Forks — Present Day
Aurora jolted awake, heart slamming against her ribs like a caged thing.
Her breaths came in ragged gasps, the room around her spinning, blurring, unfamiliar.
Rain lashed against the windows.
The storm that had rolled in overnight rumbled low and restless outside, like a warning whispered through the trees.
But it wasn't the storm that clawed at her chest.
It was the dream—
no, not a dream,
something deeper, older, truer than any nightmare.
She pressed a trembling hand to her chest, feeling the hammering of her heart as if it were trying to break free from the prison of her ribs.
Demetria.
The name echoed through her mind, leaving behind a trail of aching, impossible familiarity.
She had been that girl—
that lowborn maid clutching the earth, reaching with desperate hands toward a queen she could never save.
The memory clung to her like damp linen.
The feel of marble cool against her knees.
The scent of roses—sickly sweet, dying.
The sound of the gods' fury ripping the sky open.
The silent grief of watching beauty destroyed for daring to exist.
Aurora curled into herself, squeezing her eyes shut, willing her breathing to slow.
But the ache remained.
A hollow, splintered place inside her chest, too old, too deep to belong to a seventeen-year-old girl.
Even now, she could feel it—
the echo of loss blooming in her like a wound that had never properly scarred.
Tears pricked her eyes, hot and unbidden.
Not for herself.
Not for some abstract sadness.
For her.
For the Queen.
For the beautiful, sorrowful woman who had sat among the roses at dawn, asking for nothing but peace—
and receiving only betrayal.
Aurora shuddered, pulling her knees to her chest beneath the thin quilt.
The dream had felt so real.
Too real.
Like a memory lived instead of imagined.
She glanced toward her nightstand where her phone blinked with missed messages.
Bella Swan's name flashed among them. An invite to meet at the diner, a promise of coffee and bad weather and quiet company.
But Aurora barely saw it.
All she could think about was the woman she had met in the storm. The woman who haunted the edges of her waking life just as surely as she now haunted her dreams.
Rhodanthe.
Who are you to me? she thought, staring at the rain-smeared glass.
Why does it feel like losing you broke me long before I was born?
Outside, the storm howled, rattling the windows in their frames.
Inside, Aurora clenched her fists in the sheets, battling a grief she had no name for.
She didn't know how—
didn't know why—
but she knew this:
She had loved that Queen once.
Loved her so fiercely that even death, even centuries, could not erase it.
And now—
Now that love was waking again.
And it would not be denied.
⚜️
The hot water had done little to scrub the ghost of the dream from her skin, but at least Aurora no longer felt like she was about to shatter into pieces.
She pulled on a fitted white long-sleeved shirt and her favorite worn-in black leather jacket—the familiar weight of it comforting against her shoulders.
Simple dark jeans and her scuffed boots completed the armor.
Normal, she told herself.
Be normal.
She needed a distraction.
Anything to pull her mind away from haunting eyes and dying roses.
Her phone buzzed again on the nightstand.
Bella.
Persistent, awkward Bella, who despite her soft voice and shyness, carried her own kind of quiet stubbornness.
Aurora smirked faintly and tapped a quick reply.
> [Yeah, diner sounds good. Meet you in 20.]
She snagged her keys off the dresser, slipping them into her jacket pocket as she made her way toward the stairs.
The low murmur of voices and the clink of silverware drifted from the dining room below.
Her parents—always discussing business, land investments, political alliances like they still lived in the age of kings.
And her younger brother, Lucian, bright and reckless, laughing too loudly at something their father said.
For a brief moment, Aurora hesitated at the top of the stairs.
The air in the house felt heavy.
Not hostile.
Just… distant.
As if even here, even now, she didn't quite belong.
The feeling had chased her since arriving in Forks.
Since before, really.
Her whole life had been a series of almosts.
Almost fitting in.
Almost connecting.
Almost belonging.
She shook it off and descended quickly, boots thudding softly against the polished wood.
"Morning, sweetheart," her mother called without looking up from her coffee.
"Going out?" her father added, glancing over his newspaper.
"Yeah," Aurora said, slinging her keys around her finger. "Meeting Bella at the diner."
Her brother snickered into his cereal.
"Ditching us for Forks' local disaster magnet? Brave."
Aurora rolled her eyes.
"Better than listening to you slurp soggy cornflakes all morning."
Lucian stuck his tongue out at her.
Their parents ignored the exchange, too wrapped up in their own concerns.
Without another word, Aurora slipped out into the misty morning.
The cold bit at her cheeks, fresh and sharp, but she welcomed it.
Anything to remind her she was awake.
Alive.
Still her own.
She slid into her battered black Jeep and revved the engine to life, the low growl comforting in its steadiness.
As she pulled onto the wet road toward town, her thoughts drifted—inevitably—back to the woman in the storm.
To the dream of marble temples and dying queens.
To the ache blooming silently behind her ribs.
Focus, she scolded herself.
You promised Bella.
Besides, she thought grimly, Bella probably needed the company more than she realized.
Anyone with two eyes could see that Isabella Swan had fallen hopelessly for Edward Cullen.
Too bad Edward had been such an ass to her in the beginning—
glaring at her like she was poison, trying to switch classes to avoid her.
The kind of stupid, dramatic rejection that left marks whether you wanted them or not.
Aurora tightened her grip on the steering wheel, rain blurring the world into smears of gray and green.
Maybe we're all just haunted, she thought.
Some of us by the past. Some of us by the people we can't seem to let go of.
And some—like her—
by things written into their very bones.
The diner's neon sign flickered in the distance.
A tiny refuge against the endless mist.
Aurora pulled into the lot, cut the engine, and took a deep breath.
Then she grabbed her keys, threw open the door, and stepped into the waiting storm of memory and fate—
ready or not.
The bell above the diner door jingled weakly as Aurora pushed inside, the smell of frying bacon and burnt coffee instantly wrapping around her.
It was warm in here—overheated even—but the buzz of quiet conversation and clinking dishes made the world feel a little more solid beneath her feet.
Bella sat in a booth by the window, her hair damp from the mist, her hoodie a size too big, sleeves covering her hands as she nursed a steaming cup of coffee.
She looked up when Aurora entered, offering a small, hesitant smile that didn't quite reach her brown eyes.
Aurora made her way over, sliding into the booth across from her.
"Hey," Bella said, voice soft but genuine.
"Hey," Aurora returned, shrugging off her jacket and tossing it beside her.
They sat there for a moment in companionable silence, the rain streaking the window between them and the gray outside world.
A waitress approached, pad in hand.
Aurora ordered black coffee and pancakes without thinking, her body moving on autopilot while her mind still reeled from the morning's dream.
It was Bella who spoke first, her voice cutting through the haze.
"You look... rough."
Aurora huffed a small laugh, running a hand through her rain-damp hair.
"Yeah. Weird dreams."
Bella's eyes sharpened with a flicker of sympathy.
"I get those too," she said, almost too quietly. "Since moving here. Bad ones."
Aurora leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table.
"Dreams that feel real?"
Bella hesitated, chewing her bottom lip. Then she nodded. "You?"
"Like... I wake up feeling like I lost something. Or someone. Like I missed something important, and I don't know how to fix it."
Aurora explained to her how she's been constantly feeling.
Across the diner, unseen, a pair of amber eyes watched them intently.
Alice Cullen sat two booths down with Jasper.
She pretended to sip a cup of untouched tea, but her gaze kept flickering to Aurora, sharp and thoughtful.
It wasn't suspicion, exactly.
It was... curiosity.
As if she were looking at a puzzle whose missing pieces were just beginning to fall into place.
Aurora felt it too—the heavy weight of being noticed.
The invisible strings being tugged tighter around her ribs.
She forced herself to look back at Bella.
Focus.
Stay grounded.
"You like him," Aurora said lightly, gesturing with her chin. "Edward Cullen."
Bella's cheeks pinked immediately.
She fumbled with her coffee cup.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she mumbled into the rim.
Aurora snorted.
"Right. And I moved to Forks for the thrilling nightlife."
That coaxed a real laugh out of Bella—small, startled, but genuine.
"I can't help it," Bella admitted after a moment, voice low. "It's like... he pulls me in. Even when I know I shouldn't want him to."
Aurora leaned back in her seat, the words resonating deeper than Bella could possibly know.
Like gravity, she thought.
Like being dragged toward something you already belong to, even if it breaks you.
"I get it," Aurora said quietly.
"More than you know."
Their food arrived then—steaming pancakes and eggs for Aurora, more coffee for Bella—and for a little while, they ate in peace.
Two girls trying to hold onto normalcy in a world that had already shifted beneath their feet.
But every now and then, Aurora caught Alice watching her.
Not with malice.
With a kind of almost reverent interest, as if Aurora were a thread about to unravel something Alice had seen coming but could not stop.
Jasper, seated beside Alice, looked deeply uncomfortable.
His eyes—older, sadder—lingered on Aurora for one breath too long before looking away.
Aurora filed that away for later.
For now, she focused on Bella.
On the fragile thread of friendship they were weaving.
On the warmth of coffee against cold hands and the illusion of a life not yet touched by storms.
But somewhere, deep beneath the diner's cracked linoleum floors,
beneath the rain and the moss and the bones of the earth—
something ancient stirred.
The past was waking.
And it was hungry.