The last thing I see before the light takes me is her reaching out, as if to touch my face.
“When we become whole, you won’t have to question being worthy of anything.”
The words follow me as I fall backward through silver light, through the sensation of glass breaking and reforming, through the cold shock of reality rushing back in.
I wake on my bedroom floor, whole body shaking like I’ve been struck by lightning. The sanctuary’s curved walls spin around me, silver script pulsing too bright, too fast.
Voices. Footsteps. The door slamming open.
“Bree!”
Someone drops to their knees beside me—Gray, his hands hovering like he wants to touch but doesn’t know if it’s safe. Behind him, the others crowd in the doorway: Rhett with heat radiating from his skin, Jace’s knives already in his hands, Theo’s eyes wide with Seer-panic.
Wes pushes through, falling to my other side. “What happened? You screamed—”
“I was there,” I whisper, still tasting light on my tongue even though it doesn’t make sense. “The chamber. But it was different. All ash and ruin, then—” I stop, not sure how to explain crossing through a mirror into a world that felt more real than real.
“Where?” Thane appears behind the others, silver eyes sharp with something that looks like recognition.
I struggle to sit up, my whole body still trembling with aftershock. Gray helps me, his hands steady and warm.
“Through the mirror,” I manage. “To the other side. Where everything was beautiful. And she was there—” I stop, not sure how to describe meeting yourself and finding a stranger.
The silence stretches, heavy with questions none of us know how to ask.
I close my eyes, but I can still see her—confident, whole, looking at me like I’m the shadow and she’s the light.
When I open them again, everyone’s watching me with expressions I can’t quite read.
“Riley,” I whisper, the name slipping out before I can stop it.
Because somehow, impossibly, I know that’s what she calls herself.
The silence that follows feels heavy, loaded with questions none of us know how to ask. But it’s not the others’ confusion that makes my skin prickle—it’s the way Stellan goes completely still.
Not the casual stillness he usually wears like armor. This is different. Predatory. Like he’s just heard something that changes everything.
When I look at him, his gray eyes are fixed on me with an intensity that makes me want to shrink back into the floor.
Like he’s just seen a ghost step out of legend.
Chapter 5
Stellan
The name hits me like a blade between the ribs.
Riley.
Not just the word itself, but the way Bree says it—with recognition, with certainty, like she’s naming something that’s always existed. Something that was waiting to be acknowledged.
I don’t move from my position against the far wall, don’t let so much as a flicker cross my expression. But inside, everything goes cold and sharp and hungry.
It shouldn’t be possible. The Ashen Oath died with the last of the mirror queens three centuries ago. Nothing more than whispers passed around fire-lit halls, stories Feeders told each other in the dark spaces between hunger and satisfaction. And my own curiosity.
Yet Bree just named her. And my body knows the truth before my mind can cage it.
The others cluster around her like moths drawn to flame—Gray’s steady hands helping her sit up, Wes hovering close enough to catch her if she falls again, Rhett radiating protective heat from the doorway. Even Theo leans forward, Seer’s eyes trying to pierce whatever veil she’s just crossed through. Zira watches from the corner, uncharacteristically quiet, arms crossed like she’s cataloging every word.
