Remember Me *Book 3 Of The Remember the Rules Series*

The Girl You Became

"You need to sleep sometime."

"You're hardly someone with the authority to order us around."

"I'm not trying to order you around at all. You haven't slept for days, either of you. It's not healthy."

"He just got up a while ago."

"And he's been sleeping for days, since you people tried to kill him. Either get off our asses or get out, Charming."

"She's going to be fine, you know. You're worrying about nothing."

"You don't know anything about her or us."

"If it was Emma, I know I would--"

"Your analogy is inaccurate if you're comparing her to your daughter. What if it was Snow?"

"...I'll leave you to it. Just try to get some sleep."

"Say that one more time and I'll flay you myself."

"Now, Felix. No need to get violent just yet."

Before I could hear any more of the conversation, darkness engulfed me once more, silencing them.

When I woke up, Felix and David were gone. Peter sat in the corner of the room, upright but dead asleep. He was leaned against the wall across the room, head bowed too far down to have been intentional. The chessboards floated in front of him, looking significantly different than they had before; pieces existed that hadn't before, and one pawn was gone, hopefully replaced with something more powerful and not just sacrificed. It looked like the black pieces hadn't moved, but ours had. Every piece was several spaces ahead of where it had been before, except my queen, his king, and Felix's rook. My queen, in fact, had been removed from the board entirely.

There was a light tapping on to my right, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I looked over toward the door with wide eyes and David held up his hands in silent apology, gesturing for me to follow him.

I tried to push myself off the floor with my hands before realizing that that was really stupid and that it hurt like hell. Looking down, I realized that they were still heavily bandaged. My shoulder ached and my head pounded as I used the wall behind me to lift myself up. When I approached David, he motioned me out of the room and closed the door behind us.

"Sorry," he said, voice low. "He's a very light sleeper."

I snorted; it hurt my head. "Not in my experience."

David gave me a strange look. On anyone else, it would have been condescending, but on him it looked almost sympathetic. "He hasn't slept in days. I'm just hoping that he calms down now that you're awake. I hate to admit it, but the three of you are our best option, and none of you have been at your best."

I raised an eyebrow. "From what I saw, he's been pretty productive."

"I just told you that you've been asleep for days, and that's the part you decide to latch on to?" he shook his head in disbelief. "You people are ridiculously goal-oriented."

"Someone has to be around here." I leaned against the wall. "Besides, they seemed to handle the game pretty well without me."

Peter's words echoed through my mind. You're the only queen on the board. They could make progress without me, sure, but the game was likely headed for a standstill. Of course, this wasn't actual chess, and Peter was perfectly capable of winning a game like this on his own, but it was nice to be needed.