Running, running, running as she yanked Natty around the corner.

Footsteps.

The footsteps behind her remained ever thus: steady, unhurried, closer and closer.

Fear tasted like the half-cold burger she’d vomited in the morning.

A common childish nightmare, except this had been Ari’s reality. She embraced this familiar fragment from her memory: an old dream in a new body.

The limp she knew she couldn’t ignore had a timer on it. She’d yanked out the syringe and flung away the needle, but the dull ache and cold in her leg told her that whatever they’d put into her body wasn’t done with her yet.

Fifteen to thirty minutes. It was just a tranquilizer dart injected into her muscle, she wanted to tell the child within the dream, within the memory.

The river called to her. Another turn, and a dash through the brambles. Would it protect her as it had done before, when it’d lifted her above its surface with her brethren of discarded bottles and poisoned fish.

Hands colder than river water closed around her wrists.

‘We don’t need the other child,’ droned a voice that had not become familiar yet.

*

Ari jolted awake, shaking, freezing. Lines from the quests she’d tried to impose on herself before falling asleep buzzed around her head.

===Quest: Reverse the Blue. Locate Agent Hannah Temple.===

===Quest: Second Lead. Find Duke Taur, Tristram, whatever he’s supposed to be called.===

===Quest: Still Remains. Return Lady Malory’s ashes.===

===Quest: Hidden Path. Explore the hidden secret by the tapestry.===

===Quest: Suspicious Family. Search the Aquilon household.===

===Quest: Suspicious City. Search Eirene.===

Quest… Quest… Quest…

The black bracelet bit against her wrist, deathly cold.

Hadn’t it been at the foot of the bed when she’d first arrived in the world? She was still feeding the bracelet with magic, while sleep was feeding her body with nothing.

Her fingers fumbled. The buzzing in her head grew louder, yet unable to drown out her rising dread.

Claribel’s spirit grinned, then slammed into her weakened form.

It was like dipping into the ocean, but having the water flood through her body, which was not her body. What did Claribel feel like, this girl with the same face as her, waking up disembodied, invaded, usurped? Ari fought the urge to gasp as the water flooded her neck.

Not with her by the morrow her arse. So this was what it was all about: tiring out the body until it was on the brink of death, then hoping that the original connection between body and spirit would triumph over the new bond with the invader.

A deadly gamble.

Pity. If Claribel had stay put…

If Claribel had stay put, it’d be no fun.

Ari had her own weapons. Wrenching open the box of useless things that she kept locked in her mind, she grabbed an old memory, blunted with time, but it was enough, enough for Claribel, like the shards of broken glass she used to wrap in rags, and pressed it into the tendrils where their spirits intertwined, into Claribel’s heart.

The monstrous form of Cain towered over her. His words were muffled in her memory – or perhaps they were muffled to begin with by the pounding of his fists against her jaws. One, two, get up, get up. The blade pierced through her shoulder, and Cain wrenched her close, lifting her two feet off the ground until she could see the flecks of green in his hazel eyes. ‘Your friend is dead.’ A punch against her diaphragm. Air. Air… She struck the cold concrete; the taste of blood filled her mouth. Air… Air… Stomp. His boots against her temple.

Ari knew her own strength better than anyone else did. Things didn’t hurt her the same way that they seemed to hurt others, and even if they did, she would never be drowned by tears, suffocated by fears.

A cold, unfeeling killing machine.

That would kill her, too, one day. But right now, it did its job; Ari spread her spirit through the body silently as Claribel howled, clutching her phantom wounds. Once again, in she slid into the ill-fitting suit that was Claribel’s body, one with a worthier owner.

She closed her hands around Claribel’s throat. Worthiness was worthless.

~Wait! You need me! How are you going to stay in my world without me? How are you going to talk to others about heraldry? About magic? I bet you don’t even know… even know… how to address Duke Auster in writing.~

Worthless.

~But you wouldn’t! You’d write, ‘My Lord Duke’.~

The smile that overflowed from another Duke’s eyes as he gazed at his daughter flashed into Ari’s mind. Worthless.

~That’s not–~

Ari yanked Claribel closer until her crystalised breath bridged the bounds between the spirit and body.

She stared into the other spirit’s face. Déjà vu. Once upon another lifetime, she’d closed her fingers around another neck, dangling his body over the molten flames. She should have been returning the favour, but the look in his eyes had been… defiance too.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

~I thought not.~

~You are not going to kill me.~

A statement. Claribel had regained her serenity, dangling by a silver thread, staring back at whatever was in Ari’s eyes, something that she didn’t want to see.

~You are some sort of assassin from another world, aren’t you? You kill people. It’s what you do. Why haven’t you killed me yet?~

A question. What was she doing, pretending to strangle a spirit who didn’t need to breathe?

~It’s because you are a good person. I can see it.~

An answer. An answer that she hated more than anything the Chief had ever said to her. Because…

Claribel scoffed: a sound most unladylike.

~Spoken like a true queen.~

~That just means every single word you just said is pure and utter rubbish. I should know. I could have become one. What’s worse, some actually believe every word they say, through and through. I don’t think you’re quite that bad. Not yet. I think, deep in your heart, you know you’re lying. Right?~

She wasn’t. But no matter. She could be what Claribel wanted her to be. She was always what others wanted her to be.

With a flourish, she let Claribel go and twisted the black bracelet off her wrist. The other spirit promptly dragged her to a drawer filled with dried dates. Warmth flooded their body, much like the overwhelming sweetness on their tongue.

~It’s my emergency stash. Don’t eat it all at once! We can get some more food from the pantry once we can feel our feet again.~

Claribel settled on the bed, taking a seat next to her.

Once upon a time, Natty had sat together with her like this, before missions, before the unending loops. Now, her friend snored in front of the hearth on a straw mattress, refusing to stray closer. ‘Even ladies-in-waiting sleep on straw at the house of the lady they serve. If the chambermaids catch a fool sleeping at the foot of the lady’s bed, we’d both be in for it.’

Not even Claribel’s screams had caused Natty to stir. Perhaps Fabia’s senses, which had never been honed, had dulled Natty’s ones from her previous life. A new life. A new face. Natty had broken free. How much was it OK to grab the hand that she’d always hold out for Ari? How hard was it OK to pull to get herself out, not knowing which way they’d fall? Was that even possible for someone like her? A Red, not a White?

~Why don’t you just tell him no?~

Claribel didn’t need to name him for them both to know who she was talking about.

~You wouldn’t be here without him.~

A good person. She knew a worthier owner of that title. The silence between them drew the words out of her.

But Max was a White, like Natty. Max didn’t know how to kill people, only how to be killed.

~… My mother always says that we must not underestimate the choices we can make, but the difference between the daughter of a draper and the daughter of a duke is that for one, choice is a luxury, but for the other, it is a necessity, and with every choice, we must own its consequences. So… I guess it wasn’t your fault, and from now on, we’re going to make it possible for you to make real choices. Choose well when your time comes.~

Choose well.

Abandon mission?

All she had to do was let go.

The barbs that he had planted into her dug deep. She could pull them out, one by one, and… and…

~And you’d die. Even I know that. You leave the arrows in there. You can even cut off the parts that stick out to make it easier to move, but you mustn’t pull them out unless you want to bleed to death. It takes time to get them out properly.~

Time. How much time did they have? Natty had no reason to lie about the way that Fabia’s presence had faded, even though they’d never spoken to each other.

She should have said that from the very beginning. Shame that the book wasn’t set in the future; being some sort of apocalyptic android might have been fun.

The corner of their lips twitched upwards into a half-smile.

~In the name of the Fated One… I regret saying you’re a good person. Seriously?~

~Daisy. She’s amazingly strong. She lives on my farm, and managed to birth four live calves in one go.~

<…You think I’m a bit of a cow.>

~Sometimes. How about it?~

~You’ve got it.~

~That’d be my mother’s dream come true.~

~ …You always say you can’t see inside my head, but you keep yourself away from that.~

Claribel tapped a glowing mass that lit up her features with a ghostly light. It was buried somewhere close to where her physical heart would have been. Sometimes, its tendrils would brush against Ari’s spirit, and she’d dodge it just in time. She was good at dodging. That was what lightning-fast reflexes were for.

Because…

Because it was easier to provoke Claribel and catch glimpses of her pains and fears.

Because there were things that she had to know about other people to survive, and other things. Knowing those other things as a Red was like shaking a handful of earth into the barrel of her Glock: it made shooting others harder and more dangerous than it had to be.

Still, she’d asked the question, hadn’t she?

A gentle prod was all she could manage today. A flash. Then warm treacle trickled into her body. The fire crackled: not the one that had consumed Lady Malory, but a comforting sound, one from long ago.

A different hearth. A different seat. That one was a giant’s knees, where she squirmed and squirreled to find a different, comfortable spot.

Had young Ari’s face ever smiled like that?

‘…and the mysterious warrior removed the mask that hid all but his eyes to the world to reveal none other than Susu. The other warriors cried, “How can it be? How can someone like you strike bullseye on all the targets when non other managed?” Susu said, “That is simple to answer. I took some arrows and I shot them. What is more difficult to answer is… why did you think someone like me wouldn’t be able to do something like that?’

The vision faded just in time. Ari shivered, trying to shake off the sticky honey-treacle that clung to her spirit, but the feeling refused to budge.

~My dream is for Aquilon to flourish and… to find love with someone as valiant as Susu.~

~He’s… more for the benefit of my family. I know, I know, they don’t like him. But the alternative is far worse.~

Worse. Option one: age gap, but did people in Ventinon worry about this? Option two: someone already married. Option three: a Khurammian, perhaps… or… Option four:…

Ari swallowed the sixth dried date and flexed her fingers. The warmth had finally returned to the very tips of their body. The wall with secrets was on the way to the pantry. This might be an opportune time to visit.

~You can’t go sneaking around the manor at night. The spit-boys usually sleep in the kitchen, and Simon’s a light sleeper.~

<…Do I even want to know what they are?>

~They just spin the spit – the meat on the roast…~

~Right.~

~There’s a disused escape tunnel. It collapsed a long time ago, so it’s more like a cellar nowadays.~

~I… can’t…~

A tunnel linking two forbidden lovers? Or something more?

Ari updated her mental list and removed a self-assigned quest.

===Quest: Hidden Path. Explore the hidden secret by the tapestry. [Rejected]===

She should have been transported into the world as a fool, like Natty.