Chapter Two

I blink, and even though my mind is fuzzy, I find myself in the financial aid office, talking to the officer assigned to my case. What am I doing here? It's all a little hazy in my head. I reach for my head and rub my right temple.

"I—I didn't know I had to redo the forms every year." The words come out of me before I realize I'm saying them, and they sound rehearsed, like I've been here before.

Have I?

No, that's silly. If I was here before I wouldn't be having this conversation with the financial aid guy.

"For students with cases similar to yours—" As he explains why I should make a habit of visiting him more often, his face changes. His face and his voice morph right in front of my eyes. His hair gets a little bit longer, its brown color darkening, and a thick line of stubble grows from his jaw.

I must've been giving him a strange look—for good fucking reason, since his face literally changed right in front of me—because he stops what he's saying and asks, "Rey? Rey, are you all right?" His voice is different, softer, gentler. Warmer. It brings me back to a time that I… I just can't remember.

Right when I'm about to excuse myself because I think I'm going insane, I blink, and the man's face returns to normal, his voice back to the way it was before.

What… what was that?

It's all I can think about as we finish the depressing meeting about me losing my scholarship because I didn't fill out the paperwork on time, and as I hurry from the building to get to my first afternoon class, the nagging feeling doesn't go away.

That face. The second face, rather—it's familiar to me, so familiar, and yet I just can't place it.

Needless to say, it drives me nuts as I sit through the rest of the day's classes, and it still bothers me even as I head to the campus library to fill out some job applications. I can't get that face out of my head. I know it. I know I know it, but I just don't know where.

Oh, God. Am I going insane? Is that what this is? Shit.

I try to focus on the applications, but doing the same thing over and over again—sometimes multiple times for a single job app—doesn't help. I can't get what happened out of my head. It's driving me nuts.

The sound of small feet on the tiled floor alert me to someone else's presence behind me, but I don't look. I keep my nose to the computer screen… until I hear a small child's laughter. That gets me to look around.

And when I do, I see I'm alone. Alone as in no one is around me on any of the other computers. No one walks through the stacks I see on the far side of the open-room. No one's there at all, which wasn't the case a few minutes ago.

Where did everyone go?

Eyebrows creasing, I'm slow to get up as I hear the giggling again, this time on the glass stairs that lead down to the first floor of the library. I leave my bag to follow the sound. Not like there's anything important in there, anyway. I'm too poor for a laptop of my own, hence why I'm here at the library in the first place.

I walk down the stairs, and I make it to the first floor in time to see a small girl glance at me before racing out the main door. "Wait!" I try to call after her, but she doesn't stop or come back. She's outside within seconds, and I hurry to follow.

Pushing out of the glass doors, I stumble to a halt when I see the girl ten feet ahead of me. Her back to me, she wears an old dress full of holes, its fabric dirty. A small red ribbon is in her wild hair, her skin tawny.

My heart skips a beat as she turns around, and her big, hazel eyes land on me. Her stare is like a brick hitting me square in the chest, and I stumble back as her name comes to me out of nowhere.

"Prim," I whisper, and then I shake it all off and sprint before her. Falling to my knees, I grab hold of her frail arms and give her a gentle shake. "What are you doing here? How—" The truth washes over me as her hazel eyes watch the realization come.

The girl is dead, and the man I saw in the financial aid office was Frederick. The world around me is nothing more than a lie, a repeat of my last day before I found Rune and was thrown into another world.

"You shouldn't be here," she tells me in a whisper. "You know you shouldn't be here."

She's right. Of course she's right. I don't argue with her, but I do say, "I don't know how to get out. He's too strong."

One of Prim's small hands reaches for my face, and the feeling of her tiny fingers cupping my cheek nearly makes me weep. "He's not," she says, and she sounds like she truly believes it. "You need to fight him. You're the only one that can."

It sounded like the empresses—you know, actual strong women who trained their whole lives, who had magic on their side—couldn't defeat him, so what hope do I really have? "How?" I ask, practically begging her for an answer. "How can I fight him when he's…"

I don't even know how to finish that thought. Ancient? All-powerful? An asshole through and through?

Prim smiles, and if I wasn't already on my knees, I would've fallen down right then. It's a smile that reminds me of everything I lost. Not just her, but the people in Laconia the shadowstorm turned. Even my dad.

I've lost everything. I'm stubborn, yes, but being stubborn doesn't win you a twenty-year war.

The hand on my face falls, and she points to my chest. "You have everything you need."

The wind whips behind me, and the hairs on my arms stand straight up. He's here. Prim fades into ash in front of me, leaving me alone with a monster. I'm slow to stand, even slower in turning to face him.

Invictis stands less than five feet away, a smirk on his face. The sky above us turns black, the campus around us blurry—you know, since it doesn't really exist.

God, I want to smack that smirk right off his face.

I fold my arms over my chest and give him my best attitude. "I'm curious," I say. "Is that what Morimento's son would've looked like had he been left alone to grow up? Or is that face just what you think he would've looked like? I mean, either way, it's not your face, right?"

All he does is continue to smirk at me. He ignores my questions and remarks dryly, "I assumed you'd catch on quicker this time, but I didn't think your subconscious would be strong enough to break through the illusion."

"Maybe you underestimated me."

That makes him laugh. Hearing his voice while seeing him isn't something I'm used to yet. I don't know that I'll ever get used to it. For so long, he was just Rune, nothing more than a voice that kept me company, a body-less man who manipulated me to get what he wanted out of the relationship.

"Do you really think you can defeat me, Rey? Look at where we are. Look at what I can do. You've seen what's left of Laconia. You know precisely how strong I am." Invictis takes a step toward me, aggressive in his movement, but I stand my ground. "Do you truly think you have any hope of beating me when the three empresses of Laconia could not? What makes you so special?" He practically spits out the last word.

I'm no liar, so I tell him the truth: "Absolutely nothing."

He cocks his head at that, as if he's a dog trying to understand something he's hearing for the first time. Like he thinks it's a trick or a lie.

"I bet the empresses thought they were special," I say, inching toward him myself. "I bet Morimento's son even though he was. Maybe that's why they were all so susceptible to you. You are madness , right?" I mock the deep tone he uses when he's ascended or whatever he called it. "You made them lose their shit. If you haven't noticed, my world's a little different. My world sucks. Nothing about it is easy. So, no, there's nothing special about me. I'm just a normal girl from another world—but maybe that's enough to kick your golden ass."

In a blinding flash, Invictis appears in front of me, his tall figure blocking out the rest of the fake world. I don't blink; I don't even flinch at his sudden closeness. He's intimidating, sure, but I'm not scared of him.

His eyes flash gold, his skin lighting up in the same tattoo pattern that used to be on my arm. His tall frame leans over me as he growls out, "I could tear you limb from limb. I could send the scourge into your body and have it change you from the inside-out. I could tie you down and let the blighted creatures of Laconia feast on your flesh while you scream and beg for it to stop. I—"

I raise my hand like I'm in class. "Uh, just curious, for time's sake, how much longer are you going to ramble? How many more threats you got? Just toss out a number. They're creative, but they're not really doing it for me."

Invictis bares his teeth the same moment his hands snap up to my neck. "You are small compared to other humans your age. Almost frail. Your neck fits so easily in my hands. Snapping it would be effortless on my part."

Though he's a deadly sort of serious, I just can't help myself. I grin as I gaze up into his golden eyes and deadpan, "Kinky. Say it again and squeeze harder next time."

He's clearly caught off-guard by my response and blasé reaction to his vicious threat, because he does not squeeze harder, nor does he say it again. He growls out, "Most humans would be quaking with fear if they were in your place."

"Yeah, well, we both know if you were going to snap my cute little neck you would've done it already."

Invictis sneers. "Cute? I said nothing—"

I talk over him, "So why don't we go back to the real world so we can finish this, hmm? Unless you want to keep at this whole schtick. Although, I should warn you, the magic has worn off now, so I doubt watching from the sidelines like a creep will be as fun."

His hands around my throat tighten just a hair. Not enough to choke, but enough to remind me that they're there. They're there and if he should choose to, he could choke me out very easily.

But I don't think he will. I can practically feel him seething with annoyance—it's something I got pretty good at when he was nothing more than a tattoo on my wrist and hand. Bugging the shit out of him. A skill like that comes in handy right about now.

Plus? The dude is so full of himself that there's no way he'll kill me right here. Like he said before, he wants to make it last. Make me pay for being a thorn in his side.

"You wish to go back and finish this?" Invictis sneers. "Fine. We shall finish this, as you say, and before you die, you will know just how worthless you are." He releases me, and I fall backward, to the ground—only the ground no longer exists, and I fall into nothing.

I see nothing. Everything is black. Black and thick, invisible threads trying to crawl inside, get at me in a way nothing else could. I'm falling for what feels like ever. Falling, falling… until I'm not.