Page 37 of Gua rdian of Blood and Shadow

“Partially,” he admitted with surprising honesty. “The prophecies speak of a star-born consort, and I am a prince of my House. It seemed beneficial for all.” His expression shifted to something more vulnerable. “But there was more to it than duty. Something about you calls to me in ways I don’t fully understand.”

Before I could respond, a figure emerged from the shadows of the garden path, and I tensed as I recognized Ren, Reiji’s supposed guard. Her dark eyes assessed the scene with clear suspicion, her stance seemingly casual but ready for action.

“Reiji,” she said, her voice carrying an edge beneath its deference. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Reiji straightened, his open expression closing like a book snapped shut. “Thank you, Ren. I was just gathering herbs for the morning ritual.”

Something in their exchange felt off—a current of tension that belied their supposed roles. Ren’s eyes flicked to me, then back to Reiji, her gaze guarded.

“High Queen,” she acknowledged with a shallow bow that seemed purely performative.

I felt a surge of protective energy through my bonds—my consorts awakening to my absence. Javier’s presence grew stronger, moving through the house with vampiric speed.

“We have company,” Reiji said, already stepping away. “Your Prime Consort approaches.” He handed me the herb bundle he’d so carefully prepared. “For protection,” he said, his voice carrying a weight that hadn’t been there moments before. “You may need it sooner than you think.”

Ren’s eyes narrowed at the exchange, her attention fixed on the bundle in my hands with an intensity that felt almost predatory. She placed a hand on Reiji’s arm, guiding him away with subtle urgency.

As they retreated down the path, Reiji glanced back once, his expression unreadable in the growing dawn light. I looked down at the herb bundle in my hand, wrapped in a silver thread that caught the rising sunlight. The scent was complex—rosemary and sage, yes, but something else underneath. Something like starlight made tangible. Something that whispered of ancient knowledge.

Reiji slipped out of view around a bend, but Ren lingered a moment longer, her dark eyes meeting mine with an unexpected intensity. Unlike Reiji’s calculated charm, her gaze held something raw and genuine—a silent assessment that went deeper than mere appraisal. Her lips parted slightly like she wanted to say something else, something unrelated to her role as guard, before she seemed to think better of it and turned away.

Reiji called her name, and the connection snapped as she stepped out of sight.

The moment left me with a strange feeling of recognition, as though we'd met before in some forgotten life. Even as she disappeared down the path, I felt the lingering weight of her attention like a physical touch against my skin.

“Luna?” Javier’s voice carried from the kitchen doorway, sleep-rough but alert.

I stared down the path where Reiji and Ren had disappeared, an inexplicable chill washing over me.

“Everything all right?” Javier asked as he reached me, his hand settling at the small of my back, his thumb smoothing over my spine as his eyes tracked the direction of my gaze.

“I don’t know,” I whispered, the herb bundle suddenly feeling like both a gift and a warning in my hands.

22

Theancientleather-boundtomefelt like a betrayal in my hands. After years of finding safety in books and building a life among their predictable pages and sturdy bindings, this one had failed me, like so many of the others stacked on the coffee table.

I could feel my consorts’ eyes on me. Javier stood by the door, deadly and alert, his hawkish gaze missing nothing. Bastian leaned against a bookcase within my line of sight, periodically glancing my way as he leafed through book after book, the barely leashed power simmering beneath his skin, making his tattoos gleam with subtle golden light. Since letting the beast out the other night, that primal part of him always seemed to be right beneath the surface, waiting to come out.

Behind me, Ash and Thane kept watch, ready to shield me with their bodies or whisk me away to safety—whatever the situation required. Their presence was a steady calm, balancing the sense of flailing tension that seemed to be unraveling around Isador. She hadn’t had many answers about what happened with the queens in the graveyard, merely more questions. But at least she had a direction. And—and I meant this with my whole heart—at leastthat direction didn’t involve another ritual.

Yet.

Instead, it relied on something I was much more comfortable with: research.

“Here,” Isador said, pushing an open book across the coffee table toward me and turning it sideways. The pages were yellowed by age and worn around the edges. Her elegant finger pointed to a passage written in what looked disturbingly like dried blood. “This account suggests Queen Maeve was able to tap into Selene’s divine power through ritual.”

Her voice still carried the self-assurance afforded to her by centuries of queenly practice and experience as a high-ranking queen within the House of the Moon, though something had changed between us. Not respect, exactly. I hadn’t earned that. But there was a level of genuine deference where she had only gone through the motions before. She hadn’t called me “child” once since the graveyard ritual, so that was something.

“Fourteen days of fasting, starting on the new moon and ending on the full moon, dailycommunionswith a full harem of seven…” She met my eyes, her copper irises gleaming. “Nothing like what you did.”

“Maybe I just got lucky,” I suggested halfheartedly. The words felt hollow even to me. Nothing about that night had felt like luck; it had felt like reading a book written in a language I’d never learned but could somehow understand fluently.

Isador’s laugh was sharp and humorless. “Luck doesn’t bend moonlight to its will, Sophie.Luckdoesn’t pull a ghost back from beyond the veil. Andluckdoesn’t allow an untrained vampire queen to channel the power of the goddess herself.”

She pulled another book from the stack, this one bound in something that looked suspiciously like a prime example of anthropodermic bibliopegy—a book bound in human skin, for those outside the rare book world. I’d only seen one example of the macabre practice before, and I’d been as disturbed then as I was now. I fought the urge to recoil.

“Every recorded instance of a queen channeling divine power required preparation. Ritual. Control.” Isador’s eyes met mine, unwavering. “Except you.” Her brow furrowed. “What’s wrong? Why are you making that face?”

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