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The text in my Alfea history textbook had dissolved into a meaningless blur of glowing ink hours ago. I finally shoved the heavy book away, the sharp scratch of the desk legs against the floorboards sounding entirely too loud in the suffocating quiet of my room. I slumped back against my pillows, pulling my knees tight against my chest. Flora was down in the Alfea greenhouses tending to a rare lunar bloom, leaving me completely alone.
Usually, I welcomed the quiet. Tonight, it felt like a trap.
Outside my window, the Magic Dimension was still alive with celebration. The banners were still flying in Magix, and the realms were throwing feast after feast. It made sense. We hadn't just beaten Valtor anymore; we had actually done it. We defeated the Three Ancestral Witches. I had found my birth parents, King Oritel and Queen Marion. I had restored Domino from its frozen grave. I was a full, proper fairy now, having earned my complete Enchantix by breathing life back into an entire realm.
Everything was supposed to have returned to a perfect, fairytale normal. I was finally a real princess of a living kingdom.
But inside my own head, I felt like I was completely fracturing.
The phantom chill of that horrific night on Eraklyon—the night Diaspro fed Sky that love potion—still clung tightly to my skin. Even with Domino restored, even with my birth parents sitting on a golden throne, the restoration of my kingdom hadn't magically erased the trauma. If I closed my eyes, I wasn't sitting safely in my Alfea dorm; I was standing in the middle of that glittering, hostile Eraklyon ballroom. I could still hear the mocking, aristocratic snickers of the royal court nobles whispering behind their silk fans. I could still feel the agonizing, public humiliation of watching the boy I loved hold another girl’s hand, looking right at me as if I were a dangerous, unstable stranger.
I had lost Sky twice. First to his own lies about his identity when we met, and then to a dark spell that literally stripped away every single memory of my existence. And even though we had fought side by side to save Domino, even though he was a king now, the deep-seated humiliation of that party hadn't gone away. It had just been buried under layers of armor and destiny.
“Not much longer,” a dark, velvety voice purred deep within my chest.
I flinched, my hand automatically clutching my shirt over my heart. My fingers dug into the fabric, desperate to squeeze the feeling away. It wasn’t a real sound—not anymore—but the icy, lingering echo of Dark Bloom. It was the corrupted shadow Lord Darkar had left behind in my soul, and lately, it had been feeding on the dark temptations Valtor had offered me before the end.
Valtor had promised me understanding. He had looked into my eyes and offered me freedom from the crushing, exhausting weight of being everyone’s flawless, smiling savior. And God help me, sitting here in the dark, a terrified, broken part of me deeply regretted turning his offer down. I was just so tired of carrying the fate of worlds.
“Look at yourself,” the dark voice hissed, wrapping like cold, thorny vines around my heart. “You are completely falling apart. You think you are actually worth a king? King Erendor and Queen Samara only tolerate you because you are a weapon. You defeated the Trix, you stopped Darkar, you destroyed Valtor, and you woke a dead planet. If you hadn’t performed those massive feats, you would just be an average, ordinary fairy from Earth. Do you honestly think they would ever let Sky be in love with a nobody?”
The words cut cleanly through my defenses, drawing psychological blood, because I couldn't find a single logical argument to prove them wrong.
Diaspro belonged in their world. She knew the strict royal bloodlines, the perfect etiquette, the political dances, and the marriages of convenience. Even with Domino back, my royal heritage felt like a beautiful lie—it was a title built entirely on twenty years of ashes, ruins, and ghosts. I didn't know how to rule a magical kingdom. I was just a girl from Gardenia. I grew up riding a bicycle, scraping my knees, and eating greasy pizza at the counter with my dad. If I didn't possess the absolute, terrifying power of the Dragon Flame to act as a shield for their kingdoms, I would be completely worthless to the courts of Magix.
I felt toxic. Untethered. Unequal to the glittering life I was trapped in.
Desperate for any kind of escape, my mind drifted backward, leaving the high-stakes trauma of the Magic Dimension behind. I forced myself to anchor onto a memory of a simpler, safer life.
I thought of Andy.
Before Alfea, before the magic, before the wings and the villains, there was just me and Andy. He had been so genuinely nice, so fiercely caring in that uncomplicated, human way. Back then, I had still felt like an insecure outcast—a weird girl who didn't fit in anywhere on Earth, always looking at the sky and wondering why I felt so different. When that feeling became too overwhelming and I told Andy I wanted to break up, he hadn't yelled. He hadn't been poisoned by dark magic, and he certainly hadn't humiliated me in front of a royal court. He had simply understood. He accepted my reasons with a gentle, sad smile, gave me a tight hug, and stayed my friend.
It had been so easy. So incredibly safe.
Drowning in the complex, exhausting politics of the newly restored Magic Dimension, I craved that simplicity with a desperate, aching intensity. I craved a love that didn't require me to literally save the universe just to be deemed "good enough" by a king and queen. Sitting alone in the quiet dark of my room, the savior of the magical world stared out at the starlight, wishing I could shed my wings forever and run back into the ordinary warmth of a boy who loved me just for being Bloom.