The Substitute Luna’s Revenge
I was already reaching for my skirts to stand when I saw it, one rose, pure white, blooming three months out of season at the very edge of the bed, its petals impossibly full for autumn.
I shouldn’t have touched it. I knew that even as my fingers moved.
The moment I brushed the petal, the garden dissolved.
A castle rose around me, broken towers stark against a moon gone the color of blood. A woman stood at the center of it, crowned in silver, her face turned away from me no matter how I tried to see it. And a child’s voice, small and certain, called out a name.
Aelra.
It wasn’t my name and yet something in my chest answered it anyway, some door creaking open that I hadn’t known was shut.