A Curse of Shadows

“There are four territories, Your Highness,” he replies. “Polaris, Venaris, Altaris, and Selaris. We used to be one land, but now the sea separates the four kingdoms. King Asher is very proud of our home. He’s spent a large part of his life dedicated to keeping us safe.”

He speaks of the king as if he were someone to be worshiped, but that man came storming in and confronting me like the world’s biggest asshole. Just my luck.

I stop asking questions because most of them will likely lead back to King Asher and I don’t like the way my heart races when his name graces my thoughts. Instead, I mentally keep track of the few turns we take to get the next set of stairs. By the time we reach the third level, I expect to be out of breath, but I haven’t even broken a sweat.

I guess new hair, new body? That’s at least one thing I don’t have to complain about.

“Your room is the second on the left, Your Highness,” Cain announces before touching the double set of handles.

Two wooden doors open with his gentle touch and the lights inside the room begin to illuminate, casting a glow into the hallway. I step forward and peek around but stay beside Cain.

There’s a four-poster bed with silver tulle draped from the wooden corners, connecting one to the next. The bed is covered in a thick, blue comforter that looks heavenly to sleep on.

The walls are cream in color with more of the same art gracing the walls that I noticed in the hallway, but they seem solely focused on white, pink, and yellow lilies—my favorite flower—in varying depictions. Not odd at all. Nope.

An open door that appears to lead to a bathroom is opposite of the bed and another one is only five feet beside that but remains closed. A small sitting area is set up next to another set of doors with glass windows that lead to a balcony.

My skin tingles and I close my eyes, breathing in this moment and trying to understand what’s happening to me and why I feel as if…I’ve been here before, yet nothing looks familiar.

“Are you ill, Your Highness?” Cain asks quietly.

“I’m something,” I mutter before entering the room.

Another cursory glance of the space brings my attention to the bedside table, where a single framed photo sits. Three people, including an older man with his arm wrapped around a woman whose blue eyes are eerily similar to mine, but more than that, they’re standing next to…me.

The new hair I now have hangs in waves over the shoulders of the woman in the photo, but it’s the face staring back at me that captures my attention most. There isn’t a single detail that varies from what I saw in the mirror this morning. My light-blue gaze is the same, my wide smile, my round nose—everything is as I’ve always known it except the rose-gold hair with white and auburn highlights, almost making the strands seem pinkish.

“This is me,” I say with reverence. “When was this taken?”

Cain steps closer and looks over my shoulder. “About a month before your disappearance, Your Highness.”

I shouldn’t ask this next question, but I can’t help myself, considering something King Asher said before that I chose to mostly ignore. “How long ago did I disappear?”

He pauses, making me tense for his answer. “Five hundred and four years ago, Your Highness.”

My heart sinks. I want this to be some sort of cruel joke, but the longer I stare at this photo, the more I see the faces of the people—no matter how impossible my brain is telling me this is—my heart feels a connection to these strangers. With every rapid beat in my chest, I come closer to accepting that maybe—just maybe—this isn’t a dream after all.

CHAPTER THREE

ASHER

Isobella Blackwood has returned to Lunara. Six words I didn’t think I would ever say again.

For centuries, my soul was entwined in a relentless search, combing through every crevice and shadow for her essence and yearning for my future queen, the woman who completed me. Now, as though conjured by a cruel twist of fate, she returns, claiming to have no memory of who she was, and worse, she doesn’t seem to recall who we were.

The agony that knowledge causes me replaces the void her disappearance created all those years ago with a throbbing that threatens to shatter my heart all over again. Instead of succumbing to the weakness, I focus on my fury. An easier emotion to grasp after facing the vacant look in her stare when she saw me.

Her gaze, once a beacon of warmth, now cuts through me each time I close my eyes, sharper than the most finely honed blade. Though I didn’t miss the way she assessed me with unwitting appreciation, the inferno she used to hold for me doesn’t seem to have been completely extinguished. Still, after all this time, she’s a stranger to me and I to her. A revelation that proves to be a bitter pill to swallow.

Worse, my father was right. He came to me about a decade after my Isobella had disappeared without a trace and told me that a source he trusted but couldn’t reveal had told him that this had been my mate’s choice. That my Issie had chosen to leave and her final words to me had been a lie, which is where my ire is currently growing from.

She’d promised me that we would overcome the obstacle of me taking the throne so early together, that everything would be okay because we’d be together. And then she was gone. There’d been no note or message passed on to me. Just a nothingness that I nearly didn’t come back from.

The beast within me, my kindred spirit, my wolf, stirs with a restless rumble, echoing my internal turmoil. He, too, has been fragmented by the chasm of her absence, our suffering a shared penance through the relentless years.

After storming through my castle, assuming an imposter was present, only a fragile moment passed before her scent seeped into my consciousness—a fusion of sweet vanilla laced with earthy undertones and a spiciness I’ve only ever smelled from her.

I wanted to fall at her feet, but my father’s previous words haunted me the closer I got to her. I’d never believed them before. Even after he assured me Isobella’s departure had been her choice, I still searched for her. It wasn’t until nearly a century had passed and my kingdom was at risk that I finally ceased putting everything I had into finding my mate. Though my heart never stopped loving her and hoping with each new wolf pup born in our world that her soul would return to me.