Forty years had passed since our Nevertide excursion. Forty years since Tejus and I had tied the knot and settled into a beautiful and tranquil life. Not a day passed that I didn’t marvel at the wonderful creature I’d been lucky enough to cross paths with in Nevertide. He worshipped me, and I adored him, and boredom was never part of our lives.

We were both busy with GASP, mostly involved in training new recruits, but also embarking on the occasional mission, and I couldn’t wish for a more rewarding occupation.

It took us a while to start talking about having a child. Looking back now, I didn’t know what I’d been thinking during our first twenty years together. We’d turned into vampires to extend our lifespans, but I lived with a constant feeling that something was missing, that we were, somehow, incomplete.

Tejus felt the same way, so we took the cure and returned to pure sentry form so that we might conceive. For a while, I thought one of us was struggling with fertility issues, but Corrine was quick to brush that concern aside. Then, on our twenty-first wedding anniversary, I was thrilled to give my husband the best news ever. I was pregnant, and I couldn’t think of another time when I’d seen Tejus so happy, other than the day I’d said “Yes”.

Harper was born nine months later, and we were fascinated by the wonderful creature we’d brought into the world. With sentry blood running through her, Harper quickly developed her mental abilities and barrier-building skills. Her True Sight was spectacular, as good as Tejus’s, in fact, covering an impressive number of miles in range.

She was relatively quiet and kept mostly to herself, but she was always a ray of sunshine around Tejus and me. When she turned eighteen, Harper wanted to be turned. After lengthy conversations about what life as a vampire involved, both my husband and I agreed that our daughter was mature and strong enough to understand and transition successfully, and we decided to turn back a few weeks after her.

Her first year as a vampire sentry was a bit rocky, but, with careful guidance from all of us, including Great-Great Grandma and Grandpa Sofia and Derek, she quickly grew into it.

As our only child, she was the focus of Tejus’s and my attention, and as a newly anointed GASP cadet, she was trained in the best tech and gear available, ranging from weaponry to recon devices, and we equipped her with state-of-the-art protective plates that kept her extra safe during training—for now. Soon, Harper would start participating in field missions, and I dreaded the thought of something happening to her. For that reason, I never crinkled my nose when Tejus showered her with the latest in army gear and gadgets.

At the same time, Harper was well looked after by her adoptive uncles—the Hawks were always around, from her first day in this world to her first steps and well into her maturity as a vampire sentry. This was mainly because Harper and Caia, Grace and Lawrence’s daughter, pretty much grew up together from day one, and the Hawks were particularly attached to the little fire fae, thus ending up as Harper’s guardians, too. Fly, Sky, Rock, and Blue had played a big part in honing the girls’ fighting skills, not just during practice but also through surprise tackles whenever they had their guard down.

Our daughter was sharp and fierce, making my heart swell with pride whenever she came back with a grin from a GASP training session, hiding whatever bruise she’d acquired in the process so I wouldn’t worry in the least.

Harper was the center of our universe, but, after all these years since Nevertide, I still felt like there was a void inside me, waiting to be filled. Just… something missing. I couldn’t explain it, but to my surprise, I discovered that Tejus had been feeling the same way. We often looked at Harper and experienced a mild form of guilt because we still felt… incomplete, despite having raised an extraordinary young woman.

Oddly enough, it seemed to be a common feeling among us Nevertide survivors. It had taken Lawrence and Grace well over twenty-one years to conceive Caia, and it had all been thanks to Corrine’s full moon ritual, which gave Grace a boost in fertility.

We’d all wanted children, after all. We’d been looking forward to growing our families and bringing wonderful beings into this world. For a while, we thought that our delay in conceiving might’ve had something to do with the Nevertide Oracle and the way in which she’d touched Grace, Victoria’s, and my, bellies four decades ago. But we had no way of finding her. All we could do was learn to live with the quiet idea of something still missing from our lives. Grace and Lawrence had felt it, too—as had Victoria and Bastien. The latter had Dmitri around the same time as Harper, leaving us all wondering as to why we’d gone twenty years without children. These births came across as a strangely timed coincidence.

We never let this void get in the way of our lives, though. I watched with joy as Harper, Caia, and Dmitri grew up. They did pretty much everything together, and occasionally dragged the Hawks into their mischief, too—not that Fly, Rock, Blue, or Sky would ever shy away from a challenge. Harper and Caia had been the first to join GASP, followed by Dmitri a couple of years later. He’d struggled with the decision, as he’d been spending some time in the human world and had been contemplating a career outside The Shade for a while.

In the end, Dmitri came back into the fold after a teenage heartbreak and asked to join GASP. He was keen to catch up with Harper and Caia, after having found his place back among the Shadians. The girls had been the first to endorse him, and, soon enough, Dmitri was learning to control his instincts and improve his attacks, with Harper and Caia, his best friends, guiding him along the way.

It was a calm and quiet Sunday morning in The Shade. Late spring had finally brought the cherry blossoms out, patches of pale pink blooming in between the redwoods, brightening the otherwise dark green forest of The Shade. Arwen, Corrine’s daughter, had been quite adamant about cherry trees over the past couple of decades, after an extended vacation with Brock in Japan.

I could only thank them for her persistence. The Shade had a little bit more color in it, and we’d each planted a cherry sapling next to our tree.

It took me a while to get out of bed, that feeling of emptiness bothering me more than usual. I found Tejus in the kitchen, waiting for me at the table with two hot coffees. Sure, we didn’t need coffee, but we still enjoyed the taste, so we’d kept it as part of our intimate morning ritual. He’d been looking out the window when I entered.

He turned his head, his dark brown eyes burning hot into my soul. He’d been having an equally difficult morning. I could feel his emptiness through mine, like a mirror image of a hole that refused to go away.

“Rough night?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

I smirked, then proceeded to sit in his lap. He wrapped his arms around my frame and rested his head on my chest, listening to my heartbeat. I ran my fingers through his long, russet-brown hair. He always made my heart skip a beat, and I knew he enjoyed it. In return, I had a similar effect on him, his body heat spiking and his pulse racing whenever we got close. It never got old. I loved the chemistry between us.

“I could say the same about you,” I replied gently. “But we only have each other to blame…”

“Sorry, I can’t help myself when you saunter into our bedroom wearing that flimsy piece of black lace you call a nightgown.” He looked up, his gaze dark as he licked his lower lip. But there was something else there, a tinge of sadness he was trying to mask, similar to what had made me dread getting out of bed in the first place.

“You’ve been feeling that hole again, haven’t you?” I sighed, changing the subject. I would’ve loved nothing more than to continue that conversation about my lace garments and his natural reaction to them, but I knew something was bothering him. He nodded slowly. “Me too…”

“But why?” he asked. “Why are we feeling like this? I mean, why do the first twenty years of our marriage seem… like an unfinished painting?”

“I don’t know, Tejus.” I shrugged, leaning my head against his as he tightened his grip on me. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not happy or thankful to be with you, to have Harper. And yet, there isn’t a day that I don’t put my head down and feel like there’s something missing.”

“What I’m finding to be truly weird and a cause for concern is that Grace and Victoria are dealing with the same emotion…”

“Maybe we could grow our family a bit more?” I asked with a half-smile, relaxing against his firm body. He reacted instantly, pulling me closer and looking deep into my eyes.

“Do you think it would fill the emptiness? Harper didn’t, and I sound like such a horrible parent for saying this…” He groaned and hid his face in my chest.

I held him tight, feeling his anguish as it poured through me. He didn’t deserve to struggle like this, and neither did I. It had been going on for too long, and it had to stop.

“You’re a wonderful father, Tejus,” I said soothingly. “Don’t ever think less of yourself over what you’re feeling. It’s not your fault.”

“Do you think we should talk to Corrine about it?” He gazed at me, his dark eyes hopeful.

“I don’t know…” I exhaled. “I mean, we could try—”

Something broke inside me. Like a thick sheet of glass that had stood between me and the emptiness I’d been facing, the unknown mist shattering and dissipating.

A tidal wave of memories crashed into me, leaving me reeling, breathless.

Suddenly… I remembered. Everything. Things I’d never even thought I’d lived through and yet… had all been there.

Phoenix, our first child. Serena, our second. Watching them both grow into the spectacular creatures that they’d become, both capable sentries with effervescent personalities. Vita, Grace and Lawrence’s petite fire fae daughter. Jovi and Aida, Victoria and Bastien’s children. Field, the Hawk brother.

The first twenty years of our lives together had been more than eventful. They’d been downright extraordinary, and we hadn’t even remembered them.

I gasped, tears springing to my eyes as I realized that a little over twenty years had passed since we’d last seen our children, our beloved Serena and Phoenix. I looked at Tejus and recognized his horrified expression because it mirrored mine.

“Tejus, w-what’s happening?” I gasped.

“I… I don’t know.” His voice was trembling. “Hazel… We had a son… and a daughter before Harper… What… What is this?”

I stood, wobbling on my legs from the shock. Memories continued to roll over me like waves of ice water. One after another, each second that I’d been missing from my life. This was the truth hiding behind the emptiness I’d been feeling.

How could this have happened?

My breathing accelerated to the point where I feared a panic attack was imminent. I felt unable to control myself anymore, tears streaming down my burning cheeks. “Tejus! We have children we haven’t seen or heard from in twenty years! We have children we didn’t even know we had! What the hell is happening?!”

“Mom? Dad? What’s wrong?” Harper’s voice from the living room broke my focus.

I stilled, staring at Tejus with wide eyes.

“Tejus… What… What are we going to do?” I whispered. “Where are Phoenix and Serena? How… How do we tell Harper what happened? I mean, we don’t know what happened, so how do we explain this to her?”

A moment passed, and we heard Harper’s feet approaching. She found us holding one another, our faces pale and eyes glazed with tears, as we became more and more aware of the first twenty years of our lives together and the children we’d somehow… forgotten we’d even had.

“Mom.” Harper stared at us with her big bluish green eyes and long black hair caught up in a loose bun. She was almost identical to Serena, though her jawline and shoulders were a bit sharper. But she was just as tall, and her lips and nose and stance all reminded me of her sister. Her frown and the shape of her cheeks and chin reminded me of Phoenix, and I couldn’t take it anymore.

I crumbled and broke down, crying uncontrollably. Tejus clutched me tight.

“Mom, Dad, what’s happening? What’s wrong?” Harper came closer, gazing at us in alarm.

“How do we tell her, Tejus?” I sobbed, hiding my face in his chest, no longer able to look my daughter in the eye.

“Hazel, listen… Listen to me,” he croaked, managing to gain control of his own emotions, his fingers pushing my chin up to look at him. “This… This clearly isn’t our fault, okay? Something happened. We’re not horrible people who simply forget they had kids. There’s something… going on… and we’ll get to the bottom of this. We’ll find out what happened, and we’ll find out where they are, and we’ll get our children back, okay?”

A few seconds passed as I lost myself in his dark gaze, regaining some of my composure thanks to his strength. He was just as torn as I was, I could feel him, but his warrior instincts had kicked in faster than mine.

I nodded slowly, and we both turned to look at Harper, who was stunned, staring at us in disbelief.

“‘We’ll get our children back’?” she asked, her voice low.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Tejus took the lead.

“There’s no good way to explain this, darling,” he said. “But long story short, your mother and I have been living with this vague impression that there’s something missing in our lives. Grace and Lawrence have been experiencing the same, along with Victoria and Bastien, and the Hawks. And River and Ben, too…”

“River and Ben?” My gaze darted from Harper to Tejus. I’d never heard my aunt and uncle talking about this before.

“Yeah, we spoke about this a couple of months ago,” Tejus replied with an apologetic expression. “You were already dealing with your gap. I didn’t want to add to your worries. Although now, in hindsight, it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway, since only now are we able to remember Field.”

“Oh, dear,” I gasped. “You’re right, there is definitely something dubious going on here. Who would do such a thing? Who would hate us so much that they would put us through such an ordeal?”

“Will someone please tell me what is going on here?” Harper burst out, unable to keep track of our rapid and puzzling conversation.

“Sorry, honey.” I sighed. “It’s… It’s complicated, and we’re trying to find the right way to tell you without you thinking that we’re horrible parents…”

“Harper, listen.” Tejus steered us back on topic. “You have an older brother and sister we never told you about.”

“What?!”

Her eyes nearly popped out of their orbits, her lips parting as she was left speechless and gaping at us.

“We never told you about them because… we couldn’t remember them up until a few minutes ago,” I added. “We’d been feeling like there was something missing from our lives, but we couldn’t really explain what it was because we couldn’t remember.”

“There’s some foul play involved, Harper,” Tejus continued. “Last time we saw Phoenix and Serena, we were at Sherus and Nuriya’s ball, at their palace on the fire-fae star in the In-Between. Then, the next day… it was like our children never existed. The same happened to the others. There are Jovi and Aida, Victoria and Bastien’s kids. Vita, Grace and Lawrence’s daughter. And Field, the fifth of the Hawk brothers. Nobody could remember them anymore…”

It took Harper a couple of minutes to process the information, pacing around the kitchen and running her fingers through her hair. She took deep breaths before she stopped in front of us, while Tejus and I waited quietly for a reaction—I dreaded a possible rejection, although, technically speaking, my husband was right. We were not to blame. I would’ve never forgotten about my own children, willingly, and the hole that I’d been living with for so many years was clear proof that whatever magic had been used to wipe my memory clean of Phoenix and Serena, it could not delete my love for them.

I’d been longing for them for two decades.

“Okay.” Harper finally spoke. “You guys are amazing, so please, don’t think for a second that I would ever blame you for this. It’s not in your nature to be such forgetful jerks, for sure. And the same goes for River and Ben, the Hawks, Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Grace, or Victoria and Bastien. There’s clearly something weird going on here. How did you remember, though?”

Relief washed over me, and I couldn’t help but smile and be thankful that Harper had a clear head and immediately went into her investigative mode. Her training at GASP had definitely left its mark on her.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “It’s like something broke, all of a sudden. Tejus and I were talking about it, and then poof, it all came back. Twenty years we thought we’d lived differently.”

“This was powerful magic for sure, Mom.” Harper frowned. “Think about it. Not a single person in The Shade remembers Phoenix and Serena… Cool names, by the way. Not to mention the others. This was deliberate.”

I took a moment to look at Harper, holding on to the calm and composure that she’d so carefully built over the years. This gorgeous young creature was my rock, my beacon of light, and the source of my strength. Tejus worshipped her, and he had every reason to. We’d raised a true fighter.

Tejus took his cell phone out, looking in the address book.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice nearly gone.

“Calling the others,” he replied as he selected a number and put the phone to his ear. “We can’t be the only two remembering.”

“Dad’s right,” Harper said. “You’re not the only ones missing children and siblings in your lives right now.”

“Gah! This is so weird…” I groaned and pinched the bridge of my nose. Harper moved closer and hugged me, and I welcomed her warmth and affection. I needed her energy now, more than ever.

Harper listened quietly as Tejus caught up with Lawrence and Bastien. I called my mother and realized we were both raw and emotional about this. She and Dad had started to remember, and they were just as shell-shocked as we were. We asked them all to meet at the Great Hall, urging them to call in the others, too, including the Hawk brothers, Derek and Sofia, and the rest of the councilmembers.

We rushed out of our treehouse with Harper and followed the path through the dark forest, heading toward the Great Hall. Birds trilled in the foliage above, and the wind brushed against my skin, calming me a little.

We reached the clearing in a matter of minutes, the Great Dome rising proudly in the middle. The lights had been turned on. I rushed inside, followed by Tejus and Harper, and found that my parents had been the first to arrive. I burst into tears and found comfort in my mother’s arms for a couple of minutes as the rest of our council members poured in.

We joined our circle of family and friends in the meeting space. Sofia and Derek sat at the head of the massive table, Aiden, Lucas, Vivienne, and Xavier on either immediate side of them, while Victoria, Bastien, Grace, and Lawrence paced around nervously. The Hawk brothers sat in chairs, arms crossed and sullen, while Corrine and Ibrahim talked animatedly with Mona, Shayla, and several other witches. Rose and Caleb stood by one of the large windows facing east, while Caia and Dmitri leaned against the western windows, watching their parents with genuine concern. I stayed with Tejus, Harper, and my parents.

None of us had seen this coming.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but we’ll get to the bottom of it.” My grandfather Derek came to us and laid a hand on Tejus’s shoulder, while Sofia moved around and hugged me tightly.

“It’ll be okay, darling,” my grandmother said in a soft voice. “We’ll figure this out.”

Her emerald-green eyes urged me to stay strong. I gave her a thankful nod, then turned to speak to Victoria and Grace. They both rushed around the massive council table and wrapped their arms around me. I responded with equal affection, as I could feel their pain and desperation.

“How could this happen?” Grace asked, tears glazing her turquoise eyes.

Caia and Dmitri came to our side, exchanging sympathetic glances with Harper.

“I don’t know,” I replied, my voice raw with emotion. “We don’t know… It’s like…”

“It’s like they never existed until half an hour ago.” Victoria sighed, rubbing her face with her palms. “This doesn’t make sense! You don’t just give birth to two perfect babies and then forget you ever had them. It’s ludicrous!”

“It’s very powerful magic,” Ibrahim announced, standing up. “I don’t know yet what could’ve caused it. Or who. But I’ve already sent out a message to Sherus and Nuriya, so we should be hearing from them soon.”

“And what do we do in the meantime?” Bastien growled. “My son, my daughter, our children are out there… Good grief, we haven’t seen them in twenty-one years…”

Sobs and murmurs rippled through the Great Dome as we tried to understand how all this had come to happen. We all agreed that our memories had been wiped clean on the night of Sherus and Nuriya’s ball.

“D-Do you think… they had something to do with it?” River asked, holding Ben tightly as she wiped her tears.

“But why?” Ben replied, frowning deeply as he gazed at his wife. “It makes no sense. Nuriya is like an aunt to me, and Sherus…The Nasiri jinn and the fire fae are our allies and well-wishers.”

“Of course, Nuriya would never do such a thing!” Aisha piped up from her seat next to Horatio, her cheeks flushed with indignation.

We all looked at one another, utterly baffled and frustrated beyond belief. How would we get our children back? Where were they? Why hadn’t they reached out in all these years? The more we talked about this, the more questions we had.

“The fae and jinn had nothing to do with this.” A female voice suddenly boomed through the Dome.

We all stilled, turning to look at the main entrance, where a pink mist had gathered out of thin air, shimmering as it formed the figure of a beautiful young woman with long reddish pink hair and bright violet eyes. She held a golden mask in her hand, and was covered in beautiful, colorful layers of fine silk and an abundance of jewels.

A couple of seconds went by in silence before Tejus shot across the hall, his expression darkened by fury.

“Did you do this?” he asked, gritting his teeth.

The creature lifted a hand and sent out an invisible pulse, stopping Tejus in his tracks. It prompted the rest of us to move toward her, as our instincts kicked in. I treated her as a potential hostile, using my fury to fuel me into fighting mode, but the strange woman raised both arms and launched another pulse, this time keeping us all back.

“Who are you?” I snapped, trying to move past her barrier.

It was impossible. How did she even break through The Shade’s protective barrier?

I looked over at the others. They were all dealing with the same invisible opposition. A room full of vampires, werewolves, fae, jinn, sentries, Hawks, and witches, and none of us could do anything against her.

“What did you do with our children?” Bastien snarled, struggling to get to her.

“Please,” the creature said. “I mean you no harm. I come here in peace. I wish to take you to them.”

“Who are you?” I repeated my question, feeling my nerves stretch beyond their limits.

“I am a Daughter of Eritopia,” she replied, her glowing violet eyes capturing my attention. “It is a galaxy many lightyears away from Sherus and Nuriya’s star, in the In-Between. Your children and siblings are there. They are alive. They are now safe and eager to see you.”

I blinked rapidly as I processed the news.

“Wait, wait,” I replied. “What do you mean they are now safe? Weren’t they safe before? What happened?”

“And what’s a Daughter of Eritopia?” Dmitri chimed in, scrunching his face in bewilderment, before Harper nudged him in the ribs. “Ouch… What, don’t you want to know?”

“Maybe now’s not the right time,” my daughter hissed, silencing the young half-wolf. Looking back now, Dmitri and Jovi were like two peas in a pod.

“We are guardians of our galaxy,” the Daughter replied gently. “And we owe your children a great debt. They put their lives at risk to save our world when we failed.”

“Take us to them, now!” Tejus commanded furiously.

“I will. But you must be aware,” she said. “We’ve had to put Eritopia in a time freeze of sorts, to hide it from the rest of the universe and keep the darkness that had festered inside it from spilling out and destroying other planets. Time has passed differently there because of that. You have not seen your children in twenty years, but it has only been weeks since they saw you.”

We all needed a long moment to take that in. Grace, Victoria, River, and I looked at one another as the realization sank in.

“You mean to say our children have barely aged a few weeks, while we’ve been living without them for twenty years?” Victoria asked what I couldn’t, as my voice had finally left me from the shock.

“Indeed.” The Daughter nodded. “We hoped that this disruption in time would give the rest of the world a solid advance. We hoped that by the time the darkness from Eritopia would eventually break free, you would all be far more advanced, with stronger allies across the universes, able to destroy it before it consumed everything in its path. We are sorry for your loss of time, but we had no other choice.”

“What darkness?” Derek boomed, glaring at the Daughter, who kept up her calm and dignified demeanor.

“Azazel, a powerful Druid who embraced evil and poison and nearly destroyed the kingdoms of Eritopia.”

“Why haven’t we been able to remember our children?” Tejus asked the question we all had on the tips of our tongues, sending a pang through my stomach at the thought of Phoenix and Serena.

“It was safer this way, for everyone involved,” the Daughter replied. “We couldn’t risk anyone discovering Eritopia, so we made it so that no one knew about it in the first place. It affected all those who entered the shroud obscuring the galaxy, including your children. The moment they entered Eritopia, they ceased to exist outside of it. For this, as well, I am deeply sorry.”

“Oh, you’re sorry.” Tejus was furious. “That’s fine, because you’re sorry. That fixes everything. Except it doesn’t! Take us to our children! Now!”

The Daughter analyzed us carefully and quietly for a short while, then vanished, leaving behind the same wisps of glimmering pink dust that she’d emerged from. We were all suddenly free to move, enraged and unable to stand still as we tried to figure out where she’d disappeared to.

A low buzzing sound captured our attention, and we all turned toward the exit again. On the wall next to it, on the right side, a bizarre-looking doorway had appeared. A portal of sorts, with a bright white light emanating from it, causing us to squint in order to look at it.

We were all forced to take a few steps back, as the light intensified before a dark silhouette came through it. A tall young creature set foot into the Great Dome, and it took me a couple of seconds to adjust to the brightness until I recognized him.

“Field!” I heard River gasp before she darted across the hall and immediately took the Hawk in her arms.

Sighs of joy and relief flooded the room as Sky, Rock, Blue, Fly, and Ben swiftly joined in a collective hug. Field laughed as he kissed River on the forehead and shook the hands of his brothers and adoptive father, Ben, who then pulled him into another embrace.

I ran to him, touching his face, then his shoulder, as the others huddled around us.

“Field,” I gasped. “Are you okay? Where are Serena, Phoenix? Jovi, Aida, Vita? Are they okay?”

“Yeah, Hazel.” He nodded with a warm smile. “Please, don’t worry. We’re okay. We hadn’t known how time passed for you here. We only knew you wouldn’t remember us until the shroud was lifted. But it’s okay now. We’re okay. We made it, and we have a lot to talk about. Just don’t cry anymore; it breaks my heart…”

I hadn’t even realized I was crying until he said it. I wiped my tears and swallowed the others back.

“Field, honey,” I said. “Take us to them, please…”

He took my hand, and moved toward the bright portal.

“Wait, Field—is it safe for us to travel there?” Sofia interjected with a concerned look on her face.

“Yeah, it’s nighttime there right now, so you vamps have nothing to worry about, and this light here isn’t sunlight. It’s a spell,” Field replied. “Just don’t be alarmed. We might seem a little different than the last time you saw us…”

He looked at Victoria and Bastien as he said that, but I didn’t have the focus or the patience to dig into the meaning behind that glance. I squeezed his hand, reminding him of my desperate need to see my children.

“Let’s go, Field,” I said, my voice trembling. “I need to see them now…”

He entered the bright light, and I followed, along with the others. I felt the warmth envelope me, relaxing my muscles as I walked through the interdimensional portal. I closed my eyes, delighted to feel something akin to sunlight on my skin.

As soon as the light faded, I heard my boots click on a stone floor.

“Mom? Dad?” Serena’s voice broke through.

I opened my eyes and found that we had emerged into a massive throne room clad in black marble and limestone, with old portraits, giant iron chandeliers, and blazing torches on the walls. And in the middle of it stood the Daughter we’d seen earlier, along with six more dressed like her and looking an awful lot like her, despite the variation in hair color, along with a younger one and a little girl. They all seemed to be related, their facial features similar, their eyes violet and their silk garments and jewels screaming ‘royalty’.

Next to them stood Serena and Phoenix, along with Aida, Jovi, and Vita, surrounded by several other creatures I didn’t recognize. But they all looked dirty and bloody and worn out.

I instantly focused on Phoenix and Serena.

“My babies,” I gasped, no longer able to hold my tears in, a mixture of joy and grief overwhelming me.

I ran toward them, unable to think of anything other than the urgent need to feel them in my arms, to hold them tight and to never let them go. They beamed at me and darted in my direction.

We met halfway in an embrace, laughing and crying at the same time as Tejus came from behind and joined us. We kissed and hugged and held each other, twenty years of absence making their presence felt.

“I missed you so much,” Serena sobbed as she hid her face in my hair.

I couldn’t stop kissing her cheek and temple, wrapping my arms around her while Tejus kissed the top of her head and Phoenix kissed my forehead. We were an emotional jumble of bodies and arms, a family reunited.

I heard the others crying as they hugged their loved ones.

I could breathe again.