The healers called it superficial. A wound long healed. Proof that nothing was wrong.
I know better.
The pain isn’t flesh-deep. It pulses with memory. With fire. With something ancient and watching—something that never truly let me go.
“Does it hurt?” Kat’s voice breaks through my thoughts. She comes up behind me, her hands settling at my shoulders, kneading away the tension. “Breathe,” she murmurs. “In four. Hold four. Out four.”
I obey. My breath steams in the cooling air as the hearth’s fire begins to fade. I place my hands over hers, anchoring myself.
“I love you, Sunshine,” I whisper.
“I love you too, Rose.”
When she was little, she called me that because Selene was too hard to say. We spent so much time in the garden, our refuge, that I let her keep it.
She’s my sunshine, and I’m her rose. Born to help her grow, and she to help me bloom.
I squeeze her hands, praying it won’t be the last time.
Chapter 2
Bloodmoon
The sky burns red as I run, my white dress drenched in blood. My breath comes in ragged bursts, trailing smoke in the freezing dark. Behind me, the Bloodmoon rises full and high, painting my rusted hair in fire. Shadows claw at my heels, and I dare not look back. The air reeks of sulfur, and the ground writhes like something alive.
The corridor bends in impossible ways, its walls folding inward like a serpent devouring its own tail. Above, the sky fractures, bleeding ribbons of light that drip like molten rain. The stars spin faster, forming symbols I almost recognize before they vanish. Each step echoes from another place, another time.
The wind doesn’t howl. It whispers. Names.Names I know. Names I’ve tried to forget.
The pillars bleed liquid light. Vines of smoke slither down from the ceiling, brushing my skin like skeletal fingers.
I turn a corner, and suddenly I’m climbing, the soft ground pulsing beneath my feet as if it resents my escape. Far above, the moon cracks like glass, spilling crimson across the maze.
Every turn leads to more corridors of despair, dimly illuminated by the sickly glow of the cursed sky, its breath on my neck like a whispered promise of death. My heart hammers, each beat a plea for mercy. But the beast is close, always close.
I don’t look back. I can’t. This time, I won’t make it out.
Part of me wants to stop, to face it, to end this endless running. But then I hear it again—the fire licking at my heels.
Liora’s scream.
The night she burned. The night I didn’t run fast enough. And if Kat ever finds herself in this place, I won’t be able to save her, either. I’m not just afraid of the beast. I’m afraid of myself—of what I couldn’t stop, of what I might become.
A roar splits the sky, and fire follows.
The shadows twist into a labyrinth of nightmares. Through the smoke, I glimpse its form: a hulking shape with scales of obsidian and eyes that burn like dying stars. It slithers through the dark, a predator of claw and fang, its low growl harmonizing with the rhythm of my fear.
A claw bursts from the smoke. Time shatters. My scream dies in my throat as the world fractures into a torrent of fire.
Flashes. A white rose bleeding red. A sea of shadows writhing like serpents. Twelve veiled figures walking into fire. A silver crown shattering. My sister’s voice screaming for help. A throne swallowed by thorns and then engulfed by flames. My hands cupping golden light, only for it to slip through my fingers like blood.
Then I see her.
My mother stands barefoot in the garden, roses blooming at her feet. I run to her, but the petals blacken, curling like burnt paper. Behind her, a Pegasus rears, its wings torn and bleeding, a bridle of chains biting its throat. Kat stands beside it in a bridal gown the color of dried blood, her eyes hollow yet shining.
“Don’t let them take me,” she whispers. “Don’t let me burn.”
A figure steps through the fire. Barefoot, skin blistered, dress in tatters. Liora. My cousin. My best friend. Her lips don’t move, but her voice crawls straight into my head.
