Chapter 2: The Moon Goddess

Darkness held me for what felt like a lifetime.

No pain. No sound. Just an endless, weightless nothing that I assumed, with a strange and distant calm, must be what death actually felt like.

I thought of Sherwood’s voice ordering my body into the river, and I waited for whatever came after that, drifting without shape or time, without even the comfort of fear to anchor me to anything at all, wondering distantly if this was simply what all the stories about the afterlife had gotten wrong.

Then — moonlight.

It bloomed out of the darkness slowly, silver and impossibly soft, gathering itself into the shape of a woman. She stood taller than any person I’d ever seen, draped in fabric that seemed to be made of the light itself, her eyes holding centuries I couldn’t begin to comprehend.

Something about her presence pressed against my chest like gravity, ancient and patient, the way mountains might feel if mountains could look at you.

“Your life was stolen from you,” she said, and her voice moved through me like a current, gentle and immense all at once, resonating somewhere deep beneath my ribs where words didn’t usually reach.

I started crying before I even understood why. “I don’t want another life. I just want this to be over. I’m so tired.”

Something sad passed across her face, ancient and knowing, the kind of sorrow that only came from having watched countless mortal lives unfold and end long before their time. “Perhaps that would be simpler.”

She reached toward me, her hand catching the light in a way that made my chest ache with a longing I couldn’t name. “But destiny has other plans for you, Bella. Plans that were written long before Sherwood ever laid a hand on you. Plans older than the betrayal that ended your first life.”

“Please.” My voice broke apart entirely. “I can’t do this again. I don’t have the strength to survive it twice.”

She didn’t answer. She simply reached out and touched my forehead, and the world dropped away beneath me, silver light swallowing everything at once, my own scream lost somewhere in the rushing dark. I was falling. Falling through darkness, through silver light, through something that felt like time folding in on itself, the sensation of my own body dissolving and reforming somewhere I couldn’t yet see, and just when I thought the falling would never stop —

I woke.

…

Sunlight streamed through gauzy curtains I recognized instantly. My wedding dress hung on its stand by the window, pristine and untouched. The flowers on my vanity were the exact arrangement I’d chosen months ago, down to the last ribbon. Even the date on the small calendar beside my bed matched — the same day, somehow, impossibly, all over again, as if the universe had simply rewound itself back to this precise, terrible morning.

My hands shook as I sat up, running through every detail of the room, searching for some sign that I’d imagined the entire nightmare. There was none. Everything was exactly as it had been that morning. The morning I’d died. I pressed a hand to the back of my skull, half-expecting to find the wound that had killed me, but there was nothing there — no blood, no pain, no proof at all that any of it had happened, except the memory burned so vividly into my mind that I knew, with absolute certainty, it had been real.

I could still feel the cold marble against my scalp if I closed my eyes, still hear Miranda’s voice giving the order that ended my life.

The door opened, and Miranda swept in, glowing with the same bright, practiced excitement she always wore on special occasions, her arms full of hairpins and the small silk pouch of jewelry we’d picked out together weeks ago.

“There’s my bride!” She crossed the room and began fussing with the wedding dress, utterly unaware of what her hands had helped arrange in whatever life had just ended, humming some tune under her breath like this was any ordinary morning. “We only have a few minutes left. Let’s get you into this dress.”

I stared at her, my stomach twisting with a nausea I couldn’t hide. This woman had laughed while planning my father’s murder. This woman had told Sherwood to throw my body into a river like I was nothing more than an inconvenience to dispose of, and now she stood here fussing over silk and ribbon like none of it had ever happened, like she hadn’t been the one to seal my fate with a single careless sentence.

And here she stood, smiling, helping me into the very dress I’d die in again if I let her.

I forced my voice steady, years of practice at hiding my true feelings finally serving some purpose beyond survival at family dinners. “Thank you, Miranda.”

She hugged me, warm and affectionate, her perfume the same as always, the same jasmine and vanilla she’d worn since we were girls, and I closed my eyes over her shoulder, swallowing down the disgust rising in my throat like bile.

This time, I promised myself, my hands curling into fists behind her back where she couldn’t see, my nails biting crescents into my own palms. I’ll survive. Whatever it takes. Whoever I have to become.

My gaze drifted, almost involuntarily, toward the small clock on the mantel, its hands ticking forward with a patience that felt almost cruel given what I now knew waited on the other side of them.

Thirty minutes.

Thirty minutes until I reached the same hallway, the same marble pillar, the same fate that had already claimed me once. Thirty minutes to decide whether I’d let history repeat itself, or whether I’d finally do something about it.