Page 35 of Gua rdian of Blood and Shadow

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw them—the ancient queens. My mother. The shadow that wanted to consume us all. The way Isador had stared at me.

The look in Isador’s eyes—part fear, part awe—had lodged inside me like splinters. I needed to speak with her. Needed her to explain what had happened out there. But by the time I had emerged from within the shelter of Bastian’s wings, replenished, she had already gone, and with her, any chance of rest. I couldn’t sleep with such a massive WTF hanging over my head.

I stared up at the carved ceiling. I had to complete my harem—bind an elemental and someone else. I’d understood that much from the vision. Oh, and if I chose the wrong people, we were all doomed. I understood that, too.

A familiar electric tingle brushed my awareness. The fine hairs along my arms stood on end, letting me know I had a ghostly visitor. I raised my head and peered around the dark bedroom.

Wes hovered by the window, his ethereal form appearing more substantial than usual in the light of the nearly full moon. Unlike the overwhelming presence of the ghosts of the ancient queens, he was familiar, comforting—a piece of my past that had followed me into this unexpected future.

I extracted myself from the tangle of immortal limbs. Javier’s fingers tightened on my hip, his protective instincts surging even in sleep. “I’ll be right back,” I whispered, managing to wriggle out without disrupting any of them further, and pulled a T-shirt over my head. From the faintly sweet, woodsy scent, it was Bastian’s.

Wes didn’t turn as I approached, his attention fixed on the hillside graveyard. “Can’t sleep, firefly?” he asked softly, his voice carrying that old soul quality that had first drawn me to him when we were little more than kids.

“Too loud in my head,” I admitted, studying his profile. “I don’t know how to make sense of what happened out there.”

“You could try talking about it,” Wes suggested. “Might make things a little quieter inside your head if you let them out.”

I gave him a look he used to receive often, whenever he would give me a hard time about bottling everything up inside.

Wes smiled faintly, moonlight streaming through his translucent form. “You’ve always guarded your thoughts so carefully. Like if you let the wrong ones out, even for a moment, it’d bethe end of the world.”

I snorted softly. “Wouldn’t it have been?” Talking to him like this unwound something in my chest, a knot I’d been carrying for decades. “It was safer that way,” I admitted. “Back then, anyway. To be quiet. Small. Made it easier to hide.”

“And now?” he asked, his ghostly fingers hovering near mine, the familiar tingle of his presence raising goosebumps along my arm.

I looked back at the bed where my consorts slept; four powerful immortals bound to me by blood and magic and something deeper I still couldn’t fully name. Fate, perhaps.

“Now, I don’t know how to be anything but small,” I whispered, my fingers finding Wes’s pendant through the fabric of Bastian’s shirt. The tree of life felt warm against my skin. “I spent twenty years making myself invisible, and suddenly everyone expects me to be enormous.”

“The queens,” Wes said, his gaze drifting toward the window, the garden, the graveyard beyond. “They saw something in you tonight. Something that frightened even Isador.”

I nodded, my fingers finding my mother’s ring, twisting it around and around. Another inheritance I hadn’t earned and didn’t understand. “They looked at me like—I don’t even know. Like I’ve done something—anything—to deserve their respect. Something beyond justbeingDiana’s daughter. The onewho lived.”

Wes’s form shimmered, moonlight passing through him in waves that distorted his edges. “You were always more than just someone’s daughter, Soph.”

Movement caught my eye in the garden below. A lone figure passed between the raised beds. Even from this distance, I recognized the elemental prince, Reiji. He wore dark clothes that accentuated his tall frame, his long hair pulled back, gleaming silver in the moonlight as he bent to examine something in the nearest bed.

“Speaking of hidden natures,” Wes murmured, following my gaze. “He’s been watching you since he arrived. From a distance. Like a creeper.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Probably trying to figure out how to slither his way into my harem.”

Wes tilted his head, his ghostly form shimmering slightly. “Yes, and…I think it’s more complicated than that. He’s calculating but also curious.”

“And the ‘guard’—Ren?” I asked. Because not for one second did I believe she wasn’t more than either of them claimed. “What does he say to her when they’re alone?”

Wes frowned thoughtfully. “Not much. She’s quiet, standoffish, almost disapproving. Which seems to bother him. It’s a strange dynamic. She thinks he’s wasting his time here, that the House of the Moon is dying, but he seems to believe there’s something here worth fighting for.”

I studied Reiji as he moved through the garden, his fingers brushing stalks and leaves with unexpected gentleness. “Maybe I judged him too harshly,” I admitted, surprised by the regret in my voice. “Something about his presumption just set me off.”

“First impressions are rarely the whole story,” Wes observed, his voice softening. “You, of all people, should know that.”

My lips curved into a reluctant smile. “Iamsupposed to bind an elemental consort. What if heisthe one?”

“Only one way to find out,” Wes said.

I watched Reiji kneel beside a patch of moonflowers, his expression shifting to something less guarded, almost reverent as he cupped one of the blooms in his palm.

I narrowed my eyes. “What if this is a scheme?” I asked, my voice barely audible. “He’s down there, in perfect view ofmywindow, lingering inmyherb garden, fondlingmymoonflowers… What if he’s trying to lure me out to—”

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