Electricity crackles around me as I plant my feet and scream, “I won’t let you hurt him!”
The gargoyle jolts, its voice a sharp growl. “You’re protecting him from me?”
I don’t have time to reply. The other gargoyles reach me, a cloud of them, shrieking, mere feet away from me now. They’re reaching for me, for the dagger. With a scream, I drop to the cliff’s surface, turn the dagger upside down, and slam its hilt into the stone with all my might. The electrical thud reverberates around me, pulsing outward.
Lightning streaks in a wide circle from my weapon, bashing into the oncoming attackers. Their teeth and claws light up, bony, glistening, wings snapping as the force hits them, hurling them backward.
All of them tumble away from me. Some of them drop from the sky, clinging to the ledge before sliding out of view. Others plummet down the cliff immediately, but most of them spill backward, the force of my lightning propelling them far, far away from me.
Their screams fade as I spin back to the male gargoyle. It alone is still standing, one arm flung across its eyes, braced against the storm raging around me.
Blood drips down the side of my face. I roar at it. “I will protect Baelen Rath to the death. Because I love him!”
The gargoyle’s eyes widen as my shout reaches it. I take a step back for momentum and then run toward it, electric dagger raised. The creature glances backward—it’s dangerously close to the cliff’s edge—before bracing for the strike. At least, I think it’s going to brace, until the last moment, when it ducks, angles its right shoulder into my ribcage and tackles me backward along the ledge where it forces me to the ground.
Oomph!The air leaves my lungs as I slam into the ground. A ton of gargoyle male drops down on me, but at the last moment, its hand slides up behind my head, cushioning me from cracking open my skull, and its other hand punches the ground to stop its massive body from crushing me. The impact hurts and it takes me a moment to catch my breath. Long enough for the beast to shift its paw to my dagger arm, pinning it and forcing my hand open, compelling me to release the weapon.
I struggle, kicking my legs and trying to get my arm free as it rises upward, straddling my hips. “Stop fighting me, Marbella.”
“Never! I won’t let you hurt him! You… what?”
It leans across me. I lie stunned as it whispers into my ear. “Stop fighting me.”
I shiver, because there’s something so familiar about the way it just leaned into me. “Wait… Who…? B-Baelen?”
He nods. “It’s me.”
I search his features as he helps me rise to my knees, trying to find anything that resembles the male I know. My lips form a startledwhat the?
“What’s happening?” I ask. “This is supposed to be my simulation. You’re not supposed to be here…”
He growls, “I didn’t know it was you until you held the dagger. You’re the only one who lights up at the touch of steel. That’s when I recognized you.”
“But what do you see when you look at me?”
A rattle of breath inside his chest sounds suspiciously like a chuckle. “Please don’t be offended, but you look hideous.”
I’m too stunned to be offended. “So I look like a gargoyle to you, just like you look like a gargoyle to me?”
He sighs. “I should have known this was all wrong. Gargoyles don’t look like this. Especially not female ones.”
“Then, what’s really going on right now? Have our simulations somehow combined in our minds?” Heat suddenly burns through me. I stare at him. “What happened in yours before you flew down here?”
He smiles, slow and strong, seeming to enjoy the blush that blazes across my cheeks. “A memory. One I haven’t forgotten.”
“Oh.”
He clears his throat, suddenly serious. “Which ended when I hit my head.” He gestures to his younger self. “After that, I floated way up high, and I thought the simulation was over, but then I plummeted back here. It felt like I was actually falling.”
He shakes his head as he peers around us. “I can’t see anything beyond this cliff. I can’t see the arena. I don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t feel like I’m sitting in the chair anymore.”
I think back to the moment when I fell out of my younger self. I’d fallen too, as if something had released me—or pulled me out. Had we both fallen out of the chairs of truth at that moment?
“Then… what does this mean? Are we stuck in the same vision but our bodies are moving in real life now? Bae, if that’s true, we could have killed each other!”
I look around us, searching the sky, the cliff, the rocks, trying to find a clue about what’s happening. It’s too silent. Too quiet. There’s no breeze, no moving clouds anymore. The simulation has… paused.
“What about the other gargoyles that attacked just now? If you look like a gargoyle to me, and this is somehow really happening, then who were they?” Fear shoots through me, sharp and terrifying. “Who did I hurt?”
