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Evelina

Evelina was once a girl who spent her days filled with the warmth of the sun against her face and laughter tumbling from her lips. She dreamt of her future, of her friends who would always be there, and the boy with midnight eyes.

But one day, her dreams changed. It was the same thing that haunted her sleep now, the same memories of the little shadow boy who left her behind. She would wake up each morning with sweat-soaked sheets twisted around her legs, wishing there was something to make her forget.

Each night, she fell asleep praying to Eurydice that the memories wouldn’t come. They always did. Even the good ones—few as they were—hurt. Because all her dreams were his, and every reminder of his absence was a pain she could do nothing to fix.

A Nox so young shouldn’t have been able to enter another’s dreams yet, but he had found a way. The first time was by accident, when they had fallen asleep beneath an oak tree in the middle of the day. Neither of them realized they were dreaming—they thought perhaps they had died and awoken in Caelum. Then their eyes went wide with the possibilities, feverish with childish delight. They were unstoppable—best friends who could explore not just the woodland in the day, but whole universes in their dreams.

After that, they dreamt together every chance they could get.

They were too young to understand the heaviness growing on her mother’s face, the way her father’s lips seemed to struggle to smile. Too naive to the world around them to see the darkness rising.

Soon, even their dreams would not be safe.

If she were lucky, her haunted dreams would end there by the time the sun rose. But sometimes, the memory would keep playing out. Flashes of her crying beneath the Mother Tree after an unsuccessful day of training with the healers. The shadows that swirled gently around her, holding her until he was there, and it was his arms wrapped around her.

His shadows would always find her.

But that was before it all changed.

Before, the humans still lived in harmony with the fae, and her mother was still married to a human king. Then Moros killed Evelina’s father. He had been raising a rebellion, preparing to overthrow her family’s rule, and he took his opportunity to strike on the darkest day of the year.

And her father did as he’d always promised, protecting the queen with his life.

At the lux, his warm face was turned to stone, his calm gaze empty.

Moros’s betrayal was felt throughout the entire empire, pushing some to join the rebels, and some to reaffirm their support of the Manors. What had once been the unified Valon Empire split almost neatly in half.

The realm descended into chaos. The rebels wielded swords charmed with dark magic, lumps of iron shot out of cannons into villages, and an endless sea of human soldiers grew larger and larger with their ease of reproducing.

The fae were strong enough to protect the palace, but they were still forced into the fray. Aegis trained every race of fae in Drogheda. Woodlands learned to weaponize their growth and animal affinities, Undine to make water as dangerous as a sword, and Nox to wield shadows on the battlefield.

Evelina thought the rebels would be taken care of quickly, but her hope was drained day by day.

The wyverns arrived shortly after, signaling the start of the war.

And that’s when they took the last thing she called her own.

A wyvern had claimed her shadow boy for the war, taken him away to the Zenovia Mountains to train with the Riders.

Away from her.

This was the dream she hated most of all, where she waited for him to return, watching the forest edge from the palace.

He said he would be back. He always came back.

She awaited the comfort of her shadow boy in the wake of all she had lost. As the months turned into years, the memory of his smile faded.

For the first time, he didn’t come.