Page 21 of Gua rdian of Blood and Shadow

“You were captured!” I protested, shaking my head.

He turned his face away and shut his eyes, a tortured mask warping his features. “I sensed your every agony,” he whispered, shame reaching across the bond from him. “Your hopeless desperation.” Tears leaked from between his lashes and trailed down the chiseled planes of his face. “These past few years, I felt you giving up. Accepting your fate. Accepting death.”

I hadn’t known the connection was so much more intense on his end. I hadn’t realized just how much of the dark times I had shared with him. And then he’d had what I could only describe as a trauma response when he felt my distress earlier. Gods, he likely had the immortal equivalent of PTSD, and I had yelled at him for it.

I shook my head, raising my hands to his face and turning him back to me. His pained gaze met mine, breaking my heart. “You did nothing wrong, Javi,” I said, vehement. “Nothing. I’m the one who should be sorry.” Again, I shook my head. “I didn’t understand, but I do now. I won’t ask you to leave me alone. I’ll make sure everyone knows that you’re always to be admitted, wherever I am, whoever I’m with. I love you. I love you so much, Javi, and I won’t ever hurt you like that again.”

Javier leaned his forehead against mine. “I love you, too, my Luna.”

13

“Youdidn’teatenoughearlier,” Javier said as he fastened his pants, his overprotectiveness comforting rather than frustrating now that we’d had a chance to hash things out, so to speak. “I’ll bring you something.”

I drew my bottom lip between my teeth, reluctant to be apart from him, even briefly, after his recent revelations about how the bond felt from his end. “I’m fine,” I insisted, though my body disagreed, my stomach growling in betrayal.

Javier’s lips curved into that gentle smile that had always made me feel safe. He leaned in and kissed me, unnaturally still as he did so. The sensual tenderness made my head swim. “Allow me to do this for you, my Luna,” he murmured against my lips. “Please.”

That blend of command and supplication, so uniquely Javier, made arguing impossible. I nodded.

He smoothed my hair back, his thumb tracing my pulse point on my neck, then stepped away with predatory grace and slipped from the room.

I sensed my other consorts out in the hallway, each allowing me space while staying close enough for me to feel the full force of our bonds. My awareness of them was comforting. And overwhelming.

When was the last time I’d truly been alone? Between binding myself to immortals and fighting destiny, quiet moments had become incredibly rare, when just a few days ago, they had been my status quo.

My attention wandered to the door leading to the High Queen’s study and the bedchamber beyond. My mother’s sanctum. Mine now. The thought made me feel like a little girl playing dress up in her mommy’s clothes.

But the pull toward those rooms was impossible to ignore. I hadn’t been in there since…well, honestly, I couldn’t remember ever having been in my mother’s bedroom, though I had a vague mental image of what it was like. Had Amaya and I been welcomed there? Or had we snuck in? My few clear memories of my mother were from the night of the massacre, when she had fled with me into Amaya’s room.

I crossed the sitting room and the study beyond, faltering as I approached the bedroom door. Silver and moonstone inlays traced lunar phases across the carved wood, centered on a majestic eclipse. Even in the dim light, the moonstone pulsed with an ethereal glow.

My hand trembled on the handle, and I took a deep breath, steadying my nerves. I pushed the door open, half-expecting to find my mother at her vanity.

Instead, memories of my mom slammed into me.Her, kneeling at the moon altar before the arched window, her voice resonant with ancient power as she prayed to Selene. Huddling together on her huge four-poster bed when I fled into her room during a thunderstorm, her arms wrapped tight around me. Midnight garden walks, silvery moon flowers greeting the stars. The whisper of her footsteps as she crossed my bedroom to kiss my forehead each night when she thought I was already asleep. And yes, sneaking into my mother’s study with Amaya and attempting to peek through the keyhole to find out exactly what a queen did when shecommunedwith her consorts—and Javier finding us and shooing us away.

I pressed a hand to my chest, tears streaming down my cheeks, and attempted to keep it together. I could feel the concern from my consorts two rooms away, responding to my reaction to the sudden tsunami of memories. Needing a moment, I entered the bedroom fully and eased the door shut.

The room looked different from what I remembered, but it felt the same. New linens draped the four-poster bed. Bare surfaces stripped of my mom’s personal items—the seashells, her silver hand mirror, our photos—waited for treasures I didn’t have after decades of running.

My mom’s presence lingered, embedded in the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the air. The room remembered her, and through her, it felt like it knew me.

I crossed to the moon altar, where my mom had appealed to our patron goddess. My fingers trailed over the worn wooden surface, tracing around the amethyst athame. The empty polished silver bowl at the center of the narrow table reflected a woman caught between worlds—too changed to be Sophie Matthews, not quite Luna Sofia, High Queen of the House of the Moon.

A small silver box shaped like a crescent moon sat in the corner of the altar table, tarnished to near black. Everything else in the bedroom was freshly dusted and polished—except for this. Almost like it had been overlooked.Almostlike it hadn’t been visible to anyone but me. Something about the tiny box pulled at me, a whisper I couldn’t quite hear that somehow echoed in my bones.

I picked up the box, and when I lifted the lid, my breath caught.

A silver ring lay on the faded black velvet lining within, its band a dainty strip connecting to a triple moon. Within the full moon at the symbol’s center, a moonstone shifted between silver and blue as if alive.

My fingers hovered over the ring, hesitant yet drawn to it. When I touched the cool metal, energy surged up my fingers and into my arm, and I sucked in a breath. A flash of blindingly bright light pulsed from the stone, and an image of my mother appeared, like the negative of a photograph. I saw her warding this crescent moon box and placing it on the altar for someone to find.

“My shining girl,” she whispered, her words reaching me across decades.

Not forsomeoneto find. Formeto find.

The vision faded, leaving me gasping, fresh tears streaming from my eyes. My certainty that she knew I would return was absolute. She had known I would need this connection to her.

I slipped the ring on, not surprised when it fit my finger perfectly. The band settled against my skin like it belonged there, the moonstone pulsing once before quieting to merely reflect the late afternoon light from the stormy sky through the window.

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