When I opened my eyes again, my murderer was knocking on my door.
Three soft, polite taps.
As if he hadn't once watched me choke on my own blood.
For a moment I didn't move. I lay frozen beneath the cream canopy, staring at the tiny stitched moons above my head. I knew those stitches. I knew the faint crack in the bed's wooden post. I knew the smell of lavender soap clinging to the sheets.
But last night, I hadn't fallen asleep here.
Last night, I died.
Cold marble beneath my cheek.
The heavy weight of my crown lying crooked on the floor.
My sister's hand wrapped around the dagger buried in my chest.
And behind her, just far enough away to pretend he wasn't involved—
him.
Prince Kael.
Another knock came, a little more hesitant.
"Aura? Are you awake?"
Aura.
No one had called me that at the end. I had been "Your Majesty" to the council, a "burden" in their whispers, an "inconvenience" in Kael's tired sighs.
I pushed myself upright slowly, as if any sudden movement might rip reality open and prove this was a cruel dream. The room swam for a second, then cleared.
It was my old room.
Not the grand, cold chamber they moved me into after Father died. This one was smaller, warm, with faded rugs and a crooked window latch that let in too much wind in winter. The same desk piled with old books. The same chipped jewelry box Arcelia had once "accidentally" dropped.
The same room I'd had when I was sixteen.
A thin panic crawled up my spine. I scrambled to the mirror and gripped the table, knuckles white.
The girl staring back was not the broken creature I'd seen in reflections at the end.
Her cheeks were smooth and full, not hollowed by illness and grief. Her lips weren't cracked. Her hair was long, dark, heavy down her back instead of hacked short in a fit of rage. No scars along her jaw. No bruises on her arms.
Just a sixteen-year-old girl with pale silver eyes that had always looked a little unusual.
Only now they looked… older. Sharper. Like they'd seen things this young face had no right to know.
"Aura?" Kael's voice again, a little sharper. "Your father asked me to check on you. May I come in?"
My murderer, asking permission.
My fingers dug into the wood, splinters biting my skin. The last thing I remembered before waking was not this room. It was darkness. And a voice that didn't belong to any human throat.
The throne room had been chaos—shouts, steel, the smell of smoke from the outer walls. Arcelia's dress had been splashed red at the hem where she stood over me, dagger hilt slick in her hand.
"You were never meant to keep the crown," she'd whispered. "You were just keeping it warm for me."
I hadn't screamed. I was too busy drowning in my own blood.
Kael had been there, standing just beyond her shoulder. Watching. Not stopping her. Not even calling for help.
I'd thought I was finished when the world dimmed. Then the windows shattered, and wind howled through the hall like something alive. Glass hung in the air like stars. Through the broken arch of the ceiling, the moon had hung low and wrong—too big, too bright, stained the color of fresh wounds.
It had looked at me. I don't know how I knew, but I did.
"Aura," a voice had said, inside my bones, inside my skull, inside every place that hurt. "Do you wish to return?"
I hadn't thought of peace or justice or the stories of gentle gods.
I thought of my father collapsing alone in the council chamber.
Of Arcelia laughing when she thought I couldn't hear.
Of Kael turning away when I reached for his hand.
"Yes," I'd whispered through the blood in my throat. "Send me back. I'll do the rest myself."
Darkness had folded around me like a cloak. For the first time, I hadn't been afraid of it.
"I will grant you a second life," the voice said. "But know this, child of the moon: you will not return as who you were."
Good, I'd thought, as everything fell apart.
I had no wish to be her again.
Now, staring into the mirror at my younger self, I understood.
I hadn't just been reborn.
I had been rewound.
"I'm not her," I murmured to my reflection.
The girl in the glass didn't argue. Her silver eyes just watched me steadily, old and cold in a young face.
"Aura?" Kael knocked again, softer now. "If you're unwell, I can call a physician—"
"I'm fine," I said.
My voice came out steady, softer than I remembered but perfectly clear. Not like someone who had clawed her way out of death and landed ten years in the past.
Fine.
I was standing in a year that shouldn't exist anymore. My murderer was on the other side of my door pretending to care. My heart was beating on borrowed time.
I was not fine.
But I could be dangerous.
"Come in," I added.
The handle turned. The door opened.
And there he was.
Prince Kael of the Solar Court. Future husband. Future betrayer. The man who had kissed my forehead with trembling hands while the council swore loyalty, then stood still when my blood hit the floor.
He looked younger, like everything else. No hard lines of constant decision around his mouth. No extra weight of responsibility in his shoulders. His dark hair fell looser over his forehead, and his eyes—the warm brown eyes that had once made me believe anything he said—softened when they met mine.
"Aura," he said, and his smile could have lit the room. "You really are awake. You look… startled."
"Strange dream," I replied.
Understatement of several lifetimes.
He stepped inside, closing the door behind him. My muscles wanted to recoil, but I forced myself to stay still. I would not flinch in front of him. Not now, not ever again.
"Another dream?" he asked. "You've been restless since your father announced the engagement. It's understandable."
Ah. Yes. The engagement.
In this life, it had just been announced. The banquet and the blessing under the moon, the vows, the first kiss as a promised future queen—those lay ahead.
Along with the poison. The blade. The war we never saw coming.
"Maybe," I said. "Maybe the dreams are trying to tell me something."
His brows drew together, a faint line appearing between them. "What are they telling you?"
That you kill me.
That my sister helps you.
That I was a fool.
I let my lips curve into a small, shaky smile. The smile he knew. The one that meant Aura, soft and sweet and desperate to make him proud.
"They're telling me," I murmured, "to pay closer attention to the people I trust."
For a heartbeat, something unreadable flickered in his eyes. Then his expression smoothed. His charm slid back into place like a mask that had never slipped.
"You always think too much," he said lightly, moving a step closer. "That's why you frown in your sleep."
I hadn't known that.
He watched me in my sleep?
He stopped at arm's length. Close enough that I could breathe in the faint scents of steel and citrus clinging to his clothes. In another life, that smell would have comforted me. Now it made my skin prickle.
"Your father asked me to check on you," Kael went on. "He's worried. The preparations are… a burden. You did look pale at dinner last night."
Last night.
In this timeline, last night I had gone to bed anxious about which dress to wear for our first official appearance as an engaged couple.
In my other life, last night had been my last.
"I'm alright," I said. "Just seeing things differently this morning."
"Differently?" he echoed. "How so?"
I met his gaze and let the silence stretch a little. The old Aura would have dropped her eyes first, cheeks pink, hands restless. She would have swallowed any hard words.
I wasn't her.
"If the world ended tomorrow," I said quietly, "and you had to choose just once—would you stand here with me?"
His lips parted. The question shouldn't have fit this moment. It didn't belong in this warm little room, with daylight spilling across clean floorboards and no blood on the walls. But I wanted to see how he answered when he wasn't standing over my corpse.
He frowned, confusion clouding his face. "Aura, what kind of—?"
"Just answer," I said, voice gentle, not giving him room to turn it into a joke.
He studied me, really studied me this time, as if trying to understand what had changed while he slept.
"I would stand where duty places me," he said finally. "That has always been my answer. You know that."
Yes.
I did.
Duty. Not love. Not loyalty.
I smiled, small and almost sweet. "Then I suppose I should start changing where I stand."
He opened his mouth—maybe to ask what I meant, maybe to laugh it off. A servant's voice floated in from the corridor before he could.
"Your Highness? Prince Kael? His Majesty is waiting in the council chamber."
Kael exhaled, looking toward the door. "I'll be there shortly," he called, then glanced back at me. "You really do seem different today."
Good.
"I just woke up," I said. "Give me time."
He chuckled softly and shook his head, still studying me as if trying to solve a puzzle he didn't know existed. Then he stepped back toward the door.
"I'll send someone with breakfast," he said. "Try not to get lost inside your own mind today, Aura."
"I won't," I replied.
This time, I planned to get lost in everyone else's.
When the door closed behind him, silence settled over the room like dust.
I turned back to the mirror.
Sixteen-year-old face.
Ten extra years of memories behind it.
Somewhere beyond the ceiling, beyond the pale morning sky, I could feel the heavy weight of the moon—watching.
"You kept your promise," I whispered. "I'm back."
The girl in the mirror said nothing.
But her eyes had stopped being soft. They were the color of moonlight on a drawn blade.
"I won't waste this life," I told her. "I'll learn every secret you hid from me. I'll find every hand that pushed the knife a little deeper. And when it's time…"
My smile turned cold.
"They'll wish I stayed dead."
Outside, the first bells rang for morning court.
The second life of Aura, reborn under the blood moon, had truly begun.