DOFAB#3

Chapter Thirty-One

~ KINLEY ~

Blades of blue grass rustle in the breeze. It's all I see. Thin stalks of soft grass with peeks of flowers of every color. The world is skewed. My head pounds, vivid images of a black heart floating in an emerald orb cutting into the grasslands of wildflowers before me. The fields go on for miles, accenting the rolling hills as if Rien himself had sewn them.

I'm wandering again.

I sit up, twisting around to gather my new surroundings. The castle of Valderanna is behind me. I was dancing then—

A rock tumbles down, cutting off my thoughts as it crushes flowers on its way to the bottom, a blue ribbon tied to it. The stone lands outside one of the three circles of bones at the bottom of this hill I'm on.

"Morning biscuits, I missed it. A little more to the left next time and I'll have it." A little girl in a white flowing sundress snaps her fingers. A little girl that looks just like me when I was her age.

Her next throw of a rock with a yellow ribbon comes over my head, making me duck or get clobbered in the face. "Hey, watch it," I shout, but the little girl doesn't appear to hear me as she tries again. This time, I dive onto my stomach, narrowly missing a broken nose like Ralaya when another temple priestess got off a count.

"This next time, I'll make it for sure." The young girl, no more than six, picks up another river stone from her stack of ribbon rocks and readies herself for another attempt. Her aim one of the three circles at the bottom of the hill below us.

"Kin-a-ley." A voice from far away hollers, causing the young girl and me to turn around. The difference is the young girl crouches low, letting the tall grass overtake her small frame.

They called her by my name. But I don't remember this. I've never played this game before. Why is a memory of me when I was younger merging with Valderanna? Where is the field of my sisters?

"Hehehe. That was close." The young me stands up, dusting off her dress. "I may be a bleeder, but I can sneak up and hide better than the rest of them." She wiggles her little butt, brow furrowed in concentration as she faces the circles of bone once more. "All right. Shoulders back. Elbow up. Target locked. And—"

The rock falls from the little me before she can launch it as a giant, intimidating hand fists the scuff of her dress. "What have I told you about being off castle grounds?" Tristan growls, the armor he's wearing more clunky than usual. It resembles the armor that lines some of the hallways of Valderanna. Archaic. Millenniums before I was ever born.

"I'm not off castle grounds." The little girl responds, unalarmed by Tristan despite the taught jaw and ebony webs shifting over him.

"Anything past castle courtyards is off castle grounds."

The pounding in my head intensifies. How are they reacting? When I wandered before, the two realms blending couldn't interact.

"You told me I needed to practice. If I become the great huntress that stands by your side, the fledglings won't be able to make fun of me anymore."

"No one stands at the Beast of the Damned's side. That's your first mistake. The next, you put too much loft on the throw. Let gravity do the work for you."

Little me struggles to keep up with Tristan's strides, leaving me to rush after them. A phantom that doesn't belong. A voyeur trapped in this world that doesn't make any sense. It's statistically impossible for Tristan to have known me at this age.

"But I'm standing by you now," the young girl says.

"Until the frogs come."

"Frogs! Where?" Little Kinaley hides behind Tristan's leg, eyes squeezed shut.