The moment the words fell from her lips, Sara felt her face flush with embarrassment.

Isabella brushed away the hand on her cheek and looked down. “Thank you, my lady, but you do not need to flatter me.”

“Lady Isabella…” She hadn’t felt so tongue-tied since high school. Before she could ruin the moment further, Isabella grabbed Sara’s gloved hands and held them tightly. Teenage hormones melted away the evening’s stress and fear for a brief moment, and Sara couldn’t help but smile.

“Please, call me Izzy,” she said. “All my good friends do.”

“Okay, Izzy,” Sara replied. “Call me Sara.”

It just slipped out, her real name - and it was such a natural request that Isabella nodded cheerily and opened her mouth to reply in the affirmative. Then, a pause. Her brows drew together and she asked, “Why?”

Sara stood there, unsure of her next words. She hadn’t planned on explaining her situation to anyone. A gut feeling told her it was a secret, a glitch, something that other people would not understand. But Isabella’s kindness had made her tongue slip, and Sara wanted to follow through on her accidental honesty.

“My real…” The words stuck in her throat. They were alive, clawing at her vocal chords and making her tongue grow thick and dumb in her mouth.

My real name is Sara. I am not Lady Liliana, but someone from another world.

She choked on these simple words. Her body was paralyzed. Two lines of golden text flickered across Sara’s vision.

[ - CENSORSHIP ACTIVATED (1/3) - ]

[ Agent must remain in character to meet mission parameters. ]

“My lady?” Isabella leaned closer, her concern written across her face.

The moment Sara stopped trying to force out an explanation, her throat and tongue returned to normal. The words spilled out, almost of their own accord: “I am sorry. I do not know why I said such a thing. Please, call me Lily.”

“Of course,” said Isabella, obviously pleased and willing to forget her new friend’s strange behavior.

“Thank you for everything, Izzy,” said Sara as they made to leave the dressing room. She was exhausted and burnt out, but genuinely grateful for the girl’s help. Isabella blushed and deflected, but her brown eyes shone brightly in the soft glow of the corridor.

They returned to the main hall together. Isabella apologized to her escort, who had found them immediately. They looked related, and Sara watched from a distance as he began to chastise Izzy for abandoning him.

She decided to leave before anyone else could pull her aside and ruin her evening any further. The servants, in characteristic fashion, questioned nothing as they brought her carriage to the base of the wide marble steps that led to the banquet hall.

Sara thought she would cry once she was alone in the carriage. She had been holding it in ever since she had stifled her tears in Isabella’s arms. At the very least, she wanted to sit back and analyze the day’s events from a cool distance. Dissociation could occasionally be a useful tool in a crisis. Instead, the swaying and rocking motion lulled her into a light doze.

The servants at the duchy’s estate guided their mistress gently from the carriage and into her bedroom, where maids shucked her armor and laid down her weapons before placing her gently into bed.

Sara hazily experienced being undressed and tucked in before she fell into a deep sleep.

She knew it was a dream because she was standing somewhere from her memory. Familiar trees and familiar gravel under her cheap foam sandals. She was also much too small: the park information sign stretched high above her, its text unreadable.

I know how to read, thought Sara in frustration. Why can’t I read this?

Before she could answer herself, she was falling. She wasn’t even at the cliff edge, she was still near the park sign, but she was also falling, falling down. She was at the edge, looking down, and it was not a long distance, just ten or fifteen feet, but the bottom was jagged with rocks. She was at the sign again, and she could not read but she could see the WARNING sign that meant scary things like the electric fence at her uncle’s farm.

She was falling the whole time, her stomach upended and her heart in her throat. It’s okay, she thought, you don’t hit the ground in dreams. And of course she did, she hit it hard and her body resisted the rocks, she was reaching up and up with shattered limbs. Muscles pulling on nothing, reaching towards the little face peeking over the cliff edge, backlit by the sun.

Sara woke screaming, crying. She was tearing at the sheets and trying to stand before strong hands pushed her back into bed.

“Wake up!” It was Nanny, and she was Liliana, and she was still in a nightmare. Oh god, oh fuck, she thought before going limp. “Goodness, my lady, what is wrong?”

Nanny stood beside the bed with her oil lamp set on the bedside table. She was shaking her head, but it was hard to feel chastised by a middle-aged woman in a frilly nightgown and cap.

“June!” Nanny called, and the maid appeared in the doorway, also in nightclothes. “You were the one who heard her first. You’ll sleep in here from now on. Try to keep her from waking the whole estate.”

Sara sat silently throughout this exchange. She had drawn her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. She was frantic, not believing the solid limbs and intact skin beneath her fingers.

She hardly felt June as the woman knelt on the bed beside her. It was dark in the room now. Nanny had taken her lamp with her and the curtains were drawn.

Strong, muscular arms - the arms of a laborer - wrapped around Sara’s shaking body. June hushed her, soothed her.

“My lady, it will be okay,” she whispered. “We all have bad dreams. It will be okay.”

“I hate this place so much,” mumbled Sara. She allowed her body to relax, and June put them both under the covers. She cradled Sara like a child, head on chest, and the other woman’s slow breathing was an anchor.

“I know, my lady.” They fell asleep like that, June holding Sara. Her thoughts as she fell asleep were a jumbled mix of Veridia and her childhood until a dark veil settled over her mind, calming her fears and frustrations.