His gaze flicked to me—seeing too much, knowing too much.“Her call reaches even here, though she knows it not. She wakes in what is now known as Bellona.”
Nathan looked almost feral. “You can feel her?”
The elder’s talons flexed.“We all can. She is Aurathia.”
I couldn’t catch my breath. I knew what this meant. Everything that I had believed about my Nexus was true.
The elder slammed his claw into the ground, runes lining his wings blazing beneath us in a spiral of light.“Then go, Factionof the Queen,”he intoned.“Find her. Restore what was broken. We will be waiting for your signal.”
There was no time to find out what he meant. The ground vanished beneath our feet.
Light. Sound. Nothing.
When I could breathe again, the world had changed.
We lay sprawled across a cracked plain beneath a copper sky. The air buzzed with energy, and I could almost feel Reverie’s heartbeat. My body hummed with it—an ache that wasn’t pain but pure joy.
Zeke was the first to speak, voice low. “It’s… her.”
I froze. Then felt it too—apulse.
Warmth flooded through the bond, faint but steady. The emptiness that had haunted us since she was taken snapped, replaced by something fierce and alive.
Jet’s breath hitched. “It’s back. The bond.”
Nathan pressed a hand to his chest, eyes wide. “I canfeelher.”
Zane looked toward the distant city of Bellona, with the giant Colosseum stark against the sky. “No,” he said. “She’s more than alive. She’s calling to us.”
The air shimmered as her pulse echoed through us again, bright and unyielding.
I clenched my fists, fire flickering at my fingertips. “Then we find her.”
The five of us turned toward Bellona—toward the coliseum, where our Nexus waited.
And for the first time since this nightmare began, I was able to draw a full breath.
Chapter 18
Reverie
Idreamed of voices.
They rose like wind through the ruins of memory—soft at first, then layered, dozens upon dozens, old and echoing. Some were familiar, like lullabies half-remembered from childhood. Others spoke in tongues my mind shouldn’t have understood, but my blood did.
The air in the dream glowed amber, smoke curling through the dark. I stood barefoot on marble streaked with gold veins—the same throne room I’d seen before, but broken now, overtaken by flame and shadow.
“Child of all of us,” the voices murmured together. “The line endures.”
“Who are you?” My voice was barely a whisper.
“We are the echoes that built you. The Ancestors who carried the crown before you.”
Their words thrummed through me like a second heartbeat. The floor cracked beneath my feet, splitting to reveal light—raw and pulsing.
“Yes.” Their tone deepened—neither kind nor cruel, but absolute. “The queen was but one of many. We are all that remains of what was once whole.”
I took a hesitant step forward. “Why now?”
