"Oh, yes, the Harvest Festival," I hear myself croak to Mrs. Morrell. "Almost forgot it's today."

Surprisingly, Mrs. Morrell chuckles. "You really have just woken up, if you've forgotten. How many weeks have you been looking forward to it?" She reaches out an arm, and guides me off the floor and towards the table where her platter still sits. "You're lucky you have a mom that'll cook you breakfast, hopefully it manages to wake you up," she teases gently.

Not trusting myself to speak, I only nod, settling at the table with Mrs. Morrell. I stare down at the charred apple, the hard-boiled egg, the bowl of something brown and sweet-looking. With nothing else to do, I cautiously pick up the wooden spoon and take a small bite.

The brown stuff turns out to be porridge, still warm, hearty and lightly sweetened with fresh berries. It should taste good—but I can barely get it down my throat.

"When did you say you'd meet Alex today?" Mrs. Morrell says companionably as she peels her egg.

"Um..." I say, stalling.

In the book, it was in the evening. Supposedly, Aurelia Prime1 had some family-related things to take care of before then.

But I can't be with Mrs. Morrell until evening. By then, my (very dead) fate will basically be sealed.

"Right after breakfast, actually," I hear myself saying.

Mrs. Morrell's eyebrows rise. "Oh," she says. "Doesn't Alex have to help with preparations at the Keep?"

"You know Alex," I say. Aurelia was in only two scenes at the beginning of the book, so I can't be sure I'm getting her personality right, but I've got a pretty grasp on Alex's.2 "Always leaving things to his brother."

As I hoped, Mrs. Morrell laughs and shakes her head. "That boy's lucky he was born second and not first." She finishes her egg with another bite, and then stands up. "I'll see you there then. I'm going to head out to the square now to help with preparations for tonight."

God, she's such a warm, gentle, beautiful woman. She isn't anything like my actual mom, who's a great deal larger, and louder, so loud that every time she gossiped with the butcher at our local supermarket at least a couple of people turned to look at her.

But when Mrs. Morrell looks at me—at Aurelia Prime, really—, there's still something about her gaze that brings my mom to mind.

I wonder how my mom's doing. Out in the real world. Whether she's heard yet, if I'm really dead.

I look down to avoid Mrs. Morrell's gaze, my throat dry. "Yeah. Definitely," I say.

She nods. I hear the scrape of the chair as she pushes it back and rises.

"I—" I blurt out, looking back up, heart hammering.

"Be careful, okay, Mom?" I say. Surprise brings a small crease to her forehead, but before she can speak, I add, "I know we're too close to the Keep for bandits, but still. There are lots of people coming in today from far away. Just. Be careful."

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Her smile softens. She rounds the table and kisses my forehead warmly. "You worry too much about me," she says, and her voice has a thin, inexplicable thread of melancholy. She straightens, and heads towards the door. "Enjoy yourself with Alex."

I watch her step out, the door closing behind her, then stare back down at my porridge.

What had I even hoped to do by warning her?

Gestures like that are useless. Like Aurelia, she's meant to die in the attack. She probably will still die in the attack, I'm not capable of changing her plans, or the Keep's plans—not without risking giving myself away—

Whatever. Let them die, it'll be the plot's fault.

The stupid plot's fault, because, honestly? In what world does it actually make sense for a heavily-guarded place like Silverwood Keep to relax its guard rotations on the very day when it opens wide the gates for everybody and their (literal) mother to come and gorge themselves on the Silverwoods' stores and cellars? You'd think that in the couple of hundred years they've supposedly done this, someone would've gone, "Wait, friends, isn't that a security risk?"3

Point is.

I can't save anyone else. Not if I want to make sure to save myself.

And I will save myself. I won't be dying by dawn tomorrow in the attack.

And sure, I don't know if I can actually die, because I remember enough of the car accident to know it was really bad, that my head had cracked against the ground. So maybe none of this is real, and I'm just experiencing dreams in a coma, or even already dead—

But what if I'm wrong and I can still die?

Or what if I can't die, but this whole dream-alternate world thing is vivid enough that whatever my real body in the real world is doing, I'm still going to feel what Aurelia felt when she died?

That death had been pretty brutal too, if I remember right. The attackers had slit her throat and torn apart her body. The book had said that if not for her signature red hair, even Alex wouldn't have been able to identify her. In the scene when Alex discovered her remains, he'd taken one look at her and scrambled behind a tree to vomit.

Dying4 in a car crash was painful enough. I'm not really keen to find out what dying by murder feels like too.

I'm an empowered, twenty-first century young woman. I refuse to die (maybe again) in a poorly-plotted, poorly-characterized GOT knock-off.

Not to mention I'd read every page of the knock-off5 and knew all the plot points. Andure, I'm not a genius, but I'm at least medium-smart. I should at least be able avoid my blood being spilled into the pseudo-Medieval dirt.

Having settled my swirling thoughts into conviction, I fill my stomach with the remaining porridge and an apple—just in case this was my last warm meal for awhile. All the while, I keep my ears perked up, just to be sure there weren't any footsteps heralding Mrs. Morrell's return to the cabin because she'd forgotten something or other.

But one minute passes, then two. Five. Ten—

At twenty minutes, food long polished up, I spring up from the table and start looting the cabin.

What is it that video game characters in RPGs always load up on before embarking on quests? Food, money, potions, and weapons?

That seems as good a starting place as any for a packing list slash survival pack.

I'll find all the equivalent things in the Morrell's cabin, and then I'll flee far, far, far away, so far that none of the book's remaining plot can happen to me.

It's as good an escape plan as any. Plan this simple, even I can't mess it up.

---

1. Yes, Prime as in original Aurelia, in the original book universe. And yes, that phrasing is taken from Star Trek's "prime timeline", because I'm a proud Trekkie.

2. Honestly, just think of a lazy jock, except make him quasi-medieval nobility with a hot temper and a vicious streak, and you've got Alex. Wouldn't be my first choice for a king, but Chess Games of Blood is GrimdarkTM, so.

3. Convenient plot device yada yada, well, I still think professional writers should write better. Hmph.

4. Or maybe dying, I guess. Theoretically, I could be not dead, just a vegetable.

5. And reading every page was a real feat, let me tell you. The first book was 400 pages. By the last book, we'd gotten to Nine. Hundred. Freaking. Pages. Andor K. O. Natter, the author of Chess Games of Blood, clearly needs to let go of his delusions that he's George R. R. Martin.