“Quick—Summon Duke Sera at once!” a female voice orders. Light taps echo in the quiet room, a door creaks open and closes with a heavy thud.

What the heck Netflix? I thought I streamed true crime documentaries, not Bridgerton. I can’t believe I fell asleep watching TV. Now my iPad is dead and those stupid chargers always fall out of the hospital outlets. Calling a nurse to plug in a charger always earns a stink eye. If I could use my legs I would get out of bed and do it myself, you know. I rub my eyes before blindly patting the side of the bed, searching for my iPad.

Nothing.

My eyes snap open. If it fell off the bed and cracked the screen— Marble floors? Wallpapered walls? Huge French windows with sheer pink curtains? “This isn’t a hospital room.”

“Hospital? Oh, my lady, why would you think you belonged there?”

“This isn’t my voice!” My hands clutch my throat.

Wait.

Hands.

I hold them in front of my face.

Small hands.

Children’s hands.

A laugh bubbles from my chest. “This dream is wild.”

The copper-haired nurse crosses her arms. “Perhaps I should give you a sip of potion to perk you up. You’ve been in bed a long time.”

Potion?

I sat up. Now this is something interesting.

She opens a large black leather bag and began rummaging around before pulling out a round glass bottle filled with a pale green liquid. It sloshes around and clings to the sides of the bottle like milk. The ball-shaped bulb, light blue string knotted around the stem, and light brown cork looks exactly like the potion vials in Dragon Fantasy XXIV.

“I’ve always wanted to taste one!” I grab the bottle from her hands and struggle to pull out the cork. It pops and the liquid spurts out of the hole, soaking my hands and the bedspread.

“My lady!”

Ignoring her, I chug the remaining liquid. Sweet, sticky, tasting faintly like jasmine milk tea. That sounds good. Maybe after waking up I can beg Mama to stop by Boba Tea Palace.

“By the Daughter! Not all of it!” Cold hands grasp mine and wrench the empty vial from my tiny fingers.

Every single cell in my body feels like the mitochondria drank a cocktail of Monster energy drinks, Red Bull energy drinks, and Starbucks Nitro Cold Brew Coffee. I jump up. “I wish I could have one of these all the time! This is awesome!”

“My lady!” the nurse shrieks as she grasps my torso and pushes me back down on the bed. “You cannot play around so quickly after surviving Ashen Scales!”

“Ashen Scales?” Sounds like cancer. If only I could survive that with a potion.

“Lay down, it is too soon for you to play.”

Even in my dreams I’m forced to lay down all day. Stellar. Time to end the dream, in that case. No sense in spending time in a fantasy world if I can’t move around.

Wake up!

Nothing happens.

Come on, body! Wake up!

Still, nothing.

I pinch my cheek.

It hurts, but, nothing.

Suppose, for a second, that this entire thing isn’t a dream?

Ha ha, stupid, right?

Yeah.

Totally stupid.

The door roars as it opens, slamming against the walls with loud bangs. “Lucina!”

My spine prickles like spiders walked on it. Lucina? She’s—

The smell of smoke and ink envelopes my nostrils as my lungs are crushed in a tight embrace.

“We thought the Mother took you, thank Her!”

Mother? Isn’t that what they call the goddess in Dragon Fantasy XXIV?

Father strokes my hair and kisses my forehead over and over.

Everything blurs. My mouth waters. The stench of tobacco suffocates my lungs into a burning mess. The familiar sensation of a clenching stomach and the bitterly burning slide of liquid upwards though the esophagus. Remnants of potion splash onto Father’s chest, dying the mustard-yellow dress shirt a mossy green.

“Lucina!” He cries in a voice tinged with sorrow.

The overwhelming smell sends another wave of nausea through me.

“She’s awake but not recovered,” the copper-haired nurse replies, taking a handkerchief and wiping it across my mouth, obviously expecting this result. “We need to let her rest.”

“I am thankful she had something in her stomach to vomit.”

What sort of reasoning is that? I just soaked your shirt with a potion!

“Permission to cast, my lord.”

Father frowns, his thick black mustache making a clean upside-down u. “I’d hate to do it so soon after she wakes, but if it must be done, then it must.”

The freckled fingers glow and spin a sparkling silver smoke into my nostrils.

The world goes black and my body falls into the soft recesses of quilts.