I pried my eyes open slowly, dread already settled deep in my chest. I knew, even before my vision cleared, where I would find myself.
When it did, my gaze fell upon the Moon Goddess seated upon her throne. Silver light gathered faintly around her, and a smirk rested comfortably upon her face, as though she had been expecting me
I let out a deep exhale.
"What becomes of me now?" I stuttered, the question slipping free before I could steady myself. My body felt heavy, weak from dying yet again.
"You still have one wish at your disposal," she replied, her voice calm and unbothered, as it had always been.
"I will stay here," I said, my strength giving out as I lowered myself to the floor. The cold stone pressed against my legs as I sat.
"Is that a wish?" she asked. "You must stand in the circle to make one, child."
I did not move.
What was the point of making another wish, when I never lived long enough to enjoy it.
"What is the point?" I asked at last, lifting my head to look at her. "When I am only going to die again."
"You do not have to return and face death by his hands again, Freya."
I looked up sharply.
It was the first time she had spoken my name. Hearing it from her lips sent a chill through me, one I could not explain, though it lingered all the same.
"There are other wishes you could make," she continued. "Wishes that do not require you to go back. You could even keep your final wish by joining my army."
As she spoke, something began to form in my line of sight.
At first, it appeared like a pale cloud gathering in the air before me. It shifted and thickened, stretching wider as though taking shape. I squinted, trying to understand what I was seeing.
For a moment, I thought it was sand.
Then it moved.
Not all at once, but in small, shifting motions. The longer I watched, the clearer it became.
They were people.
"They were once my descendants," the Moon Goddess said, noticing the confusion on my face. "Each of them was killed by the same man. Each of them was hunted, just as you are."
"There are so many," I whispered, my eyes fixed on them. "How did he kill all of them? Why was no one able to stop him?"
"The King has existed for centuries, child," she replied. "He is immortal, just as I told you."
The weight of her words pressed down on me. And for a moment I allowed myself to wonder, how many of these people had tried to kill the king to no avail.
Just then my thoughts drifted to something else. A question. So I shifted my gaze back to the moon goddess and asked quietly,
"What are your armies for?"
"For the King," she answered. "I am readying them for the day his weakness is found, so that he may finally answer for the innocent lives he has ended."
My gaze drifted back to the figures suspended in the air before me.
"When will that day come?" I asked.
She did not answer.
I turned back to her then, and in that silence I understood. It was not that she refused to speak. It was that she could not.
She cannot defeat him.
The truth settled heavily in my chest. If I agreed to join her army, I would be bound to the same waiting. Neither living nor dying. Trapped in a kind of endless stillness.
I was not certain which fate was crueler.
And yet, beneath that fear, another feeling stirred. The same one that always did. The pull. The need to return.
It was that feeling that made me rise from the floor. Slowly, as though my body itself resisted the choice, I turned and began to make my way back toward the circle.
"You do not have to go back, Freya," the Moon Goddess said suddenly. For the first time, her voice wavered. "You are my last descendant. If he kills you, I will lose my hold upon this world. I will fade. I will be erased."
I stopped.
"But if I remain here," I said quietly, "you will lose it all the same." I turned to face her. "You will be forgotten."
I let out a soft, breathless laugh. "And I cannot stay here. I have to go back. There is still too much I want."
"All of that, you could have here," she said. "All that you desire."
"It is not the same." I shook my head. "I want—"
The words failed me.
How could I explain that even after being killed, hunted, cast aside, and unwanted in every life I had lived, I still longed for it? For breath. For pain. For choice.
For living.
So instead of speaking, I stepped into the circle.
"Very well," she said at last. Though her lips curved into a smirk, her eyes betrayed her sorrow. "Since you have chosen to return. Do you have any last cunning wish?"
She paused.
"Remember," she added softly, "this is your final wish."
I remained silent for a long moment.
Then, at last, I lifted my head and spoke.
"When you send me back again, this time as the King's weakness, make me remember."
For the first time, the Moon Goddess looked taken aback. It lasted only a moment before her gaze dropped to the circle beneath my feet.
I followed it, my breath held. Time stretched thin as the markings remained dark.
Then, slowly, the circle glowed green.
A sharp breath left me, half laughter and half relief. The sound echoed through the hall, but the Moon Goddess did not share in it.
She watched me for a long moment before rising from her throne.
"I suppose this is the end of our bargain," she said at last. "And for making me smile, something I have not done in a very long time, I will grant you one final kindness. If you survive beyond the moment of your previous death, I will return what you lost. Your wealth. Your powerful wolf. But you will begin again from the very beginning."
She gestured to me. "Now open your eyes, child."
"My eyes are already open," I began to say when the floor beneath me shattered, swallowing me whole.
I screamed as I fell.
When my eyes flew open again, I was on the cold stone floor of a kitchen, gasping for breath as if I had truly fallen from the sky.
The smell of bread and ash filled the air. My heart pounded as I pushed myself upright and looked down.
A maid's dress.
Rough cloth. Worn hems. Hands that did not belong to a lady of any standing.
"No," I whispered. "No, no, no."
I knew this place. I knew this life.
When the moon goddess said the very beginning, I thought she meant my previous life. I thought she meant the beginning where I had power, or at least the chance to earn it.
Not this life where I was a slave and not a maid to my mistress.
Not the beginning where I had already made the brilliant decision to sleep with my mistress's daughter's husband-to-be.
And certainly not the life where that single mistake was enough to get me killed long before the King ever had the chance.
The door swung open just then, and my worst nightmare stepped through.
"Freya!" Olivia, my mistress's daughter, shrieked, as though I hadn't been standing right in front of her.
I had asked to be sent back as the King's weakness.
Instead, I had been sent back to my worst mistake.