I woke with a start, yanking my arm away on reflex. Ani’s claws skidded across my arm, leaving three shallow red scratches. “Ouch!”

I cradled the injured arm against my chest, looking at Ani. His tail flicked, and he jumped down onto the plush carpet to meow aggressively at the door. Something banged against the door, rattling the hinges. “OPEN UP! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!” Someone yelled. I lept out of bed, unlocking it and yanking it open before I could blink.

A guard stood on the other side, frantic. “The palace is under attack! By order of –”

“Is it the chimeras? Did they make it to the king?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Some part of my dream must have already happened. The question was, how much?

Unblocking the doorway, I darted back into my room, tuning out the guard as I scrambled for my shoes and some kind of weapon. As dressed as I could be, I turned to the fretting guard and asked, “Where are Sera and the others heading?”

“The princess?! She is to be escorted to a more secure area of the castle along with Prince Aeolus and the other guests.”

It didn’t take future sight to know that wasn’t going to happen. I brushed past him into the hallway, able to make a vague guess as to where the king’s bedroom was from my dream. “They’re after the king. Take me there.” There was no time to think about what a terribly monumentally idea this was. There was no way I could help. But–the man had worn modern clothes.

The guard protested, “But sir, I–”

Impatiently, I added, “Is she really the kind of princess to sit around?” Faust had complained often enough.

He drooped, defeated. “No,” he said, jogging down the main hall. “This way.”

As I followed, my heart pounding and my spine tingling, I cursed my magic’s inconsistency. The dream would have been much more useful if it had occurred before the events happened.

The guard set a fast pace as we moved through the castle, weaving through nervous crowds of defenders and evacuees. We passed the main entryway, heading up the stairs and down an even more lavishly decorated hallway than the ones before, where loud shouts and sounds of battle echoed down the corridor. His footsteps slowed as we rounded the next corner, coming across an entryway with massive decorative doors fit for a king. Someone had already propped the doors open, and scattered soldiers rushed in. The smell of burning wood wafted out the door.

Inside the guardroom was a gaping, still smoking hole where a mage had managed to burn their way through the door and the dresser. The ragged edges of the hole were fuzzy, still radiating heat. On the other side, soldiers and fighters were doing an impressive job of corraling the dozen or so cloaked chimeras, a few familiar figures in their midst. Sky provided support for Azure, taking on one of the chimeras by themselves. August, Faust, and Octavia, who’d managed to get ahold of a sword, surrounded another, pressing the chimera away from his comrades.

Bodies of soldiers mixed in with a few chimeras were strewn across the floor, collapsed on the ground like fallen toys. Across the room, Aeolus and Helia stood with their heads bowed in the moonlight above a crouched Sera, her head bent over and her shoulders shaking. Tiny glimmers of moonlight fell from her cheeks. A strange sense of calm washed through me at sight.

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The guard assigned to me lept into the fray, helping the others corral the remaining chimeras. I skirted around the edges of the skirmish, staying out of reach of the flying swords, elbows, and claws. My eyes stayed focused on the scene in front of me, of Aeolus and Helia gripping Sera’s shoulders with their silent support as her tears rained down on the king’s deathly pale face.

The world around me felt disconnected for a moment, like watching a movie or reading a novel.

I expected to feel something as my eyes lay on the king’s body, but I felt nothing. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised-neither the sight of a relative nor the death of Sera’s body doubles had brought me to tears either. It was an aspect of myself I tried not to dwell on.

I looked back up at Sera’s face when she was almost within reach, and the devastation I saw there left me reeling. The grief etched into her face ran deeper than I’d ever experienced. The closest I had gotten was reading the words on a page, descriptions of how others felt when faced with the deaths of their loved ones. It was a grief I’d never felt for anyone I knew. It was a grief I’d felt only when reading. Reading, which was the only thing that ever truly made me feel alive.

Would I ever feel so strongly about anyone for myself?

The answer isn’t one I’d discover for a long time.

Glass shattered, sprinkling across the floor behind me. Cool air brushed my back, a shadow crossing through the moonlight that dripped onto the floor in front of me. Behind me, the commotion escalated as they redoubled the chimera containment effort, but the damage had already been done. One of the chimeras had escaped.

I looked at the sight in front of me again: Sera, Aeolus, Helia, and the king. Heat flooded my veins. To anyone listening, I shouted, “What’s the fastest way to the courtyard?!”

Faust spared me a glance, blocking a claw swipe with the width of his blade. “Out the window!”

A quick glance at the distance to the courtyard below the window behind me told me it wasn’t an option. “Besides that!”

He pushed back against the chimera, sending it stumbling, and ensured it wouldn’t recover with a follow-up swipe across the chest. He stepped back, removing himself from the battle to speak.

Rubbing the sweat from his eyes, he asked, “Why?”

“That’s where it will be.”

Behind me, a hoarse and broken voice asked, “You saw my father die?!” I whirled back around to see Sera glaring up at me with grief-fulled rage. My feet took a step back of their own violation. “And you didn’t think to say anything?!” She shouted. Aeolus and Helia whispered furiously in her ear, tugging at her shoulders. She roughly knocked them off, still cradling her father’s body.

I swallowed. “As it happened, not before,” I promised her.

Faust placed a supporting palm on my back. Knowingly, he said, “It’s the chimera’s fault, your majesty.”

Sera dropped her head, her hair falling in front of her face.

We didn’t have time to wait and see if our words registered. “If we want to catch him, we have to go now. Otherwise, someone else will get there first.”

Faust removed his hand, scanning the room. “They seem to have this under control. I’ll take you there.”

Aeolus squeezed Sera’s shoulder. “I’m going with them.” He said, dropping his grip.

Sera reached for his hand and desperately clung to it, yanking him back before he could take a step. “Please don’t leave me too!” she cried. Rather than break away, he gently cupped her hand with his own.

He said with an equally gentle smile, “I’ll come back, I swear. But, I will not let him get away with this.”

Her grip loosened, and he slipped away. Helia leaned down at her other side to say, “Let’s get your father settled, shall we?”

Whatever else they may have said was lost in the motion. Faust moved toward the door at a jog, breaking into a run in the hallway, Aeolus and I at his heels. There was a brief commotion behind us, followed by pattering feet.

“Wait, we’re coming too!” Octavia called, followed by Azure and Sky, sprinting to catch up, leaving August behind to help the soldiers against the invading chimeras.

We burst into the courtyard less than a minute later, and something tugged at my senses. With speed I didn’t know I possessed, I overtook Faust, letting instinct guide me as I took the lead. A soft golden light shone around the corner ahead, and we rounded it to see the chimera trapped by the man from my dream. Fireflies of light drifted from the chimera’s body to a light glittering in his hand, the scene straight from my dream. The tugging sensation I felt grew stronger, and I stopped.

Sky stumbled to a shocked stop beside me, mumbling, “...modern clothes?”

Faust didn’t pause, sprinting ahead to raise his sword threateningly in the man’s direction. “What are you doing? How did you get into the castle?”