Page 38 of To Dwell in Shadows (Shadows of Aurelia #2)

S am’s eyes glazed over as he stood in the night-blooming garden, half-listening to a demon of Envy rant about his neighbor’s gargoyle statues.

From the corner of his eye, Sam spotted Zetta bounding toward him.

The urgency in her stride snapped him to attention.

Around the hellhound’s neck fluttered a note, tied with a strip of green velvet—the same sash Selene had used to belt her dress that morning.

Sam excused himself from the demon’s tirade and knelt beside Zetta. He fumbled with the knot, his fingers clumsy with sudden dread, and yanked the note free. It was hastily scrawled across a scrap of torn paper:

Come to the library right now —Selene

A tremor ran through Sam’s limbs. Had something happened to her? Was she in danger? Without a second thought, he took off at a sprint toward the library. Zetta raced alongside him, her massive paws clicking against the ground.

When he burst through the library doors, Selene was sitting at a desk, surrounded by dozens of candles burning with eerie blue flames.

“What’s wrong?” The words flew out before he could stop them.

“Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s right!” Her eyes shone with excitement. Then, seeing his expression, she winced. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you worry. But you’re not going to believe what I found. Come here.”

He exhaled with relief and crossed the room to drag a chair beside her. As he sat, Selene closed the book she had been reading.

“I used the traveler’s stone to scry and see where you were. Then I sent Zetta to find you,” she explained, patting the hellhound’s head. “I needed you to see this.”

“What is it?” Sam asked, still catching his breath.

Selene turned fully to him, her excitement barely contained. “I came looking for information about the Dark Sovereign. Honestly, I didn’t expect to find anything more than a footnote.” She touched the crumbling book resting before her with careful fingers. “But then… I found this.”

Sam looked down at the ancient tome. Letters had been carved into the cracked leather. When he read the faded title, the hairs on the back of his neck rose. “Is that…”

“It is,” Selene whispered.

Eyes wide, he said, “I thought it had been destroyed.”

“It was hidden,” Selene said, quickly explaining how she had found the book. Sam listened intently, his fingers tracing the cracked leather binding, worn smooth by centuries of time. A rusted lock was embedded in the book’s binding, fastening covers together.

“Have you looked inside?” he asked.

Selene nodded, her cheeks flushing with excitement. “Look.”

When she held a candle near the lock, it popped open with a click, allowing access to its contents.

She turned the yellowed pages with great care, the brittle parchment crackling softly beneath her fingers.

Most were dense with hand-lettered script—looping, archaic characters inked in rust-red, their meanings lost to all but the most ancient scholars.

Then she stopped, tapping a page with the tip of her finger.

A rough, black-and-white illustration filled the space. It showed an ancient king with the head of a goat, long curling horns that spiraled toward the sky, wings flaring from broad, human-like shoulders, and cloven hooves.

“The first Dark Sovereign,” Selene murmured. “Baphomet. At least, the first recorded.”

She flipped forward, more urgently now, but still careful with the fragile pages.

She stopped before another portrait, this one rendered in rich paint.

The colors were faded but still alive: blood-reds, obsidian blacks, and glints of gold.

It showed a young king sitting on a throne, chin raised, authority carved into every sharp feature. A crown of spikes encircled his head.

Recognition made Sam gasp. “It’s my father.”

The edge of the portrait was uneven, jagged, as though it had once been torn free and then hastily reattached.

The pages that followed were loose, crumbling at the edges, their contents written in slanted, archaic script.

As Sam read it as best he could, he realized it was the prophecy that predicted Baphomet’s fall, and Asmodeus’ ascension.

Through fire and dusk, where shadows cling,

A demon of Wrath shall rise as king.

By Thronefall Flame, his fate is sworn,

To claim the name of darkness reborn.

“This is incredible,” he said softly. He lingered over the portrait and prophecy, then glanced at the final pages of the book, finding them blank.

“Is that all?”

“Not quite,” Selene said.

Carefully, she peeled back the inside edge of the leather binding on the back cover. Tucked within was a folded sheet of paper. Slowly, she pulled it free, holding it chest, shielding it from view.

“Are you ready?” she asked, eyes sparkling with mischief .

“Yes.”

Selene laid the hidden page before him. It was another portrait, but it was unlike the others—this one was darker, more vivid. The edges were shadowed, as if scorched, and yet the image in the center was unmistakable.

Vanthee.

Sam blinked. “This… how can this be? She wasn’t even born when this book was written.”

Selene shrugged. “They don’t call them prophecies for nothing.”

He leaned in. There was no mistaking her—not with the long blonde hair, the sharp, curved horns, the red eyes. She held her torch in her left hand, its flame frozen mid-flicker. And winding around her right arm was the snake tattoo.

For a long moment, he said nothing.

“And just in case you had any doubt this is Vanthee… ” Selene turned the portrait over. “Read this.”

Long forgotten, cast away,

Her beacon stirs where lost souls stray.

Deep in the realm where spirits roam,

One lights the path to lead them home.

Between the worlds of land and shade,

Where restless echoes drift and fade,

Awakened now, her power reclaimed ? —

An enchantress born by Thronefall Flame.

Selene looked at Sam expectantly. “‘Her beacon stirs where lost souls stray.’ That’s her. ‘One lights the path to lead them home,’—that’s one hundred percent Vanthee.”

Sam rubbed his jaw, rereading the passage several times. “But she’s not an enchantress.”

“No, but who knows how long ago this was written? Maybe they called any woman with special powers an enchantress then. ”

Sam nodded absently. He watched the strange blue flame of the candles flicker and dance.

Vanthee was certainly not who he would have chosen as Dark Sovereign.

She had been manipulative, pushy, and disturbingly flirtatious.

She had no leadership experience, seemed to have few allies, and lacked the poised grace most that queens carried.

But, since the prophecy about his father hadn’t been wrong, he had no reason to suspect this one was false.

“What are you thinking?” Selene asked, watching him.

“Vanthee is… an unexpected choice.” He glanced at Selene then averted his eyes, weighing the merits of a confession. “I have something to share that may change your opinion of her. Recently, she made advances toward me.”

Selene arched a brow. “Oh, I know.”

He startled. “You do?”

“She told me.”

“I didn’t want to upset you, so I never mentioned it.”

“It’s fine, I wasn’t worried. But she also told me her attempts failed miserably,” Selene said with a smile that faded into seriousness. “She has an attitude and can be a pain in the neck, but she does care about the Underworld. And the dead. More than any other demon I’ve seen.”

Selene paused to look down at the portrait. “She’s not the worst Dark Sovereign I could think of. Has the Underworld ever been ruled by a queen?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Sam said. “But maybe it’s time it was.”

The more he thought about it, the more the idea took root.

Vanthee, for all her flaws, had something many demons lacked—empathy.

He remembered the banquet and her fierce defense of the dead.

He remembered how she had argued not for her own gain, but for those too weak to speak for themselves.

He thought about how fierce she had been during the Infernal Combat Trial, and how she had eventually had left him alone after their confrontation in the Sanctum .

If they could find a way to put Vanthee on the throne, he and Selene could finally go home. His worries would be settled.

“This is an incredible find, my love,” Sam said at last. Knowing he was never meant to be the Dark Sovereign eased a fear he hadn’t realized weighed so heavily on him.

“Thank you. How do you think your parents will react?”

“Not well. But if this is true, they don’t really have a choice, do they?” Sam crossed his arms, considering how to approach this issue. “Tomorrow, I’ll speak with Vanthee.”

“It’s going to be a lot for her to take in.”

“Yes, but since I don’t fully trust her, I want to get a feel for whether she’s amenable to ruling. I’d like to know if she would fight for the role without knowing she was destined for it.”

“I like that plan.”

He refolded the portrait and handed it back to Selene. “Even though I’m not the Dark Sovereign, I feel responsible for leaving the realm in good hands.”

“Of course you do,” Selene said, gazing at him in a way that sent a pleasant shiver through him.

“What does that mean?”

She laid her head on his shoulder. “It means I think I’m mated to the most honorable demon who ever existed.”