I’d never punched someone before.

They don’t show how much it actually hurts in movies. Pain exploded through my knuckles as they connected with Lucian’s face.

“Jesus Christ!” I gasped, stumbling backward. “Ow!”

“What the sodding hell?” Lucian snapped, clutching his nose. “You really are a bloody psychopath!”

With my knuckles still throbbing with vengeance, I stared back at the young man. My eyes were so wide, they could’ve burst from my head. Not exactly the best look for fighting off Lucian’s ‘psychopath’ allegations.

But seriously, there was no way I was staring at the real Lucian Darkona. He was a fictional character, which meant there had to be a logical explanation. Maybe the guy was some sort of cosplayer.

I cocked my head to the side, squinting as I took him in. The young man (who couldn’t possibly be Lucian)’s mouth twisted into a sneer, like it was a personal affront for me to even look at him. Or maybe he was just bracing himself in case I decided to punch him again.

I squinted even harder.

The boy’s pointed ears looked really real—way better than the cheap ones I’d ordered online for Comic-Con that fell off every fifty seconds. Those had pissed me off so much that I’d left a scathing, ten-paragraph review.

Are his ears some sort of high-end prosthetic? And if so, where did he get them, and how much did they cost because I absolutely need a pair.

That’s when the horror hit me like a ton of bricks that I really had punched some random cosplayer in the face.

“Oh my God!” I gasped. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry!”

“You damn well better be!” the cosplayer snapped, still clutching his nose. “Why would you do that?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “I guess it was just a… uh…weird impulsive reaction.”

The cosplayer’s eyes drew into stormy green slits. “You have weird impulsive reactions to punch people?”

“I just like to, err…” I forced a smile, “keep people on their toes. Y’know?”

“Well, you smashed that, at least,” the young man muttered. “Literally.”

The cosplayer finally dropped his hands, revealing a trickle of blood as it dripped from his nose.

“Oh shit!” I frantically dug through my pocket, managing to find a napkin that was crumpled but mercifully unused. “I really am sorry!”

I shouldn’t have reacted that way, even though that cosplayer had really bad taste in characters. I made a mental note to bring it up with my therapist, Sharon, on Wednesday. Maybe we could add it to the growing list of ‘things Niko should probably work on.’

The cosplayer gave me a look™ as I leaned forward to dab his nose. The expression was critical, calculating, as if he were trying to dissect me piece by piece with his mind.

But at least he wasn’t actively calling to report me to the police.

“So, what’s your name?” I asked, wiping the blood away.

“Lucian Darkona,” he replied without missing a beat.

I rolled my eyes.

God, after all these years of Comic-Con, I still can’t stand these pricks who try to stay in character 24/7. You’re a nerd in a costume, not Daniel Day-freaking-Lewis.

“No, I mean your real name.”

“What are you talking about?” the cosplayer said with a huff. “My real name is Lucian Darkona.”

“Okaaaaaaay,” I said with a smirk. “Then prove it.”

Checkmate, asshole.

“You are quite possibly the strangest person I have ever met,” the cosplayer muttered, removing a silver chain from around his throat. “And I go to a school full of right nutters.”

The cosplayer slipped off the necklace and held it out toward me. A ring dangled from the chain, its centerpiece a spider crafted from glistening black diamonds. Then, to my shock, the spider’s legs began to move on their own, pulling apart to reveal two initials.

[L.D.]

That was an actual Darkona family ring. My heart leapt so high that it lodged itself somewhere in my trachea.

Oh my God.

Oh my God. Oh my God! OH MY GOD!

The napkin tumbled from my fingers. My mind reeled, unable to process what the hell I’d just seen.

Normally when someone entered a fantasy world, they were a chosen one—or at least a protagonist of some kind. That meant that, after witnessing magic, they usually accepted their destiny, or fought a monster to prove themself, or gave some dramatic speech about saving the world.

But seeing as I was, in fact, not a chosen-one protagonist, my survival instincts kicked in instead, and I did what a regular, boring, unremarkable person would do.

I ran.

Did I know where I was running to? Hell no! But I figured that maybe, if I ran far enough, I could break out of whatever dream or weird hallucination I was in. Because it couldn’t be real. There was no way.

“Wake up,” I cried, squeezing my eyes shut as I slapped my face. “Wake up, wake up, wake up—”

I barreled directly into a tree.

The branches were thin, long and drooping. I would’ve mistaken it for a weeping willow if it hadn’t been for the pink blossoms nestled between the leaves. The petals were glowing gently.

The tree shuddered, sending those same glowing petals raining down around me. Then slowly, its bark lifted like eyelids, revealing a pair of bright pink eyes staring down at me.

My heart dropped into my stomach.

I knew what that tree was in an instant—the cause of countless kids’ nightmares after reading the third Owen Thorn book. It was the Child Snatcher.

The branches shot toward me in an instant. I spun on my heels and bolted, my feet pounding against the dirt as I ran for my fucking life.

Then I felt bark dig into my ankle as a branch hooked around it. Before I could even scream, the Child Snatcher had wrenched me back. I hit the ground hard, and the breath expelled from my lungs as my stomach slammed into the grass.

The tree flung me into the air, suspending me by my ankles as branches whooshed around me. And yes, I might have let out a high-pitched screech.

My glasses flew off, transforming the world into a blur of blue, green, and pink as the tree swung me back and forth. The motion was dizzying, and my stomach lurched with each swing as if I were a pendulum.

With blood rushing to my head and my heart racing a mile a minute, I scrambled through my pockets for anything to defend myself with. Useless items tumbled out—an old McDonald’s receipt for a Happy Meal (don’t judge me), a pack of gum, a long lost LEGO. At last my fingers closed around a fountain pen. It was neon green, with the words [I Love Owen] scrawled across it, a pen I’d fought tooth-and-nail for in a two-week, eBay bidding war.

A branch shot toward me. It hurtled faster and faster, swinging straight toward the hand holding the pen.

I sucked in a breath, steeling my nerves. Just as the branch was about to smash into me, I drove the sharp tip down, slamming it into the bark with all my might.

I have no idea if it’s possible for a tree to scream, but I don’t know how else to describe the sound that came out of the Child Snatcher. Its blood-curdling shriek echoed through the air as its branches flailed and thrashed.

Instead of letting go, the rough wood dug deeper against my ankles. The wind rushed through my hair and billowed through my clothes as the tree flung me back and forth, up and down, as if trying to shake my brain from my skull.

Even with my head spinning and blood roaring in my ears, I gritted my teeth and drove the pen deeper into the gnarled bark. I ground it harder, harder, harder. With a sickening squelch, the pen pierced through.

Purple sap erupted, spraying everywhere. It coated my hands and clothes and splattered across my face. Some even got in my mouth, and it tasted weirdly…lemony?

But the important thing was that the hold on my ankle loosened just enough. Summoning every ounce of strength I had, I kicked my other foot at the branch. And at last, the wood gripping my ankle released.

As I plummeted toward the ground, my heart soared, and a triumphant grin spread across my face.

But my little victory was short-lived. A second wave of branches shot up to meet me. One slapped the pen out of my hands while the others twisted and coiled around my arms and legs. The wood dug into me so hard I was sure I’d have splinters.

“PLEASE LET ME GO” I screamed as I thrashed desperately against the tree. “I SWEAR TO GOD, I BARELY USE PAPER PRODUCTS! AND I EVEN HELPED PLANT AN APPLE TREE IN THIRD GRADE!”

Unsurprisingly, the tree didn’t give a shit.

The more I struggled, the tighter the branches grew. Their rough, sap-slick surfaces dug into my skin, cutting off my circulation.

Then, slowly, the branches began to lower my body. The Child Snatcher’s gaze locked on me, wide, unblinking, and dripping venom. But beneath that fury simmered something far more terrifying—an insatiable hunger.

My heart missed a beat, and a wave of horror crashed over me as I realized what was about to happen.

Oh no.

Oh nooooooo!

The bark beneath the eyes cracked open, revealing a gaping mouth lined with rows upon rows of jagged teeth with purple sap oozing between them.

The Child Snatcher was about to fucking eat me.

I kicked and writhed to no avail. The branches held me firmly in place as the maw beneath me opened wider.

“Holy shit!” I screamed, dangling over the great, gaping mouth. “Holy shit!”

Then a voice said, “Riˈlēs!”

A flash of light lit up my vision. The branches recoiled as if they’d been scorched by fire, curling in on themselves. In an instant, they all let go of me, and my breath hitched as I plummeted downward.

Luckily there was something to break my fall.

Unluckily, that something was Lucian Darkona. I fell on him hard, sending us both sprawling to the ground.

“Why didn’t you do that earlier?!” I gasped, glaring down at the blurry shape of what I assumed was his face.

“Be glad I did it at all,” Lucian snapped. “Now get off me! For someone so scrawny, you shouldn’t be this heavy!”

Panting, I rolled off Lucian.

As we stumbled to our feet, a pair of hands shoved my glasses back onto my face. I blinked one, then twice, and Lucian’s furious face came into focus directly in front of me.

“What’s your bloody problem?” Lucian jabbed a finger against my temple. “I’d ask why the hell anyone would run directly into the Child Snatcher, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious you’re a full-blown lunatic.”

I took a deep breath, trying to steady my racing heart. Whether I was in a dream or not, telling my least favorite character of all time that he was from a book would only make things considerably more complicated. For now, all I could do was play along.

“Yeah,” I said. “I can act a bit, uh… bizarrely at times. It’s just my shtick, y’know?”

Lucian arched a dark eyebrow. “Your… ‘shtick’?”

I forced a grin. “Yep!”

Lucian was giving me that look again, like he was trying to mentally dissect me. “I’m pretty sure there’s something reeeaaaally wrong with you.”

I ground my feet in the dirt, holding his gaze. “You’ve been all up in my business, but what about you? What were you doing loitering near the Child Snatcher? I mean, ‘snatching children’ is literally the main thing it does, hence the self-explanatory, non-creative name. Pretty dangerous hang-out spot if you ask me.”

Something pained flashed across Lucian’s face. It was gone in an instant, and a blank expression settled back over his features like a mask.

“My friends and I used to study here, since it was the only place no one would dare bother us,” he snapped.

I sucked in a breath.

Right, Lucian’s two best friends (and cronies) Jay and Trip.

They had been killed at the end of book six in a wyvern attack. If Jay and Trip were already dead, and Lucian still hadn’t merged with an evil monster yet, that meant I was at the beginning of the seventh-and-final Owen Thorn book.

“And besides,” Lucian continued, “the Child Snatcher doesn’t hurt you unless you act like a complete idiot and run into it.”

Ouch.

Lucian’s gaze wracked over me.

“Why haven’t I seen you around before?” he asked. “I definitely would’ve clocked someone with as weird an accent as yours.”

Shit, I needed to think fast. My mind reeled, putting any-and-all Owen Thorn trivia I had to use. Which was to say, a lot.

“You’re right. You haven’t seen me around before because…uh…” I adjusted my glasses and flashed him a grin. “I’m a transfer student from Oakwell!”

Oakwell, the school the author had mentioned briefly in a single sentence and then promptly forgot about.

Lucian scoffed. “Oakwell, huh? Well, I suppose that explains why you’ve got the social skills of a gnome in tap shoes dancing about with a ribbon baton.”

I blinked. “What does that even mean—”

“That also explains why you’re not in uniform.” Lucian’s eyes skimmed over me, his nose wrinkling with smug disapproval. “In fact, that sweater of yours bears a rather upsetting resemblance to the ones that dreadful Owen Thorn wears on weekends.”

Yeah, that’s why I bought it.

“Thanks!” I said with a smile.

“That wasn’t a compliment.” Lucian crossed his arms. “Please tell me the students at Oakwell aren’t as ga-ga over Owen Thorn as they are here.”

My gaze darkened. I immediately got defensive over the way he was talking about Owen, despite the fact that it was obviously written into his character.

“He’s the Chosen One.” I said. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

I braced myself for a fight, ready to unleash the kind of wrath usually reserved for late-night Redboard arguments with people who had egregiously wrong opinions.

But to my complete shock, Lucian merely shrugged.

“Well, prepare to be disappointed,” he drawled. “Owen Thorn is just a boy. I don’t know why that’s so hard for you imbeciles to understand. Though, I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised. You humans need someone to believe in, especially since you’re nowhere near as powerful or gifted in the magical arts as us elves. Thinking Owen Thorn is the one to save you from the Great Darkness is your only hope.”

His mouth twisted into a sneer that made my fists itch to punch him all over again. “Pretty pathetic if you ask me,” he added.

Pathetic.

When he said the word, all I could think about were the laughter and jeers of my classmates, the judging stares, the disappointment in my dad’s face. All for loving Owen Thorn.

Anger surged through my veins, exploding out of me before I could stop it. “Not nearly as pathetic as falling down a flight of stairs trying to snoop on Owen Thorn in second year!”

Lucian froze.

“I was only twelve when that happened,” he whispered, his eyes going round as saucers. “And I was completely alone. So how… how the hell did you know that?”

My stomach sank.

Oh shit.