In the aftermath of Ravena’s attack, those who had betrayed our kingdom fled, but my husband was a merciless king. He had ordered his loyal noblesse to hunt, and he had joined them. In a day, they had captured the vassals who had supported Adrian’s former noblesse in their rebellion, and now they were a gruesome warning to anyone considering treason.

I wondered what it said about me and who I had become that I was not appalled by Adrian’s choice of punishment.

Even now, as I stared, I felt nothing but anger—anger toward those who had tried to hurt me, who had attempted to take away my power, who perceived me as weak.

Among them, my father, whose death had occurred by my hand.

You are worth every star in the sky, he’d said in the throne room of Lara when Adrian had asked for my hand. My father had been willing to go to war with the Blood King for me.

And perhaps he had meant it then, until I had given him another way to reclaim his kingdom and the rest of Cordova.

I still could not fathom it, could not come to terms with how everything had ended. My mind was a whirlwind of feelings, the greatest among them shock. My body was heavy with it, my chest tight with it, my eyes blind with it. Through my numbness, there were bursts of anger and sadness, each of them shaking my body, violent tremors that left me exhausted. Yet I could not sleep, because each time I closed my eyes, all I saw was my father, his face drained of affection, possessed by a determination to end my life because it would end Adrian’s too.

That haunting memory was how I’d found myself in the library before sunrise.

If I couldn’t sleep, I might as well research. Usually, I preferred the company of the librarian Lothian and his lover, Zann, but tonight I was glad for the quiet as I leafed through books on the history of witches.

Ravena had escaped with The Book of Dis, which she believed would give her the power she always wanted, though it likely would come at a grave price.

All spells cost something, but the toll for dark magic was life.

And yet I had been willing to pay that price two hundred years ago. Now I wondered why. I could not remember, just as I could not remember any of the spells I’d written in the book. I came here now to search the library’s archives in hopes that something from those texts would spur memories from my life as Yesenia.