Darian's POV
The ring still hums faintly in my hands, even after I’ve set it down on the edge of her nightstand. I sit there beside her, the weight of it refusing to leave my palms, like it’s burned through skin and bone. I can’t pretend it’s just metal anymore. There’s power in it—old, pulsing, and hungry for recognition—and now that I’ve seen what it does, what it remembers, I know I’ll never look at Serenya the same way again.
My mind races to make sense of everything she told me: the old woman at the flea market, the second ring that found her instead of her finding it, the first one—the one that said To My Luna—that ended up on Celestine’s hand. The pieces lock together like a cruel riddle I didn’t know I’d been trying to solve. My stomach knots as realization hits: every name that’
