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After studying the dead trees around the fence for a few more moments, I decided to go and have a chat with the princess myself.

I found her near the fireplace, tending to the gash I’d left in her leg. My magic had seared straight through her pant leg, leaving an ugly slash of burned and bleeding skin in its wake.

I leaned against the wall, watching her work for a moment, trying to recall the few memories I had of our meetings in the world above. Her appearance was more striking than I remembered. Waves of dark hair fell to the middle of her back, hints of deep violet shimmering in the strands that caught the firelight just so. Her complexion was porcelain pale, an alluring contrast both to those dark waves and to the piercing turquoise shade of her eyes. The shadows upon her arms still had not receded completely, though they were faded, now, to a pale grey that made it look as if she’d painted them on with ash from the hearth. Several bracelets decorated her wrists, and I could sense magic swirling around them whenever they shifted and clanked against one another.

She ignored me, as did her shapeshifting beast who dozed by the fire, still in the form of a large dog.

As I pushed away from the wall and sauntered closer, my head didn’t throb as badly as it had earlier, but the effect she continued to have on my power was undeniable.

It felt…chaotic.

Everything about her arrival did.

She continued to ignore me, even as I drew close enough that we could have reached out and touched one another.

“Hey. You.”

She didn’t look up from tending her wound. “My name is notYou.”

“Annoying, Abhorrent, Abysmal Creature of Death and Chaos, then.”

“Still wrong.”

“What if I shorten it to justChaos?”

With a vicious flick of her wrist, she ripped her knife through the roll of bandaging cloth she’d just taken from her bag. I could only assume she was fantasizing about doing that to me, instead—perhaps wishing she’d cut my wrist a little more deeply earlier.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“I have a proposition for you.”

“Does it involve you going and fucking yourself?”

“Such foul language for a princess.”

“Princess?” She bared her teeth at me. “The Kingdom of Eldris has no princess. Not since the night you murdered her father.”

I forced myself not to react, steeling my features into an unreadable wall.

So the poor old bastard had ended up dying.

Interesting.

What else had transpired in the world above since that moment?

A thousand questions exploded in my mind all at once. All the more reason for me to try and strike up a partnership withher, at least for a little while—long enough to get answers, and to see how her magic might help us search the endless parts of this realm that we’d yet to explore, hopefully finding our way home in some part of it.

“I didn’t kill your father, Chaos.”

“Spare me your lies,” she snarled. “Isawyou stab him.”

“What happened that night was…regrettable. And complicated. But it’s not important right now.”

“Not important? For seven years, I have—”

“Do you wish to listen to my proposition, or do you wish to continue arguing until the deadly curses and demonic things in this realm overtake and claim us both?”

She looked as though she was actually considering both options with equal measure.