ANMELDENSeven Years LaterThe ocean had always sounded different at dawn.Felicia stood barefoot at the edge of the water, her dress brushing against her ankles as the first light stretched across the horizon.Behind her, the palace was still asleep.Mostly.She could already hear Orion somewhere in the gardens, arguing with someone who was probably Cael. Lyra had developed the irritating habit of waking before everyone else and then making it her personal responsibility to wake them too.Seren would still be reading.She always was.And Lucien—Felicia smiled.Lucien would pretend he was asleep for another ten minutes because, according to him, rulers needed to learn how to rest.She had never been very good at resting.Seven years had not changed that.They had changed everything else.The Moon Bond no longer belonged to one throne, one priesthood, or one bloodline.The Confederation had become what they had hoped it could be: imperfect, argumentative, occasionally frustrating, and alive.C
POV: Aela“Don’t touch it! That isn’t a hand!”Seren’s scream tore through me a half-second too late. The thing already had my attention … long fingers, pale skin, dark lines glowing beneath it like cracks in ice, and joints that bent the wrong way, like something had built a hand from memory instead of bone.It stopped an inch from my face.Then it curled. Not toward me. Around the air itself, the way you’d close a fist around something you already owned.Maren yanked me backward so hard my feet left the floor, but I felt it catch on the star at my wrist anyway, a hook sliding under skin.We are asking you to be ready for what comes through.The hand withdrew. The doorway slammed. For one breath nobody breathed.Then every light in the chamber died, and I heard something breathing in the dark. Not beside me.Inside the Thread.Chaos filled the gap the light left behind. Guards threw up barriers that flickered and failed, the Thread eating their power before it could hold. Lyra fought
POV: Aela“They know you’re here.”The words hit my wrist before they hit my ears. The star burned there, one point gone dark, another glowing with a light that didn’t belong to my world. I looked up and the second doorway was already open. Something moved inside it, patient, unhurried, like it had been standing there longer than I’d been alive.Seren screamed my name.I didn’t move. I couldn’t.Ten minutes earlier, none of this had a shape.The chamber floor split first, thin blue veins racing under my boots like something waking up beneath the stone. A guard beside me dropped to his knees, hands pressed to his skull, muttering in a language that made the hair on my arms stand up. Cael flinched so hard he knocked into Lyra, and I felt it too … thousands of minds surfacing at once, pressing against the inside of my skin like a crowd trying to get through a door too small for them.Maevra barked orders nobody obeyed. The guards wouldn’t form the perimeter. Their spears hovered, uncerta
POV: Felicia → AelaYou were never meant to finish it.The words hit before I understand them, and my hand is already locked white-knuckled on the table's edge. The recovered object hangs above it, projecting her … the first Chosen Queen, fractured by static, flickering in and out like she's fighting the distance between her century and mine.Taren shifts beside me. Cassian doesn't move at all. The Moon Priest's breathing has gone shallow."If you believe the Chosen was created to rule," she says, "you have already misunderstood the reason she was chosen."I stop breathing.A councilor mutters something about succession records. I don't look at him. "Keep listening.""She was not chosen because her bloodline was superior." The image glitches … behind her, for half a second, something rises that belongs to neither of my worlds. Then it's gone. "She was chosen to ensure that neither civilization forgot the other existed."My hand doesn't loosen. It's the opposite … every year I've spent
POV: SerenThat isn't a ship.The thought lands half a second before the water beneath us splits open, and I'm already gripping the rail when Orion shouts for everyone to the center of the deck. Aela stumbles into me. I catch her wrist without thinking, and her pulse is going so fast I can feel it in my own palm.Hundreds of thresholds bloom across the water like something exhaling light. A voice says, You brought the children, and I don't know who spoke it, only that it moves through my chest instead of my ears.Cael goes rigid beside Lyra. His jaw locks, his hands curl, and I know before he says anything that he's caught the crew's terror and it's about to become his own."Nobody jumps overboard!" Orion's voice cracks on the last word.The ship lurches. I go down on one knee, drag Aela with me, and when I look up the water is gone. In its place: a gate taller than our masts, black stone veined with light, wide enough to swallow us whole.A woman steps onto its threshold like she's d
POV: Aela"You're not going."Except that wasn't what my mother said. I was standing at the back of the war room with my siblings when the councilman said it to her, certain as breathing, and I watched her look at the ocean map instead of answering right away."Your Majesty, we need your leadership."She looked at us. All five of us, lined up like a decision she'd already made without telling anyone."No."The room went dead silent."No?""I won't lead this expedition." Her voice stayed calm even as half the council started talking over each other. "This belongs to their generation."Someone argued we were too young. She didn't deny it. "That's exactly why they won't go as rulers, or commanders, or a banner of conquest." She looked around the room like she was daring anyone to argue with the next part. "They'll go as people."•It got ugly fast. One elder accused her of disguising recklessness as trust, and I watched that land somewhere real in her. Lucien stepped in … "We won't prete







