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"W-what do you mean, 'no'?" the boy stuttered, his eyebrows scrunched together.

His expression made him seem genuinely confused, as if the thought that Kel might not agree to his request never had a place among his grand imaginings.

"If I refuse to be your knight, what will you do with me?" Kel repeated, feeling bolder in the face of Leif's timidness. "Will you punish me like you did to Dash? And the king?"

"I'M THE KING!!" Leif suddenly snapped, stomping toward Kel.

The look of bewilderment was instantly replaced by rage, and the boy raised his hand threateningly while baring his teeth.

"It's me!" he shouted again, swinging at Kel. "I'm the king! I'm the one in charge! Me!"

Kel ducked to avoid his strike, now feeling rather confused herself. Her dodging only made Leif angrier, however, and he swung again.

This time, his open palm landed squarely against the side of Kel's head, knocking her to the ground.

Her hands flew to her ringing ears, and she grimaced as Leif poised for another blow.

Should she fight back? Would things be worse for her later if she stopped herself from being beaten by the boy now?

Before she could answer that, another hit fell just above where her fingers were cradling her ear. And again after that, Leif threw his fist, this time harder than the previous times.

In the middle of preparing for his fourth strike, the boy suddenly stopped.

"Ah.. I.." he gulped, his blood-covered hand trembling as it hung frozen in the air. "I.. I.."

As he tried to step back, Leif suddenly stumbled, falling backward.

Without thinking twice, Kel took the opportunity to run, making it within arm's length of the door before the familiar yank on her ankle pulled her back down.

She'd forgotten that Leif had already locked the chain to the wall.

"Kel, don't run." Leif stayed seated on the ground where he fell, his eyes glossy. "I'm sorry.. I.."

Drip.

Kel tried to push herself up again. Why was Leif acting like the victim all of the sudden?

Drip.

Struggling to move her body from the floor, Kel suddenly realized.

Drip.

The strange dripping sensation was her blood. Various hot streams slid down her face, pooling at her chin before falling drop by drop onto her arms and abdomen.

Immediately after that, she realized something else. The reason she couldn't get back up was because her head was too heavy. Despite how she willed it upward, it continually sank back toward the ground.

Had Leif hit her that hard?

As the edges of her vision grew fuzzy, she glanced back over at the boy, who was curled up in a ball with tears welling in his eyes.

Ha. Why was he acting so patheti-

Bam!

With a thud, Kel's body fell heavily against the floor just as everything in her mind went black.

Her dreams were strange after she fainted.

First, she found herself back in Serin. Dash and Adriell were there as well, and the three of them were laughing and chasing each other around the palace garden. It wasn't a garden she'd ever set foot in, but somehow the dream version of herself knew it was part of the Dragon Emperor's castle.

Nonetheless, it was an extraordinary yard.

Beds of brilliant flowers were bathed in summer's bright white sun, and the grass was soft beneath her toes. No matter how far she ran, it seemed the springy grass would stretch on forever.

And so she ran on for hours and hours until grass was all that surrounded her. It was below her and above her, and circled her on all sides.

Her chest tightened as her vision became overwhelmed by green. She no longer knew which way was forward or back, up or down.

Was she still running? Or was she falling?

Everything was just one endless mirage of green.

"That's just how it goes.." a voice echoed from somewhere beyond the walls of grass, "when you spend your life stuck in a gilded cage."

Huh? Was this a cage?

Emerging from the green, she caught a glimpse of a man with tan skin and amber eyes.

"Tae-" she began to shout, only to stop.

The man wasn't Taegus. His eyes weren't quite the same color. He was too tall, and his shoulders were too broad.

Plus, his hair wasn't the ethereal silver of a Pandreian. It was brown. Plain brown.

"Ugh!"

Kel suddenly dropped to one knee, grasping at her feet. Sticking out from the bottom of her big toe was a tiny twig, barely sharp enough to puncture her skin.

Gingerly, she pulled the stick out and dropped it into the dirt below.

Dirt?

Kel jumped back up, wincing as her bare toes unluckily struck another thorny sprig. The lush lawn beneath her had been replaced by gray dirt that was littered with the sharp skeletons of what had once been bony brambles.

All around her were barren hills standing against an equally colorless sky.

Had she run all the way to Tael?

Remembering the man she'd seen moments earlier, she whirled around. But a different man was standing in his place.

A middle-aged man with graying hair, leaning against a cane to support his left leg.

It was Mr. Thomas. Kel hadn't seen him since he fled from Tael, being chased by head hunters from Serin.

But what was he trying to say?

It looked like the man was yelling desperately, but a strange whooshing sound filled her ears, silencing everything else.

"What?"

She tried to call out, only to have her voice whipped away by the howling gales.

As she tried to cover her ears, the sky, dirt and hills all began to spin into the same suffocating gray.

Finally, a faint noise broke through the chaos.

"-el."

"... l."

"Kel."

Calix?

Kel's eyes fluttered open, revealing gray floor tiles.

Where am I? She wondered, her head still spinning.

Gradually, she became aware of a hand on her shoulder.

Who was it? The same person that had been calling her name?

".. Calix?"