavy, and a thin layer of dust coated the cover. I gently blew on it and wiped the spine with my thumb, clearing the title: Monsters of the Hidden World . The author was a renowned naturalist I’d learned about at BANA. It was the first place I thought to look.

I carried the book to a nearby podium and flipped it open. It was an encyclopedia of sorts, a record of all known creatures in the fae and encanto realms across the world. It included detailed analyses of each creature, subspecies, and known population. Most of them had been rendered extinct, largely due to habitat destruction or by encanto hands. Included with the thorough descriptions were some detailed drawings of monster anatomy and eyewitness accounts. Some of the records I recognized, and I realized that some of these monsters, like fire-breathing dragons, trolls, and yetis, had breached the hidden realm and encountered humans, but the moment I flipped the page and found the manananggal, my heart dropped.

My throat tightened when I gazed upon the ink drawing. It snarled at me from the page, a mouth full of sharp fangs, a long, snakelike tongue curling into the air, eyes bulging and hungry. Long, stringy hair, slits for nostrils, tattered shirt that had been slashed to pieces. Ten-foot-long wings, veiny and demonic, stretched wide, lifting the torso to the sky, its intestines hanging like vines from its halved body. Even though it was just a drawing, I could tell it was howling, curling its long black claws toward me, startlingly looking both hungry and in agony. I forced myself to tear my gaze away from its horrible face and read the entry.

Manananggal, also known as “The Separator”

A bloodsucking aswang of the Biringan region. By day the manananggal assumes a human form, but at night it separates its upper body from its lower half, leaving it behind, to hunt. Favored targets include pregnant women, newlyweds, and bridegrooms.

Potential weaknesses include iron, garlic, and ash.

Garlic. So that explained why I didn’t want to eat the garlic rice that Jinky brought for breakfast. My stomach churned thinking about it, but I kept reading.

Population: unknown. Last known attack during the reign of King Manolito.

Little is understood about this elusive species, especially those in the wild, and numerous theories abound. Manananggals are rare, so eyewitness accounts and scientific documentation are often contradicting or unfortunately lacking. Some scholars theorize that the manananggal is created after a bride is left at the altar, while others believe they are born with the affliction or are the dead returned, but the prevailing theory is that the manananggal is a result of a curse. However, some manananggals may not even realize they are one.

That caught my attention. I leaned closer to the page, heart in my throat.

Unfortunately, the manananggal turns to ash upon its death, which makes it difficult to study. Information about the species is conflicting at best. Regardless of its origins, precautions can be taken to ward off manananggals, including hanging garlic above all windows and doors and sleeping with salt and ash under one’s pillow, but sources are few and far between to determine if any protection is more effective than the other. The manananggal is nocturnal, leading most scholars to believe it transforms with the setting sun. Therefore, a suspected manananggal must be locked away with iron before sunset to prevent them from harming themselves or anyone else.

My heartbeat roared in my ears after I read the page in its entirety three times, hoping that maybe I’d find some answer or cure. Instead, there was none. Only more questions. I looked at my own hands, imagined them turning into claws, and I squeezed them into fists.

Maybe I really was cursed.

I needed to find more information about the last manananggal sighting. The records said it was during the reign of King Manolito, so my next stop was the records room. It was where all the documents, decrees, and decisions made by the royal family were stored for historical reference, along with books detailing the biographies of all of Biringan’s rulers. The second I took the throne, even my most mundane days were logged and catalogued by an archivist. The books were nested into thousands of cubbies. Recordkeeping was an important process in the history of Biringan, so it was only natural to assume that there would be documentation of a manananggal attack. It would have been important enough.

My eyes bounced over all the names on polished brass plaques before I found King Manolito’s section and took his tome to a reading chair. King Manolito had ruled over Biringan for two thousand years with his daughters—Devera and Soledad.

King Manolito’s tome was as thick as my hand, but there was no mention of a manananggal. I checked his daughters’ records next. Princess Devera, who married into a djinn royal family, had officially incorporated algebra into encanto academia, calling it a universal language. And Princess Soledad struck up a trade agreement with Avalon that still continued today. But for the life of me, I couldn’t find any information about a manananggal.

After King Manolito died, the crown passed on to his brother, King Rio.

My eyes ached, and the words on the page started to blur together. The heart of the storm raged against the window, rapping like fingers on the stained glass, throwing shadows across the page. Thunder rolled overhead and the sky darkened. It was as if the weather was mirroring my own thoughts, tumultuous and fearsome.

One thing stood out to me: If King Manolito had two daughters, princesses in their own rights, why hadn’t either of them become queen? Why had the crown passed to his brother?

There was something I was missing. There had to be. And why wasn’t there any sign of a manananggal encounter in these records? The book of monsters couldn’t have gotten it wrong, could it? It didn’t make any sense.

When I went to put away Devara’s book, ready to give up, another book caught my eye. It had been shoved into the back of the shelf, originally obscured by the others. I reached in and pulled it out, finding it surprisingly light.

A name had been etched into the hard leather: Yara Liliana. Below her name was a triangle symbol and her date of birth but no date of death. Inside, the book was completely empty, but not because it was blank. The pages had been torn out, leaving nothing but ragged remnants in the spine.

I returned to the other records of King Manolito’s family, flipping back and forth between pages just to be sure, looking for her name, but there was no mention of her.

That couldn’t be right. Any royal, regardless of standing, should have been recorded and documented. Why else did she have a book in the first place? The archivists kept detailed records of every royal, every marriage, every failure, every success, practically every meal they ate on every day.

And yet Yara Liliana’s book was the only proof she had ever existed. But then why keep it? Unless…unless it was left here as a reminder.

She had been erased from history. And maybe it was for a reason.

A thump outside the archive room made me jump. I looked to the closed door, waiting for it to open, but it didn’t.

“Who’s there?” I called out.

No answer. But a shadow passed in front of the keyhole. Someone was on the other side.

Heart racing, I closed Yara Liliana’s book and shoved it back into its hiding place on the shelf before I crept to the door. A rational part of me thought that maybe an archivist had come to transcribe today’s events, but another part of me thought the worst. Was someone here to hurt me?

I put my hand on the doorknob and wrenched it open quickly.

Half hunched over was Amador, peering through the keyhole. Her head jerked up, and her jaw dropped in shock. She righted herself and smoothed out her blue-and-white dress, the colors of the Sigbin Court.

“Can I help you?” I asked. I couldn’t help the sharpness of my tone. Amador was one of the very last people I wanted to see right now.

“I—” She halted, as if thinking. “I’m looking for Lucas,” she said quickly.

My hand squeezed the doorknob. “Of course you are. Why would you think he’s here?”

Amador lowered her shoulders, stretching her neck to look as poised as possible. “I heard a noise. I thought it was him.”

I could tell she was lying. I could almost smell it on her. “Well, he’s not here,” I said through gritted teeth. “Anything else I can do for you, Grand Duchess?”

Amador’s lips curled into a sneer. “No. I’ll be going now.” She lifted her nose to me and spun around, disappearing down the row of books, her heels clacking annoyingly as she left.

I let go of the doorknob as my anger ebbed away, but when I did, I noticed the doorknob was dented in, with the distinct shape of my fingers in the brass.