Now we are in the training ring, swords in hand. Sweat glistening on our skin. I spin, slash, laugh, as my blade clangs against his. Again, it’s Koen’s face. But the way he moves, the rhythm of it, the way he smiles when I catch him off-guard, it’s Kallan. Itis.
“You always overextend,” he teases.
“So do you,” I shoot back, but my voice trembles. Because I remember this. Every detail.
But that man died. I had wept over his broken body. I had performed the Luminara and watched his body turn tostardust.
How can Koen know these moments? How can he feel like the missing half of a story I had already lived?
The training ring melts away.
Now we stand beneath the stars again. We are dressed in ceremonial clothes.The Divine Ceremony.The one that takes place at the end of the trials.
His hand takes mine, slow, reverent, like he is afraid I might disappear. Music drifts around us. A dance, slow and quiet.
It feels like another memory. But…this one has never happened. Well, not yet, at least.
Koen’s voice breaks the silence.
“I found you,” he whispers, his thumb brushing over my knuckles. “Even when I forgot everything else…I found you.”
I open my mouth to answer, but I wake with a gasp instead.
For a moment, I don’t remember how to breathe. My chest is rising too fast, heart pounding in my ears. Then, as quickly as it began, the panic eases. My lungs settle, my pulse slows, and I open my eyes.
Warm light pours through tall windows, dust motes drifting lazily in the air. The bed beneath me is soft and enormous, with layers of silks cushioning me like a cocoon. It smells like cedar and lavender and something darker beneath it, like moonlit stone.
This isn’t my room. It isn’t even mypalace.I sit up slowly, gaze scanning the elegantly arched windows, the midnight tapestries, the strange spiral shelves of glass.
Noctheron.
I haven’t been here in years. Not since the war. Not sincethatnight. Yet I remember the quiet air that hums with ancient magic, the subtle elegance of the architecture, colder than my home, but no less beautiful.
My fingers brush over the smooth fabric clinging to me. Clean, warm, and unfamiliar. A soft robe. The scent of herbs clings to my skin. My body feels whole. I look down at my hands. No blood. No sores. Only smooth, healed skin.
The door opens.
I turn sharply, expecting Dimitri, but it isn’t him. It’s another vampire. The moment I see her, my breath falters for an entirely different reason.
“...Ravelle?” My voice is quiet.
She smiles warmly, with a touch of amusement. Her long, pale pink hair falls in waves down her back. She wears black leggings and a long-sleeved dress of dark green—the hem falls to the floor in the back, but the front cuts off at her thighs, with a purposeful slit across her abdomen that bares just a hint of skin. Hercasualattire. I’ve always loved her style—bold, effortless, and unapologetic.
Her silver eyes—eyes all vampires have—crinkle with relief.
“Well,” she says, “you remember me. That’s a good start.”
A small smile tugs at my lips at seeing Dimitri’s female companion. “I do.”
I stare at her for a moment, overwhelmed. I haven’t seen her since before the bloodshed turned every vampire allianceinto suspicion.
“Glad to see you’re not dead,” she says. “You were quite the mess.”
A laugh escapes me, then I wince as my ribs protest. “How long was I asleep?”
“Three days.”
My eyes widen.
