Selene and Ubel fell to their knees, unable to breathe, unable to move under the weight of divine recognition.
Tanya’s cuffs shattered.
Malik gasped as light hit him and healed the wound on his ribs.
Rue bowed his head, overwhelmed.
Trent collapsed fully, body giving out—but his eyes stayed on me, shining with something raw and terrified and reverent.
And then?—
The chamber bowed.
Not the people.
All of Aurathia bowed.
As I hovered in the air, wrapped in ancestral fire, every life I’d lived whispered through me the same truth: I was queen not because I reincarnated.
I reincarnated because I was queen.
The Ancestors’ light dimmed, and the chamber settled. Selene and Ubel were both silent in shock against the wall as Tanya and her men stood over them.
But none of that mattered.
Because Trent—Trent was dying.
He lay on the shattered stone; one hand pressed weakly to the smoking wound Ubel had carved through him. Shadows leaked from the edges of his body like spilled ink, evaporating before they touched the ground.
His eyes found mine.
Not as Trent.
Not as Torren.
But as the man he had been before any of those names.
Kratos.
I stumbled toward him, falling to my knees. “No—no, please—stay with me. Trent?—"
He let out a trembling laugh. “Finally, you’re saying my name as I always wished you would—now, when it doesn’t matter anymore."
My vision grew blurry. “Itdoesmatter.”
A faint smile touched his lips. “Reverie… Lilibet… gods, I don’t even know what to call you anymore.”
I cupped his face with trembling hands. “Call me whatever you want to.”
His breath hitched—a soft, broken sound—because he remembered. The past life memory flickered between us: Lilibet in her golden armor, Kratos tugging her hood down to kiss her forehead before a battle. A moment stolen, a moment frozen in time.
“My heart.” He whispered.
The name struck me like lightning. I had forgotten it—but Lilibet hadn’t.
Tears spilled down my cheeks. “You saved me, Trent.”
He swallowed hard, pain shuddering through him. “In every life, I failed you. I betrayed you. I betrayed all of them. I was supposed to protect you—but instead, I doomed you.”
