They were memories, but not. Pieces of reality that felt like they should be hers, but weren't. It clutched her mind, spinning it into chaos that was impossible to separate from.

Arms clutched her tight to their chest, a warm chin settled on the top of her head. Despite knowing the person was a stranger, the arms felt familiar to her. Comforting.

This isn't me.

The knowledge hung heavy in her mind even as the woman kissed the top of her head and tightened the already suffocating hug.

"Listen close, Lita," the woman said. The words were foreign, but the meanings came to her without a second's pause."If things do not go as they should tomorrow, there is something I need you to know. It is the biggest secret I have ever bared, and it is one that you will likely carry to your grave. Can you do that for me?"

She trembled. Foreign emotion flooded her mind, as her limbs moved on their own accord. Fear, worry, determination. The her that wasn't her was scared to hear the words this woman would whisper, but was also unwilling to disappoint her.

"I can, Mama."

Tension fled her mother's frame, her arms relaxing. "Good."

Silence encased them for several seconds, before the woman released a heavy sigh and lifted her head. She didn't step back, instead simply shifting so their foreheads met. Her sapphire eyes stared deep into the her that wasn't her. Lita.

"You love your brother."

It wasn't a question, but confusion still flooded her. Of course she loved her brother. What did that have to do with any of this?

"I know the stories they whisper," her mother continued. "But, more than anything else, you must understand this--the stories are wrong. He is not Ayo's son. He is so much more than that monster.

"You must know...you're a treasure, Lita, my treasure, and you are worth the world. But he, your brother, if they knew what he was, they wouldn't dare say as they do, that he is valued less than you. They would fight over the right to control him."

A shiver racked her spine. She'd always known there was more. Her mother had never protested the rumors, but she knew they couldn't be right. Her mother wasn't such a selfless person. She may have loved them. She may have been willing to sacrifice everything for them, but if the rumors were true, she wouldn't have. Her brother would have been a living reminder of everything she hated. It would have shown.

"He is sea-marked, and I need you to understand what that means."

The world broke. The woman was gone. Time shuddered and shifted, flicking into a different place. The world was still foreign, still a place that this her recognized, but the real one didn't. A room coated in shadows. Empty buckets tossed to the side. A child drenched from head to toe, staring at their clean hands.

She was hollow.

She knew that she needed to do something besides stand and stare at the boy in front of her, but she couldn't. Because, it was her mother who had died. They may have shared her, but it wasn't her brother who listened to all of their mother's fears and stories. He wasn't allowed to sleep in their room. He didn't curl up at her side every night and drift off to the sound of their mother's heartbeat.

She stared at the invisible blood on his hands and wondered how she was ever going to smile at him again.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can't."

The broken thing in her shattered completely. The numbness fell from her limbs as she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Calli's head, digging her fingers into his drenched hair. She forced him to her chest, each seed of resentment being buried deep, and deeper in her heart until it would never be found again. Because she couldn't forgive him.

But, he didn't deserve anything else.

"Breathe, Calli. It's not your fault."

"I can't--"

"Breathe."

Another crack in reality. Her viewpoint became bigger--the mind less mature. It still wasn't her. But, it was a more familiar mindset. Less fragile.

Bark cut into her hands as a dry breeze tossed her hair about her face. Releasing a heavy breath, she edged her foot closer to the trunk, causing the branch beneath her heels to crack ominously. She froze. The decorations tied over the balcony railing behind her felt like a taunt. What had she been thinking?

"Lita?"

Her eyes fell to the shadowed ground beneath the tree. As expected, a familiar red-head stared up at her, confusion swirling in his face.

"What are you doing? Are you crazy?" he asked.

She flinched. His voice was as calm as ever, but she read the silent questions behind the soft question.

"I--They didn't let Calli come tonight. I--"Her eyes fell to the bag she'd dropped at the base of the tree. "--he's...Ayo wouldn't..."

"Nevermind," Nicolet sighed. As the branch trembled beneath her, he took a few steps back, before opening his arms. "I get it. Jump, I'll catch you."

Nicolet was the last person in the house she would ever put her trust in. No matter what expression he wore, no matter what emotion laid in the fold of his arms and the quirk of his brow--the young Duke of Rosi's eyes were always blank.

But, it was an instruction. So, she jumped.

Time shuddered. Then, emotions deeper than she could have imagined flooded into her body. The tree became shadowed estate halls.

Fear consumed her.

It bit at her very being and sent her heart into a tailspin as she ran. Her breaths were frantic and shallow, terror squeezing her lungs before they could fill. Her hands threw open the cellar door.

"Calli!"

Flickering gemlight guided her down a shadowed stairwell. Copper tasted the air. In her haste, her foot caught the last step. Her knees struck the floor, pain flooding her frame. Still, it took barely a second for her to recover and dash deeper into the dark. The soft drip of something against the stone was her only guide in the shadows.

"Calli."

Not-Iliana's soft call was met by a groan. Their heart stopped as she chased the noise. Her hands found his chest, and instantly jerked back. A sick stickiness coated her palms and she could feel the panic threatening to send her back to her knees.

"Oh gods."

It wasn't her fault, but every part of her screamed that she should have done something, anything, to avoid this outcome.

He had told her to leave them be, but she'd known that was wrong.

Nicolet's eyes had always hidden shadows, Calli had just been too blinded by affection to see them. His love for that stupid girl had clouded his judgement and she had been too eager for his happiness to correct him. When her brother looked at Rae, it was as if he were admiring the moon. His shadows seemed to blend into the rest of him, leaving nothing but a bewitching glow.

But, Rae was the sun and loving her could only end in ash.

"How?"

Calli's croaked question caused her to flinch. The temptation to lie encased her chest,and for a moment, she almost did. But, he deserved better than that.

He deserved to know what she had done for him, even as simple, and useless as it was.

"Ayo suggested he take you," she answered. Her hands finally found the links of the metal cuffs suspending him. "Nicolet disagreed. He thought it...unequal. Rae, what she gave, it..."

Calli coughted. "My life isn't equal."

He was wrong. It was all so wrong. But, Calli wasn't deluded about their misconceptions of his value. It took the entire minute she spent unlocking his cuffs for her to find the courage to continue explaining.

Her hands focused on lowering him to the stone as his legs were unable to hold even an ounce of his weight.

"He had a different suggestion. Ayo is to gift both of us. Nicolet..."

"No."

She flinched, his harsh refusal striking something heavy in her chest. It cracked, flooding her body with shame. It wasn't enough, though. Her love for him outweighed anything else. He was her little brother, and it was her job to protect him.

Even if it was stealing bits of her piece-by-piece.

"I will marry him."

Again. The cellar fell to nothing. It remade itself in seconds of visions, of emotions that flickered through her chest so fast she held no hope of identifying them. Fear. Pain. And love, so much love. Melitta loved Callias with an intensity that Iliana doubted she had ever experienced.

But, she also resented him.

It was deep, and heavy. An emotion the woman had no doubt buried so thoroughly that it was impossible for her to have know it existed. But, it did.

Their mother died for him. She sacrificed her life--as hollow as it had been--to protect him.

Then, she, too, died for him.

Crack!

She screamed.

The force of the gunshot propelled Callias backwards over the railing. It, however, wasn't so quick that she couldn't see the effects. A hole in his chest. Steaming blood.

A sudden emptiness in his eyes.

She stepped on the foot behind hers, threw an elbow into the man's groin. Then, without a thought, she ran. Her foot caught the top of the railing.

What came next didn't matter--just that she wouldn't be alone.

It was their fate to exist together. Whether it was life, or death, it had always been them against everyone.

She jumped.

Melitta wasn't so selfless as to have not harbored some blame, some hidden, buried thought that perhaps, if he hadn't existed, their life might have been easier.

Inna's hand fell away from her forehead. Emotions flashed and jumbled through her chest too heavy and quick to recognize. A familiar hollowness.

"I die."

"Yes."

"In the place of someone I love?" she asked.

"Yes."

"I don't want that."

"You will when the time comes."

Different emotions surged to life in a whirlwind that muffled her own thoughts. She wasn't her, then. She was a sense of freedom and happiness. Of choices in a life of foreign decisions. She propelled her body through the ocean with the awareness that her life never had to stop; because she had no reason for it to. She wouldn't age. She wouldn't grow sick.

She wouldn't watch a person she loved be strung up against the wall and struck because she'd raised her voice.

Lightning crashed. Noise rumbled through the water with should have been an unfamiliar vibration, but it wasn't. Because the her that wasn't her loved that sensation.

It was the sense of rightness that drew her to him. He emanated Umae's power, despite the green aura of Doroi that encompassed his body. The curse of white that stained his hair. She pulled him from the water, before collapsing into the sand. It burned her feet as her tail fell away. Callias' irritated protests felt far away as she stared at the stranger's unconscious face and felt yet another new emotion.

Attraction.

It grew. Becoming almost strangling with its weight on each step she took towards her fate. It eased the knots in her chest--made it easier to breathe past the buried emotions that clogged her mind. But it also slowed her.

She was happy.

And scared.

For the second time in her life, Inna's power fell from her forehead. She could still see the images the woman's touch had provided.

A flying arrow. Her body moving before she could think--putting her in between Kain and the assassin. His broken expression as the world grew dim.

The future that came after. The champions.

The fall.

"It is what it is. I cannot make the choice for you, merely offer the information."

It was never a choice.

She would live.

Just a bit longer, she would struggle.

They wouldn't take the predetermined path. They would run through the annex and she would live.

She would be happy.

The white overtook everything.

The otherness fell away. But, not without consequence. Her mind felt sluggish, as if she had experienced too much for any part of her to comprehend it.

And before her, body entangled in blue threads, a familiar figure at her back, was Melitta.

Surprise overtook her face. Then, understanding. Her hand reached for Iliana and--much to their shared surprise--she grasped a handful of tangled red thread.

"This wasn't in the future they showed me," Melitta shared.

"I know." Iliana's voice cracked.

Emotion tumbled through her too jumbled to place. Was it her? Or was it Melitta?

Or, someone else?

Deep, heavy, overwhelming. Guilt and fear. Resentment. Anger.

Exhaustion so heavy it felt as if a single step would be too much.

Aran laid a hand on Melitta's shoulder.

"We have to go."

Melitta nodded. Her gaze never shifted from Iliana. Those sapphire eyes--so different from her brother, but weighed with shared experience, dug into Iliana as if weighing something.

Then, she smiled.

"Live to the end, Iliana. Don't leave him alone."

And she was gone.

A/N: Welcome to Part Two! We're starting off heavy...

Hope you're ready for everything to come. I'm going to take a two week pause before we jump into it all while I catch up on other things and make sure I'm organized for writing this part, then I'll return to posting (weekly is the intention!). 

P.S. Part Two will be much smaller than Part One. Think: Thirty chapters tops, more likely twenty, before the climax.