Lucien
The storm broke before dawn.
I was already awake—hadn't slept, really. Sleep had become a stranger to me lately, elusive and cruel. The fire in the hearth had long since died down to embers, but I didn't move to stoke it. I just sat in the dark, shirtless, cross-legged on the floor of the stone chamber, watching the storm light bleed through the high window slits.
Something had changed.
I felt it the moment the wind shifted—like an ancient thread had snapped and sung through the night air. Magic, raw and ancestral, rippled across the lands like a tide unchained. Wolves howled miles away, stirred from slumber by forces they couldn't name. And in the very pit of my soul, something woke up.
Her.
Selene.
I stood slowly, dragging a hand through my tangled hair. My chest felt tight, as though someone had reached in and squeezed the very core of me.
"She remembers," I whispered to no one.
Vespera's warning echoed back to me then—If she sees too much, it may break her before it saves her.
But Selene… Selene was not built to break.
She was built to burn.
I slipped on my coat and left the chamber. Down the corridor, past the sleeping guards, the fortress was unnaturally quiet, as if even the stones held their breath. The others would wake soon, and with them would come questions, panic, orders. But for now, there was only me. And the storm.
I walked out into it, rain slicing across my face like needles.
Lightning licked the horizon as I stood on the cliffs overlooking the valley. The trees below writhed in the wind, and for a brief moment, I could feel her. Not her scent. Not her voice. Something deeper. Like a tether had been pulled taut between us, vibrating with truth and memory.
She'd done it. Faced the mirror. Taken the past into herself.
And now the world would remember her name.
I clenched my fists.
Alaric wouldn't sit idle after this. Whatever he'd felt when the altar turned to ash, when the veil between past and present tore open, it would have chilled him. He'd hear the howls. He'd see the omens.
And he would know:
She's coming.
---
By midday, the council was in chaos.
"What do you mean the runes on the western cliffs went dark?"
"They cracked—like something broke the binding."
"That's not possible. Those spells are older than the court."
"And yet they shattered."
I stood at the edge of the table, arms crossed, watching the arguing unfold like a stage play. None of them noticed the tension in my jaw, the twitch in my fingers.
"Enough," I said finally, and the room fell silent.
I met Vespera's gaze across the table. She hadn't spoken. Hadn't needed to.
"She's alive," I said flatly. "And she remembers."
A few gasps. One elder—old Magnus—nearly dropped his goblet.
"Impossible," someone whispered. "That soul was supposed to be lost. Dissolved."
"No," Vespera murmured. "Preserved. Carried. Hidden where none would think to look. In time itself."
The room erupted again, but I heard none of it.
My mind was already racing ahead—to the armies we'd need, the alliances we'd rekindle. The traitors still embedded in our ranks. Alaric's spies.
Most of all, I thought of her.
Not the girl I'd found in the forest half-starved and half-feral. Not the soldier she'd become on our journey north.
But the Queen.
The one I remembered. The one I had loved.
And perhaps, if I'm honest, the one I had failed.
---
Night came again, and with it, dreams.
But they weren't mine.
I stood in a burning hall of mirrors, each one cracked, each one reflecting a different version of her. Selene laughing in a crown of moonlight. Selene screaming in chains. Selene dead in my arms.
They all spoke at once, a chorus of fury and fire.
You should have stopped him.
You could have saved us.
You left me alone.
I turned, searching for the real one, the true one—and there she was, walking through the flames barefoot, her silver eyes locked on mine.
"You let him take our child," she said.
I fell to my knees.
"I'm sorry."
She stopped inches from me, leaned down, and pressed her palm to my heart. It burned like the altar had. Her voice was soft this time, almost kind.
"Then help me take them back."
I woke up choking on my own breath, drenched in sweat.
Outside, wolves howled again. Closer now.
She was moving.
---
By the third day, the entire northern front had heard the whispers.
The Moonborne Queen walks again.
Some thought it superstition, others a ghost tale to frighten children into silence. But the old ones—those who remembered the true war, the one buried under decades of Alaric's propaganda—they began to gather.
Torn banners were unburied.
Sacred songs were sung again in low voices around dying fires.
I was in the armory when a scout returned, eyes wide.
"She crossed the Ashen Bridge," he said breathlessly. "Alone. And the stone wolves bowed to her."
Vespera closed her eyes, her expression unreadable.
"She's reclaiming her throne," she said.
I nodded once. "Then we need to be ready."
---
Later that night, I stood in the war room alone, tracing a finger along the map's scorched edges.
So many names had been lost.
So many bodies buried under the lie of peace.
But now she was awake. She remembered. She would not stop.
And I…
I would not lose her again.
A quiet step behind me.
Vespera.
"She's still unstable," she said softly. "The memories are heavy. The power is still settling inside her."
"I know."
"She may not be the same Selene you remember."
"I know that too."
She hesitated. "And if she doesn't forgive you?"
I didn't look at her. My voice was rough when I answered.
"Then I'll fight beside her anyway."
Silence stretched between us.
Then: "You love her still."
I turned then, fully, met her eyes.
"I never stopped."
---
The moon was high when I stepped out onto the battlements, wind tugging at my coat, eyes scanning the black horizon.
And then—I felt her.
Not just in some magical, soul-tied way. No.
I saw her.
There, emerging from the forest path, soaked in moonlight like a phantom from an old legend.
Alone. Alive. Radiant.
And silver-eyed.
I raced down the stone steps before my heart could catch up, boots echoing down the corridor, past confused guards and half-shouted warnings. Out into the grass, into the moon.
She turned before I reached her, as if she knew.
And gods, when I saw her face—scarred and strong and sovereign—I forgot how to breathe.
"Selene," I whispered.
Her expression flickered—recognition, weariness, fire.
"Lucien," she said simply.
And my name in her mouth was everything I'd been dying for.
I didn't touch her. Not yet. She wasn't ready, and neither was I. There was blood between us still. Ghosts. History.
But there was something else too.
A beginning.
---
Back inside, the council gaped.
Some bowed. Some trembled.
Selene ignored them all.
She walked to the table, placed her hand down, and said:
"Call every loyal house. Call the eastern packs. Call the siren court
s beneath the lake and the sky hunters of the frost peaks. Tell them the usurper's reign is ending."
"And what should we call you?" Magnus asked, voice shaking.
She met his gaze like a storm in human form.
"Call me Queen."