Nn POV


    The temple air was heavy with incense, thick enough that I could taste it on the back of my tongue. The chamber was dim, lit only by the tall, thin candles that lined the altar, their mes flickering like they, too, were waiting to pass judgment.


    The entire setting filled me with a sense of nostalgia and sadness. It made me think of my mother and the solemn ceremonies she used to drag me to as a child. She was always so devoted.


    I had never believed in the Goddess. Not really. The stories were fine for pups, something to keep them in line, to give them a sense of meaning in a brutal world. But I had grown up under a father who spoke only of power and strategy, of bloodlines and survival.


    Faith hadn''t kept me alive. Training had. Ruthlessness had.


    And yet, as I stood before the altar, the weight of the elders eyes heavy on my back,


    I felt a tremor in my chest I couldn''t name. Fear. Anticipation. Something I didn''t want to admit.


    We had left the chambers ande directly here, to the capital temple. It was a massive, ornate stone building that carried echoes of the past and whispers of the potential future.


    I stood in front of the altar stiffly. It was covered in candles enough that it was hot this close to it. I felt the sw break out along my brow.


    A silver statue of the moon goddess stood in the center, her hands above her head holding a polished moonst orb. The expression on the statue''s face was somber. Or it seemed that way to me, in this moment.


    My entire future hinged upon what happened next. I had no idea what kind of sign the elders would be looking f The most likely oue was that nothing would happen.


    It was just a statue in an old building, so why should anything out of the ordinary happen?


    All of the confidence Ellie''s eloquent words had given me fled as I stepped closer to the altar.


    "ce your hand upon the stone," one of the elders intoned. His voice was steady, solemn, but I didn''t miss the undercurrent of doubt beneath it.


    I stepped forward, every movement measured. The altar itself was simple-an old b of marble. My eyes were glued to the moonstone, pale as ice, veins of silver running through it like frozen rivers.


    My hand hovered above it, my pulse a steady roar in my ears. What if nothing happened? What if Rowan was right? What if the Goddess—or whatever power these people believed in-truly had turned Her face from me?


    I pressed my palm down. The stone was cool in stark contrast to the candle-heated


    air around it. Nothing happened for a long, heart-wrenching moment.


    The world shattered into light.


    A blinding silver radiance shot through the stone, through me, through the entire chamber.


    Gasps echoed behind me, the sharp intake of breath from dozens of throats as the moonstone pulsed like it hade alive, a living fragment of the night sky.


    I jerked back instinctively, but the light followed, wrapping around my hand, my arm, my chest, like a tether I couldn''t escape. For one impossible heartbeat, I swore I fell something looking back at me from inside the glow- something vast, ancient, and cold as the stars.


    Then, just as suddenly as it began, it was gone. The altar dimmed, the moonstoney silent and still once more, as


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    though nothing had happened at all.


    The chamber was silent. Breathless. Every eye burned into me.


    "The Goddess..." one elder whispered, his voice breaking. "She has given her sign.” Another nodded, wide-eyed, his lips moving in silent prayer. Even the most skeptical looked shaken, as though the ground had shifted beneath their feet.


    But I-I couldn''t move. My heart thundered, my lungs refused to draw air properly. A sign. They thought the Goddess had given me her blessing.


    But I had felt it.


    Whatever that presence had been, it hadn''t been warm. It hadn''t been loving. It had been... absolute. As though I was nothing more than a tool under a vast, unknowable gaze.


    I turned slightly, just enough to meet Ellie''s eyes in the crowd. She was pale, her hands trembling slightly at her sides, but her gaze was fixed not on me, but on something couldn''t see.


    It was a confirmation of everything I had been trying to deny since I was a child. But there was more than that.


    In that instant, I knew something had happened to her, too.


    E POV


    The silver light filled everything. It wasn''t just the stone or Nn''s hand-it was the


    air, the walls, the beneath my feet. It was inside me.


    The chamber blurred, and I was no longer standing in the temple.


    I was somewhere vast and endless, where silver mist curled like ribbons through the dark. And in the midst stood a woman.


    Her hair spilled like liquid moonlight down her back, shimmering in soft waves. Her eyes glowed with that same impossible silver light, endless and fathomless, and when theynded on me, I felt a jolt deep in my chest, like recognition.


    She was beautiful-otherworldly-but it wasn''t just beauty. There was something about the shape of her jaw, the curve of her mouth, that tugged at me. Something achingly familiar.


    Her lips parted, as though she meant to speak-but no sound came. Only a rush of warmth, an aching tenderness that made my throat close.


    And then-faint, almost hidden beneath the light-I saw another face ovey hers. A boy''s face, sharp features, a familiar edge to his dark hair and his eyes. Cassian.


    My breath caught.


    The vision flickered, like a candle guttering in the wind. The woman''s features blurred, dissolving into mist, and I reached out desperately, my hand stretching into nothing.


    "Wait-!"


    The woman was gone, but the image of Cassian remained. I was Cassian as a child, freckle-faced and a front tooth missing. He looked at me with obvious annoyance.


    There was something in his hand. A ne with a moonstone set in ornate silver. He held it out to me and his voice, high and youthful, filled my head.


    “Don''t drop it again or Mom will get upset,” he said sternly. “She gave this to you for a reason."


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    The silver light snapped out, and I was back in the temple.


    The altar was quiet now, its stone dull and lifeless once more. The elders were whispering among themselves, their voices excited, awed, shocked. Nn stood stiffly, hisw tight, as though he''d just been branded by fire,


    His eyes sought mine, wide and concerned. I looked back at him, feeling exactly the same way.


    My heart thundered with confusion, with fear. With the echo of that woman''s gaze lingering in my mind.


    Who was she? And why had her face carried Cassian''s shadow?


    I forced myself to stand still, to lookposed, though my knees trembled. No one


    else seemed to have seen what I had. This vision-it was for me alone.


    The light had touched Nn, it had been seen by the others but it only illuminated anything for me.


    Which only made it more terrifying.


    Because I wasn''t sure I wanted the answers it hinted at.


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