Chapter 37 Reverie
Reverie
Trent slammed Selene into the stone so hard that the wall cracked around her outline, dust pouring down in sheets.
Already, he had killed every last guard they brought with them in one fell swoop.
Ubel’s lightning strike grazed Trent’s shoulder, causing him to spin sideways, but he didn’t fall.
He twisted in mid-air, shadows wrapping around his arms like living serpents, and landed between them and us.
He was breathing hard now. Not from exhaustion—from fury.
“Tanya—just give me a second—” I muttered through my teeth, wrenching at the cuffs that bound her. I was trying to reverse my Aegisseal ability to get them off, but so far, I wasn’t having any luck.
“Reverie—leave me—” Tanya gasped, trying to push me away with bound wrists.
“Not happening.”
A crack split the stone near my head as Selene threw a bolt intended to decapitate me.
Trent’s shadow shield ate it mid-air.
He didn’t even look back at me. Trent was entirely in predator mode—the facade gone, the restraint gone, and the honest Torren/Trent standing in front of me like a weapon sculpted by something ancient.
Ubel laughed—a broken, wild sound. “You can’t protect her forever. When I kill her, you’ll be destroyed along with her, and I’ll take control of everything.”
He raised both hands—his ability condensed into a single spear of white-hot annihilation—the kind that shatters souls.
“Watch out!!” Rue croaked, trying to drag himself upright.
“Stay down!’ I begged him.
Ubel turned the spear toward me—
Trent moved without thought.
He moved to protect me with absolutely no hesitation.
He blurred into the spear’s path, no time to shield himself.
“NO!” I screamed. Loving and hating him at the same time.
The blast hit him square in the chest.
His body bowed backward, shadows exploding outward in violent arcs. He staggered, slamming into the far wall. The shadows tried to hold him together, knitting smoke into flesh, but Ubel’s magic burned through every stitch.
He dropped to one knee.
Selene froze.
Not in shock, but in horror. Because she felt it, they both did.
The curse that had enslaved Aurathia for centuries? That forced all Aurathions to rely on a ritual to access their abilities? That kept our people weak and dependent on finding a Nexus?
It snapped like a rope held too tightly.
A ringing filled the chamber—metallic, ancient, holy.
The torches blew out.
My breath vanished.
Light erupted beneath me—the Ancestors howling in my ears. Golden lines crawled outward across the floor, weaving into a coronation circle.
“Impossible,” Selene whispered, backing away.
“Not impossible,” Rue whispered, clutching his chest as tears slid down his face. “Destiny.”
Trent looked up at me through smoke and blood. His voice broke on a whisper.
“I never meant to hurt you, Bellator… I only ever wanted to love you.”
Selene staggered, a momentary crack appearing in her facade of hatred.
Ubel swore under his breath. “He took the entire strike for her—why—WHY would he—”
Trent turned his head toward them, shadows crawling weakly along his ribs where the blast had ripped him open. “Because she…” He coughed, choking on smoke. “…she was always mine to protect. Even before I knew her name.”
And then—
The world split open.
The Ancestors erupted upward in a cyclone of light—gold, silver, deep blue, storm red—wrapping around me, lifting me off my feet. My body arched as centuries of lives poured through me like tidal waves breaking in reverse.
I saw them all.
Lilibet, fierce and sorrowful.
Seraphine, the queen who commanded storms.
Maera, who fought the First War with a Fellat at her side.
Isara, crowned in starlight.
Callida, whose fire melted mountains.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Every queen I had ever been.
The Ancestors spoke with a thousand voices:
“THE SACRIFICE IS ACCEPTED.”
“THE LINE RESTORED.”
“THE QUEEN RETURNS.”
My back arched, my mouth opened in a silent cry as light sealed itself along my sternum—the broken crown burning into brilliance, no longer fractured.
A completed crown.
A sovereign mark.
Selene and Ubel fell to their knees, unable to breathe, unable to move under the weight of divine recognition.
Tanya’s cuffs shattered.
Malik gasped as light hit him and healed the wound on his ribs.
Rue bowed his head, overwhelmed.
Trent collapsed fully, body giving out—but his eyes stayed on me, shining with something raw and terrified and reverent.
And then—
The chamber bowed.
Not the people.
All of Aurathia bowed.
As I hovered in the air, wrapped in ancestral fire, every life I’d lived whispered through me the same truth: I was queen not because I reincarnated.
I reincarnated because I was queen.
The Ancestors’ light dimmed, and the chamber settled. Selene and Ubel were both silent in shock against the wall as Tanya and her men stood over them.
But none of that mattered.
Because Trent—Trent was dying.
He lay on the shattered stone; one hand pressed weakly to the smoking wound Ubel had carved through him. Shadows leaked from the edges of his body like spilled ink, evaporating before they touched the ground.
His eyes found mine.
Not as Trent.
Not as Torren.
But as the man he had been before any of those names.
Kratos.
I stumbled toward him, falling to my knees. “No—no, please—stay with me. Trent—"
He let out a trembling laugh. “Finally, you’re saying my name as I always wished you would—now, when it doesn’t matter anymore."
My vision grew blurry. “It does matter.”
A faint smile touched his lips. “Reverie… Lilibet… gods, I don’t even know what to call you anymore.”
I cupped his face with trembling hands. “Call me whatever you want to.”
His breath hitched—a soft, broken sound—because he remembered. The past life memory flickered between us: Lilibet in her golden armor, Kratos tugging her hood down to kiss her forehead before a battle. A moment stolen, a moment frozen in time.
“My heart.” He whispered.
The name struck me like lightning. I had forgotten it—but Lilibet hadn’t.
Tears spilled down my cheeks. “You saved me, Trent.”
He swallowed hard, pain shuddering through him. “In every life, I failed you. I betrayed you. I betrayed all of them. I was supposed to protect you—but instead, I doomed you.”
“I saw it,” I said softly. “In my dreams. I know what you did.”
He flinched. His eyes closed as if the memory physically hurt.
“But this—” I pressed my forehead to his, voice shaking, “—this was your choice. Not Kratos’s. Yours.”
His breath trembled. “There was no other choice. The moment I saw Ubel’s attack—”
“I know, my love,” I whispered, kissing his forehead.
“—I thought only that it couldn’t hit you. Not in this life. Not any life.”
My chest caved with a sob.
His hand lifted weakly, tracing the side of my jaw with a touch that felt like it belonged to centuries. “You were my queen then… and you’re my queen now. But this time… I loved you the right way.”
“You can’t leave me,” I breathed. “You just broke the curse. We just—”
“That’s why I can leave.” His thumb brushed my lip, a trembling, tender touch.
“You’re free now. No more dying young. No more heartbreak.
No more fighting just to live a life with your Faction.
” His pupils flickered—a flash of gold from Kratos, a swirl of shadow from Trent.
“I don’t get a second chance,” he whispered. “This was my second chance.”
“No,” I said fiercely. “No, you stay with me. We can fix this. We—
He coughed—dark blood staining his lips. “Reverie… I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I’ve done too much.”
“But you earned it,” I cried.
His eyes softened in a way that gutted me. “You were always the bravest of us,” he murmured. “Even more than Ambrose and the others…even more than the men in this life.”
“Please stay with me. I love you.” I buried my face in his neck, inhaling the scent that had called to me as much as it had repelled me.
“I’ll love you for eternity, and I’m glad…” he murmured, fading fast. “That in the end… I died doing one… thing… right.”
His fingers slipped from mine.
The shadows around him dissolved.
The Ancestors’ light sank into the stone.
And the man who had once destroyed me—who had once betrayed me—who had once doomed a queen—an entire race of people—died while saving the woman I had become.
I bent over him, shoulders shaking, the silence thick and suffocating.
Rue dragged himself over to me and put his arm around me in comfort.
And that’s when I sensed it—a ripple—a change in the air behind me. The cold that only comes from hatred.
Selene’s snarl sliced through the grief. “Get away from him.”
I turned just as Ubel ripped himself free of Tanya’s restraints, eyes glowing with murderous zeal. “She’s weakened!” Ubel barked. “Finish it now—while her power is still settling!”
Selene’s face twisted with feral rage. “He chose her,” she spat, voice breaking. “He chose her over us. Over me.”
She raised a hand, pointing her ability straight at my back. Ubel raised a second attack, white lightning coiling like a spear in his fists.
Both powers aimed to end me.
Right above Trent’s body—the man I loved in a past life and would never get the chance to love in this one.
I lifted my head, something ancient and furious rising behind my grief—something that didn’t feel entirely like me.
And for the first time, I didn’t feel alone inside my own skin.
I felt Lilibet, Seraphine, Maera, and every queen who had ever breathed through my soul.
Their abilities hit me—but they didn’t touch me.
Light exploded outward from my spine, my sternum, my palms—a crown-shaped blaze of ancestral fire.
It slammed Selene and Ubel back against the far wall, pinning them like insects in amber.
The chamber shook.
Tanya, Razor, and Malik shielded their eyes. Rue fell to the floor.
And I felt every queen inside me—not passing me power, but joining me.
My feet lifted off the ground.
My hair whipped around me like a storm.
The crown mark burned gold, no longer broken, no longer fractured by curse or betrayal.
A voice boomed through me—the voice of every life, every queen, every Ancestor. “YOUR QUEEN RISES.”
The chamber walls cracked outward as the energy burst through the mountain.
And that’s when my family arrived.