I lost her once. I'll burn the galaxy before I let it happen again…
DAPHNE
I wake in a cave. Alone. Dressed in unfamiliar clothing. Sealed inside a glass coffin woven with gold.
I have no idea where I am, how I got here, or who I am.
All I have is the desperate, unrelenting urge to: Find Myccael. Tell him to stop the magrail.
I don’t know who Myccael is. I don’t even know what the magrail is.
But I know the message is urgent.
Battle hardened warriors bow to me, call me Vissy Thalia.
Everyone, but him.
Mallack. A scarred Vissigroth who rules Hoerst. He’s massive, magnetic, and utterly terrifying. He watches me like I’m the air he forgot how to breathe.
He says I was his mate. His queen. That I died in his arms.
I don’t remember him. But something in me aches for what we had.
When enemies rise from the shadows, I’ll have to decide if the truth of who I was is worth dying for… again.
MALLACK
Twenty rotations ago, she died in my arms.
I buried my heart beside hers and ruled Hoerst with a hollow chest. I raised our son, held back war, and kept the planets from collapsing. But every night without her carved away another piece of me. There was no life for me without her. Every night, I begged the gods to bring her back.
And—unbelievably—they do.
But nothing the gods give comes without cost.
When Daphne stands before me, exactly as she was the day she died, she remembers nothing.
Not her name.
Not herself.
Not me.
Not our love.
She looks at me like I’m a stranger.
And I have to win her all over again… before the enemies closing in take her from me a second time. Because whatever brought her back is still out there, stirring long-buried secrets that should have stayed hidden beneath the Pyme Mountains.
Weapons unlike anything Leander has ever seen are being used to attack Bantahar. And every shadow, every whisper, every unanswered question… leads back to the Zutens.
Whatever power returned her to me may have awakened something far worse.
But no matter what comes—She is MINE.
Mine to love.
Mine to protect.
Mine to fight for until my dying breath.
I will not lose her again.
I can’t.
If I do…
there won’t be anything left of me to save.
