“Serena, be careful,” Zadyn warns.
Everything behind me seems to fade away the second I cross the threshold. I keep my hands outstretched as I walk, waiting to hit the back of the tree, but I don’t. I keep going, the daylight behind me growing dimmer until it’s extinguished completely, leaving me alone in the dark.
But the witches are with me, and I am not afraid.
I press deeper into the infinite space.
Here.
They want me to stop here.
Blood of my blood.
The voice is pure moonlight, cool, smooth, and bright.
And then I see her.
I know who she is without having to ask. Every part of me knows, though I have never seen her before.
It isn’t Silva.
It’s Queen Arden.
Words don’t do her justice. Sheisstarlight. Silver-white hair that falls to the ground like a sheet of pure silk, irises the same searing blue as the dragon she bonded. Her beauty is almost too blinding to face head-on.
I fall to my knees, the full weight of who I am hitting me.
Up until now, I don’t think I fully understood that I am not a child of Earth—I never was. Or that I was born from the magic and the will of the Blackbloods who died on this sacred ground. But kneeling before this apparition, feeling the eternal souls around me, I am humbled and whole.
I am home.
“Daughter of my daughters,” Arden says, her voice warm and smooth. “Stand, child, let me see you.”
I rise, trembling and speechless.
“You’ve come home at last.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“What heaviness weighs on your heart?”
“My kingdom is in trouble.”
“Which one?”
“Aegar. My kingdom is Aegar.”
“They are all your kingdoms. You belong to them all, just as they all belong to you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This world will bow to none but you.”
I fight the urge to laugh in her face.
“No, I’m just a Blackblood—just a Dragon Rider.”
“Justa Blackblood?Justa Dragon Rider? My child, that is nothing to downplay. You are extraordinary. You have the blood of gods within you, the blood of true royalty in your veins. You are the last of us. You may yet be without your crown”—she drifts closer on an ethereal wind—“but you have been queen from the moment your soul was made.”
