It should be terrifying. It should feel like a mistake.
But it doesn’t.
It feels like something from before. Before fear, before scars, before I started bracing for impact every time someone touched me.
Like the version of me that existed before everything got broken.
"This can't be real," I whisper, barely able to hear myself over the pounding in my chest. "Stuff like that doesn’t just... happen."
No one argues with me. No one tries to explain.
I wrap my arms tighter around myself. "But I feel different."
The words taste strange. Too big. Too true.
"I don't know how. Just..." I exhale slowly. "Like something cracked open inside me. Not broken—just... not closed anymore."
The mist stirs at my words, unfurling from where it's been hiding against my skin. It doesn't reach for the others like it usually does—it stays close, protective, like it's guarding me from something.
"Hey," Rhett says softly, his thumb brushing over my shoulder. "Whatever just happened, we'll figure it out. Together."
"Will we?" The question slips out before I can stop it, raw and uncertain. I grip the blanket beneath me, grounding myself with something real. "Because right now I feel like I'm coming apart at the seams, and I don't even understand what's holding me together anymore."
Gray’s hand tightens slightly on my arm, grounding me in the warmth of his touch. “You’re not coming apart,” he says softly. “But whatever this is…”
Theo steps forward, his voice calm and certain. “We’ve got you.”
He meets my eyes, steady and unflinching.
“We see you, Bree.”
I close my eyes, trying to make sense of the storm of sensation and memory swirling through me. The memory of the crown's weight in my hands, the voice that called me queen, the way the mist responded to my touch like it was coming home. None of it should be possible. Yet all of it feels more real than anything I've ever experienced.
"I keep waiting for this to feel wrong," I admit, opening my eyes to find them all watching me with expressions of fierce protectiveness and something deeper. Something I don’t have words for.
"What just happened, what I felt... it should scare me. But it doesn’t. It feels..."
"Right," Wes says from his spot by the door. "It feels right."
I nod, surprised by how much his understanding means. "How is that possible? How can something this impossible feel so natural?"
"Maybe," Jace says, his usual sardonic tone gentler than normal, "because it's not impossible. Maybe it's just been waiting for you to be ready for it."
The mist pulses once, like a heartbeat, and for a moment I swear I can feel the crown's presence even though it's gone. Like an echo of power that will never fully fade.
I stare at my hands again, flexing my fingers like I could still close around its weight. But there's only absence. The crown's disappearance feels likea phantom limb—something I should be able to reach for but can't quite touch.
It was real. I know it was real. The weight of it, the warmth, the way it seemed to sing when I touched it.
But now it's gone, and something inside me isn't. Something that feels ancient and new all at once, like a door that's been unlocked but not yet opened.
And something tells me it's not done with us yet.
Chapter 2
Thane
I kneel before the scrying mirror in the ruins of what was once a Scarborne sanctuary, dust motes dancing in the pale light filtering through cracked stone. The chamber breathes with dormant magic, old power sleeping in the walls like a dying heartbeat.
