There really was something incredibly freeing about not giving a shit.
And sitting in a dark room alone and worrying about nothing but what animated creature might pop out at him next.
He was receiving messages along the side of the screen. Things like, Dude, what are you doing? and Who are you? and That’s not how you use the Dagger of Darian. He assumed they were referring to the little dagger he’d found under a rock along the stream.
He didn’t know who the messages were from and didn’t know how to answer them anyway, so he’d begun simply ignoring them.
That was also very freeing.
As was ignoring all the calls and texts coming in on his phone. He hated texting anyway.
Zach moved his controller, stomping through the virtual forest with heavy footsteps. For the most part, creatures scattered as he marched through the trees, but every once in a while, some ugly little critter would rear up and snarl at him. He cut their heads off.
He had no idea if that was what he was supposed to be doing, but he had a sword and a dagger and some major pent-up aggression, and hell, most of the time the creature’s head would regrow in a matter of seconds and it would go running off.
He liked that best of all. He was able to kill stuff without it being permanent.
He reached a narrow valley filled with some kind of flower. As he stepped forward on the screen a message popped up in the center of the display, unlike the irritated ones running along the right-hand side.
This one said, You have been summoned to the palace by Princess Kirenda.
Zach scoffed. He was sure he had been. He was surprised only that it had taken this long for Aimee to tell on him.
He hadn’t taken his eyes off the game or removed his headphones when she’d come into the room—it was only fair, considering how many times she’d done the very same thing to him—but he admitted he’d been happy to know she was home. And he’d known she’d go tell Kiera what he was doing.
But he didn’t care. He wasn’t in the game to get her attention. He was here because…he wanted to get lost. He wanted to play in a fantasy world for a while. He wanted to be the rogue warrior who had no family and no responsibilities, who was unpredictable and maybe even feared. If Leokin had helped Aimee all these months, it was worth a try.
He closed the message about the princess without replying and went stomping down through the wild flowers in the valley.
Fifteen minutes later Princess Kirenda herself moved into the space between the gaming chair he’d set at the foot of his bed and the desk where he’d put the monitor. She was dressed in a pair of cutoff sweatpants and a loose T-shirt. Her hair was tied back, and she had no makeup on. And she was holding a plastic grocery bag in one hand.
She looked a little ticked off and completely beautiful. And he wanted her so badly that his teeth ached.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, grumpily.
“Climbing into your bubble.”
His heart stuttered. But no. He was done with bubbles and pulling people in and out of them.
“You’re in my way,” he told her, leaning to the left to look around her.
“You ignored my summons.”
He had no idea how she’d been able to send the summons, since she would have been in the car for the past twenty minutes or so, but he didn’t care.
“Yep.” He made his warrior climb a steep embankment even as it sucked his energy to a dangerously low level.
Apparently stomping over the flowers—the magical flowers—had depleted his energy, and his warrior was having some trouble staying on his feet. He was looking for a safe place to rest and let his avatar rebuild.
Kiera glanced over her shoulder at the screen. “If you destroy the beauty in Leokin, it, in turn, destroys you.”
He sat his warrior down and then sighed, looking up at her. “I didn’t think the princess would come looking for a dangerous rebel.”
“The princess does whatever she wants to do,” she informed him with an eyebrow arched.
“The princess wanted to come looking for the dangerous rebel?” Kiera didn’t come after people. She was usually the one leaving.
And he could admit, he got it now. It had felt liberating walking out of the hotel. He’d taken control of his part of the situation and how it played out for him.
“Well, the princess is in love with the dangerous rebel,” Kiera said, crossing her arms.
Zach’s heart kicked hard against his ribs, but he kept his expression neutral. Or he tried to, anyway. “The king sent me a message and informed me the princess doesn’t get to choose to love anything but the kingdom.”
Pete Candon, the creator of World of Leokin himself, had sent Zach a private message. It hadn’t been hard to read between the lines of the message from Leokin’s king either. Kiera was Pete’s friend and Pete didn’t like hearing that Zach had upset her. Zach didn’t even want to know how Pete knew about his relationship with Kiera or how he’d found out that the relationship was over or that Zach was now in Leokin. Pete had a bit of a God complex. Which was maybe a little understandable considering he had, in fact, created a world. But Zach didn’t care about Pete.
He was trying really hard not to care about anything.
Not caring about Pete was easy.
“The king is a little full of himself and forgets the princess can rewrite the rules in Leokin at any time as easily as he can. He probably forgets because he gave her that power one night when he’d had too much pomegranate vodka.”
Zach almost smiled. Almost.
But he was pissed. He was tired. He was frustrated. And he’d been honest—he couldn’t do it anymore. Any of it. He couldn’t worry about his mother and be pissed at his father and nag his sister and butt heads with Kiera.
He just wanted to exist somewhere where everything worked out the way he wanted it to. A place where there were rules, and nobility was rewarded, and bravery and heroism were well defined and applauded.
He wanted to hang out in Leokin. Ironic didn’t even begin to cover it.
“That may be true,” he said. “But knowing the princess as I do, I would guess that she would never rewrite rules to make someone do something they didn’t want to do.”
Kiera seemed to be trying to figure something out as she studied his face. Finally she shook her head. “No, the princess wouldn’t force anyone into anything.”
“So if the rebel warrior just wanted to be left alone to explore the world and do his own thing, she’d let him do that?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes, she would.”
“Okay then.” He waited for her to move out of the way.
“But she would also caution the warrior that, if he continues to kill the innocent magical creatures in the forest, he’s going to have multiple tribes descending on him, and he won’t last through the night.”
“The innocent magical creatures that keep hissing and growling at me?” he asked mildly.
“Yes.”
She moved out of his way, and he had to resist the urge to grab her and pull her into his lap.
But he did resist. Because she was part of his frustration. He had never been as aware of his shortcomings in his relationships as he had been since he’d met her. He didn’t think she was trying to make him feel bad about how he handled things…exactly. But Kiera didn’t shy away from pointing out when he was being stubborn or judgmental or just plain wrong.
And it was messing with his ability to deal with his family.
They weren’t perfect. At all. And he didn’t think he actually had all the answers. But they needed someone to guide them, someone to demand they step up and do better. And until Kiera had come along, he’d been that guy. Confident and firm. But now he was questioning everything, including if they really needed him at all. And how he felt about that. What if they didn’t? Would he feel free and happy? Or would he feel purposeless?
He was afraid of the answer.
So he was going to tramp around in a magical world where things worked a certain way every time. Sure, he might have screwed up by walking over the magical flowers that were now sucking his energy away, but at least he now knew that’s what would happen every time. In the real world, he was never sure what was going to suck his energy away.
“And just so you know,” Kiera said, plugging in another controller—because of course she’d come prepared with her own—and settling down on the edge of his bed with her feet tucked under her like a little kid, “They’re not hissing and growling at you. They’re upset about the Dagger of Darian.”
“Because I’m lopping their little heads off with it,” he said.
“No. Well, yes. But their heads will grow back.”
“I noticed.”
“It’s because you can control the black fairies with it.” She signed into the game on the split screen she’d brought up.
“Hold on.” He looked over at her. “I can control something with this dagger?”
“The evil black fairies. Yes.”
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. He made his warrior avatar get up from resting and walk to the edge of the bluff overlooking the flowered valley. He grabbed the dagger and heaved it into the flowers.
Kiera looked at him. “What was that?”
“I don’t want to control anything. I don’t want to be in charge of anything. I don’t want to be responsible for anything.”
She nodded. “Okay. Got it.”
She pressed some buttons and moved her controller. He noticed that her avatar was in the castle. And looked almost exactly as Kiera had the first day he’d met her.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Sending some knights to retrieve the dagger. Don’t want it falling into the wrong hands.”
“Right.” He watched her for a couple more minutes. Then he said, “How would the princess feel about a night of hot sex with a rogue warrior?”
She looked over at him. “Tell you what—if your warrior can find the castle before I leave on my next quest, just have him climb up the south tower.”
“Easy.” He’d seen the castle about an hour ago. In the far-off distance, but he’d seen it.
“Here, you might need this,” she said, handing him a can of an energy drink.
“Thanks. Are those Twizzlers?”
She gave him a dazzling smile. “Indeed they are.”
* * *
Zach woke with a nasty hangover.
Considering he hadn’t drunk anything but fruit-punch-flavored energy drinks the night before, that was puzzling.
Until he tried to uncurl himself from the position he’d slept in. He was still in Aimee’s gaming chair, his legs stretched out in front of him, his head tilted at an angle that was definitely not anything he would have tried if he’d been conscious.
How did someone fall asleep on energy drinks?
But the last thing he remembered was it being three a.m. and Kiera still happily gaming away on some quest with her clan. She’d been drinking water and eating what looked like nuts and fruit and granola.
He’d gone for the caffeine and sugar. And when he’d crashed, he’d crashed hard.
He’d never had a chance of making it to the castle for a quickie.
Slowly straightening his bent spine, Zach groaned and looked around. Kiera was curled up in his bed, sleeping peacefully. She wouldn’t have any cramped muscles or sore joints.
He should have known better than to take her on.
He got up and headed to the kitchen for real food. By the time he got back to his room, Kiera was awake and again sitting on the end of his bed. She had her controller in hand and was already moving through Leokin.
She gave him a smile when he came into the room with his bowl of oatmeal but said nothing before she turned her attention back to the game.
She was granting his wish—she was leaving him alone to do what he wanted. No words about going to work, no comments about the night before, no admonishment for passing out in the gaming chair.
But she wasn’t leaving. She was clearly settled in for the long haul.
Zach took a bite of oatmeal and moved to the chair. Great. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to rehash or be reminded of the things he’d left undone, the loose ends flapping in the wind last night.
He didn’t know where Aimee was or how his parents were or how the party had turned out.
And he wasn’t going to ask. As Kiera kept telling him, not everything about everyone was his responsibility.
They played for five hours. The only time they weren’t sitting next to one another, controllers in hand, was when one of them got up to go to the bathroom or to answer the door for the pizza delivery guy.
Kiera did have her phone next to her knee and would receive and send the occasional text, but otherwise she was as focused on the game as he was.
She shared her crackers, nuts, and apples with him, and he cut back on the energy drinks and drank five bottles of water instead. And he did feel much better.
But damn if she didn’t outlast him again.
Zach fell asleep in the chair for the second time, but woke around two a.m. and crawled up into bed next to her. In spite of wanting to be left alone, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his body before falling into a deep sleep.
When he woke in the morning, she was already up. She’d showered and was sitting in her spot on the end of the bed, back in Leokin.
Zach got up and joined her.
He was on the other side of the forest today and was practicing his archery. He’d acquired a bow and arrows yesterday by rescuing a wizard from a carnivorous tree that had wrapped its branches around the older man and would have slowly absorbed him over time.
That seemed dark to Zach. So he’d chopped the tree down after hacking the old man free.
Now, apparently, there were forest dwarves pissed off at him about the tree.
Still, Zach grinned about the whole thing. At least that made sense. He’d chopped down their tree, and they were mad. He could understand that. It was much clearer than many of the things people got upset about in the real world.
He liked Leokin.
The doorbell rang downstairs and he frowned. Pizza at this time of morning?
“I’ll get it.”
Kiera was up off the bed and across the room before he realized those three words were the first she’d spoken to him in almost sixteen hours.
He’d wanted the silence. He’d wanted to be alone. But he was glad she was there. And he missed her voice.
Not that he’d admit that.
She came back into the room with a thick envelope.
“What’s that?” His voice was scratchy from disuse. He’d uttered, “Dammit” and “Seriously?” and “Whoa” a few times yesterday as they’d played, but otherwise he hadn’t used his voice box much.
“Something for me,” she said, setting it on the bed next to her.
Okay, well, then one more thing he didn’t need to worry about. Great.
He got absorbed in the game quickly.
As he was practicing with his bow and arrow—and finding he kind of sucked—a young girl went racing past. She wasn’t a human girl. She had long flowing blue hair, and, though she was running, her feet didn’t touch the ground. She was, however, being chased. A huge green snakelike creature came slithering past him, not far behind her. It had a snake’s body but a rooster’s head and wings.
“What the fuck is that?” he asked, swinging his avatar around.
“A bromdike,” Kiera answered.
He lifted his bow and arrow. He wasn’t a great shot yet, but he had to at least try.
“No, wait!” Kiera said as he drew the bow back. “You can’t kill it.”
“Why not? It’s after that…girl.”
“She’s a pessal,” Kiera said. “She steals from travelers in the woods.”
“And the brom-thing kills her because of it?”
“It’s only going to retrieve whatever she took. It will bite her, and she’ll fall asleep temporarily. He’ll take back what she stole.”
Zach shook his head. “How am I supposed to keep up with this stuff? He looks like the bad guy.”
Kiera smiled. “Things aren’t always what they seem.”
He rolled his eyes. “Right. Nice lesson there.”
Kiera shrugged. “We do what we can. You could read the book, I suppose.”
“There’s a book?”
“Absolutely. It has all the rules, maps of the world, glossary of terms, and a dictionary of all the creatures. And it’s only fourteen ninety-nine.”
He shook his head. “No coupon or discount for sleeping with the princess?”
She cocked an eyebrow. “You haven’t even made it to the castle yet, Mr. Rogue Warrior. You’re too busy doing good deeds along the way.”
He sighed. “No matter how bad I want to be, I can’t quite pull it off.”
Kiera turned back to the game. “That’s why I’ve instructed the guards to let you in and bring you straight to my chambers. If you ever manage to find your way to the palace, that is.”
Zach focused on the screen. Oh, he’d make it to the palace. “So Pete and Dalton programmed Leokin so that the characters could have sex?” he asked.
“I texted them, and they’re working on it,” she said. “I figure by the time you actually get there, they’ll have it done.”
He stopped and looked over at her. “They’re adding sex into the game because of me?”
She laughed. “No.”
She’d been messing with him. “Really? No sex in Leokin? And I was really starting to like it here.”
They both fell into the game. Zach was still determined to make it to the palace, just to prove he could.
Two days later he still hadn’t made it out of the woods. It seemed every time he made any progress toward the castle and the princess and the things he really wanted, someone came across his path who needed help. Or he came across their paths. Or whatever. It seemed that there was always someone in need of saving.
And he did it every time. He dropped whatever he was doing and came to their rescue. He was successful each time too.
He refused to think about that as a metaphor for his real life.
Besides, he was having a good time. He had managed to save more people and there was talk through the land of a mysterious new warrior who some people suspected had been a knight at one time. Everyone wanted to meet him, and he had four invitations to join clans.
Which he happily declined. This lone wolf stuff was okay.
So was not going to work, not going to his family’s weekly dinner, and not worrying about Aimee and her classes or her social life or her relationship with his mother. She wasn’t gaming—that much he knew for sure—and he put the rest out of his head more easily than he’d expected.
Kiera was the only person he wanted to spend time with. Which was a good thing because the girl hadn’t left his side in five days.
She hadn’t been in Leokin the whole time. She’d had someone bring her laptop over, along with more clothes, and she’d propped herself up on his bed and worked some of the time too. She would also venture into the kitchen once or twice a day and make food that didn’t come via delivery guy or convenience store.
She was letting him do what he needed to do. But she wasn’t leaving him alone. She wasn’t walking away this time.
Zach truly believed that he never needed to leave his room again.
There was a huge banquet going on in Leokin in one of the villages, and he was the guest of honor, having saved their herd of goats and two little boys from some beast with a lion’s body and a dog’s head.
After the bromdike incident, he hadn’t been sure which things he should fight and which he shouldn’t, but his gut had told him the lion-dog was bad news, and he’d been right.
He was a hero in Leokin. He’d even gotten a summons from the king to appear at the castle to receive an award.
He’d declined. He didn’t want to give Pete the satisfaction of having him respond to a summons—he still wasn’t sure he liked Pete all that much—and, well, he couldn’t find his way to the palace anyway.
Zach sat his avatar on a log near the huge bonfire the village had built and set the controller aside, stretching.
It was dark outside when he glanced at the window, and he realized that Kiera wasn’t in her usual spot at the end of the bed.
He turned to find her propped against the headboard, two pillows behind her, reading glasses perched on her nose, her attention on a stack of papers.
“What are you doing?” he asked, crawling up the bed and stretching out next to her.
She pulled her glasses off. “Reading about Josie.”
The words seemed to echo in his head.
Josie.
His dead sister.
In the real world.
In Leokin he didn’t have any family. He wanted to take the sexy, sassy princess to bed, but he didn’t have any true personal connections to anyone. No one he was responsible for.
He didn’t have a dead sister in Leokin. Only trolls and some other things he didn’t know the names of—because he also wasn’t giving Pete fourteen ninety-nine for his Leokin encyclopedia thing.
“Oh.” He pushed up off the bed and went back to his chair. He needed more fantasy.
He asked one of the pretty village girls to dance at the party and concentrated on the celebration. On his behalf. In the village he would leave behind the next day as he moved on to something else. Somewhere else.
“Have you read the article about the accident?” Kiera’s voice was soft and seemed to come to him from a distance. “I found it online.”
Of course he’d read the article. And the accident report. And heard about the accident from his cop friends. And he knew what she was going to say. Josie had been dead when the rescue squad arrived. It was likely she’d died instantly. There had been nothing anyone could have done. There was nothing he could have done. He knew that. He’d read it over and over, trying to get it to sink in and really matter.
He threw back a pint of ale at the party and concentrated on the dancing and celebrating.
He wondered if avatars could get drunk. He decided to find out.
“‘I just wanted to tell you that your song “True to You” really means a lot to me. I discovered it at a really tough time in my life, and I listened to it over and over. Thank you for sharing those words with me.’”
Zach frowned. He had no idea what Kiera was talking about. He refilled his glass. Online, anyway.
“‘I wanted to let you know that your story about why you wrote the song “All My Heart” inspired me to write a song too. I sang it for my dad at his birthday party, and it made him cry. We’ve had a rough relationship, and this really helped us start to heal. Thank you.’”
Zach grabbed another girl from the crowd and began spinning her around to the music in Leokin.
“‘Your song “The World According to You” is so beautiful. I hope your brother knows how much you love him.’”
Zach dropped the controller. That meant his avatar stood near the bonfire in the town square doing nothing. Like he was numb. Which was how Zach felt in real life.
He stared at the screen but didn’t see it. “What are you doing?” he asked hoarsely.
“Reading comments on Josie’s band’s website,” she said. “There are hundreds. These are from about a year ago. There are some really beautiful things in the past few months.”
Since she’d died.
He hadn’t even thought about her band having a website.
“Why?” he asked.
He heard the rustle of his sheets and blankets and felt Kiera move in near his left shoulder. “I’m trying to show you that there were good things about Josie’s music. I know you wanted her to be a teacher, to touch lives that way, but she did touch lives, Zach. I wanted you to know that.”
He dropped his chin to his chest.
“And she loved you so much. I looked up a video of her singing the song about you. It’s amazing.”
He pulled in a ragged breath.
Kiera put her hand on the back of his neck. The warmth from her touch soaked into him, and his next breath wasn’t as shaky.
She said nothing. She didn’t move. She just sat with him.
“What if I told you I didn’t care?” he asked after a moment. “What if I told you that I’m still angry about her accident and about her dying and not knowing about the band and that if I had known, I would have tried to stop her?”
All of that was true. He couldn’t deny it.
She rubbed her hand across his neck. “Do you mean, would I be mad at you? Would I stop loving you? Would I leave?” she asked. “The answer is no.”
He turned his head. “That’s the second time you’ve told me you love me.”
She nodded. “I do.”
His heart thumped. But he couldn’t deal with everything that meant to him. He simply focused on the primary thing he felt because of her words…comforted.
“Then stop pushing me,” he finally said.
Her eyes flickered with disappointment, but she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and nodded. “Okay. I won’t tell you that your mom went back to AA and your dad went with her this time. And I won’t tell you that Aimee went over there and apologized and has been staying with them since you’ve been holed up and she’s got two A’s and two B’s in her college classes.”
He shook his head. She was pushing.
He was the pusher. He was the one who was always making people face things, hear things, acknowledge things they didn’t always want to.
Damn. It really was kind of annoying on this side.
She was supposed to be the one to back off and let people be. And he didn’t miss the fact that seeing her do this to anyone else would have thrilled him.
He picked up the controller and returned his mind to Leokin.
He wasn’t going to stay in the village tonight. He didn’t want to be with people, even virtual ones. He would camp out in the forest again tonight. That was where stuff happened. He was learning the places to be wary of, the things that came out at night, the ways to stay safe overnight.
He had, of course, learned these things the hard way. He’d actually died twice in Leokin and been injured four times. But it turned out that if you were noble and loyal, you were rewarded with additional lives in Leokin, and he’d come across some dragon glitter that healed his wounds immediately.
He loved Leokin. If only fucking up and going on afterward were so easy in the real world.
He shouldered his pack and picked up his sword and headed to the edge of the village.
Three hours later he stared at the screen. He’d just finished a battle with a small army of goblins he’d found attacking a family’s campsite. Most of the goblins were dead, their bodies absorbed into the forest. The rest had run off. He’d saved all four members of the family. It had almost been too easy.
As the family celebrated and thanked him and offered him food and gifts, Zach sat there just staring at them. Because, of course, none of it was real.
He had felt the initial surge of triumph. But it had quickly faded. Because…it didn’t matter.
He liked Leokin because things always worked out. It was a nice escape. It was fun to pretend that he was the big hero. And if he messed up, the rules of the world still ensured that everything was fine in the end. It fed into every one of his fantasies. Not the prince, not the pirate, but the guy who saved the day, who knew all the answers, who everyone needed.
But that was all pretend.
Staring at the world where Aimee and Kiera both chose to spend so much time, he knew that they loved Leokin for the same reasons he did—good things happened, they could be who they wanted to be, they could do things they couldn’t do in the real world.
The difference was, they knew that. That was why they went to Leokin. To spend time away from the real world.
For Zach, Leokin was more or less an animated version of the real world—a place where he was lauded as a good guy who could be called upon when someone was in trouble…with a few weird creatures thrown in to keep it interesting.
Hell, even in the real world, he’d stumbled across a princess and a wizard and a few hobbits. He’d met a graphic designer whose dining room was a costume shop and whose idea of a night out included little kids dressed as superheroes. Who was to say that the strange and fantastic happened only online?
Strangely, the idea that he really could be the hero, right all the wrongs, and fix all the problems was the true fantasy. All of those things could happen in Leokin. It was in real-world Boston that those things became make-believe.
In the glade in the forest, with the grateful family still gathered around him, Zach turned to look to the east. The castle, where Princess Kirenda lived, was still past a river, several hills, and another dense forest.
He was never going to get there.
He dropped the controller. There was one thing he wanted that he seemed unable to achieve in Leokin—getting to Kiera. Thankfully, the real world was a different story in this case.
He looked over his shoulder. She had crawled into bed and was sound asleep. There for him. For however long it took him to figure everything out.
Zach stretched to his feet and looked at the clock. He took a deep breath. Apparently it had taken him five days, eighteen hours, and twenty-six minutes to figure his shit out. That was probably pretty good.
He stripped out of his clothes and climbed into the bed. As he wrapped his arm around her, she stirred, her big brown eyes blinking open.
“Hi,” she said softly.
“I love you too.”
She smiled. “I know.”
“And I get the leaving.”
“Yeah?” She rolled to her back. “Well, I get the staying,” she told him. “I get that love can be stronger than the hurt.”
He lowered his head and kissed her deeply. He’d never managed to get to the castle in Leokin, but it turned out there were still some things he preferred in the real world.
* * *
Ten hours later Kiera padded into the kitchen.
“Hey.”
He looked up from the griddle. “Hey.”
She grinned. “Literal pancakes?”
“And metaphorical ones.” She looked beautiful, and he realized that these were the most important pancakes he’d ever made.
She slid up onto the bar stool on the other side of the countertop from where he stood. “Does this mean that Leokin’s new, mysterious warrior is taking a break today?”
He slid a chocolate chip pancake onto a plate and passed it to her. “It does.”
“What will all those people in trouble do without you?”
Zach crossed his arms and looked at her closely. “Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.”
She cut off a piece of pancake and took a bite. She moaned. “Oh my God, these are good. So worth waiting for.” She gave him a wink.
“I need to talk to you about Leokin. I’m concerned, and as their princess, I would think you’d want to know.”
She chewed and swallowed. And frowned at his strangely serious tone about the game. “Okay.”
“There are a lot of bad things happening in that forest. I could hardly travel for an hour without running into some menace trying to hurt someone.”
She took another bite and chewed. Slowly. She was also very intent on studying the edge of her plate.
Zach braced his hands on the counter and leaned in. He suspected that Leokin was not always such a hazardous place, and he thought he maybe knew why his arrival had prompted so many run-ins with the bad element. “Kiera? What is going on in your forest?”
Finally she set her fork down and said, “Pete.”
That wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting. “Pete.”
She nodded. “He loved that you got into Leokin and was trying to give you the hero experience.”
He had really expected that the hero experience had been coming from Kiera. Or even Aimee.
Zach shook his head. “I don’t know if I like Pete.”
Kiera grinned. “You don’t like Pete or you don’t like that he seemingly knows you?”
“He doesn’t know me.”
She picked up her fork and took another bite. “You’re pretty easy to figure out. You love being the hero. He thought you’d get a kick out of it.”
“Uh-huh. And did he also purposefully keep me from reaching the castle?”
She swallowed. “Probably.”
Zach came around the end of the counter. He swiveled her stool so she was facing him. He noticed that the smudge of chocolate on her lower lip matched the color of her eyes before he swiped it off with his finger and stuck the finger in his mouth. “Well, you can tell Pete that I got to the princess. In spite of all the barriers and problems and obstacles between us.” He lowered his head and looked her directly in the eye. “Right, Kiera? I got to the princess, didn’t I?”
She nodded. “You most definitely did. Before you ever even picked up a sword, hot guy.”
He smiled. “Know what I figured out along the way?”
“What?”
“My real world’s been a fantasy—the idea that I can save everyone and always figure it all out.”
Her eyes softened. “But don’t forget, our fantasies are a part of us. We have to acknowledge and explore them sometimes.”
“Well, I’ve been all about the fantasy. I think what I need to acknowledge is the real world. I need to recognize that I’m not a superhero or a pirate or a rogue, loner warrior. I’m just a guy—an imperfect, sleep-deprived, messy, hungry guy who’s trying to do the best he can. And that’s who I want to be. Because when I’m that guy, I’m also happy, and able to understand and forgive my family, and in love with you, and looking at the world differently, and making you laugh…and making you come.”
Her smile was large, her eyes filled with love and happiness. “I’ll tell you exactly what you are, Zach Ashley.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded. “Gorgeous and kick-ass.”
* * *
2½ months later
“Zach, we can’t just give the warriors the power to fly,” Pete said in the exasperated tone he always used when talking to Zach about Leokin. He bumped the swinging kitchen door open with his hip and went through with a stack of plates and a handful of silverware.
“It’s only the nine of us,” Zach argued, following with the bowl of potatoes and the gravy boat. “And I have yet to get to the castle, for God’s sake.”
“That’s not what I heard about you and Kirenda’s castle,” Troy said with a huge grin. “I heard you breached that a long time ago.”
“You keep getting killed by the trolls,” Zach reminded him. “Maybe you need to stay quiet.”
“Maybe you need to quit bringing these loner warriors into the forest,” Pete griped. “Leokin was always known for the clans and the sense of community until you came along and decided to stay independent. You and these friends of yours don’t even answer summons.”
“We can’t get to the fucking castle,” Zach exclaimed. “It’s ridiculous the number of things we’re called upon to do as we go through the forest.”
“And we keep getting lost,” Troy added.
Zach kicked him under the table. “We could find our way if we had to. But if there was some kind of spell for flying…”
“I can’t just make a flying spell,” Pete said.
Kiera rolled her eyes as she set the green bean casserole down in the middle of the table. “Of course you could,” she said. “But you won’t. Because Zach wants it.”
Pete and Zach had a grudging friendship, mostly because they both loved Kiera. But when they were together, they turned into five-year-olds.
“That’s not fair,” Pete said. “I added the drawbridge, and I made the apples in the north orchard give extra strength after they’re eaten. Those were Zach’s ideas.”
It was true. Kiera sighed. “Just give him a flying spell.”
“That makes no sense,” Pete insisted.
“Well, I’d like him to make it to the big ball we’re throwing at Christmastime at the castle,” she said. “I’m not sure how else to get him there.”
Everyone laughed.
“Fine. I’ll make a one-time potion or something,” Pete said. “If…” He pointed a finger at Zach. “You stop harassing my customer service people. It’s not a game glitch that you always forget about the elves in the lower forest, and if you’re going to sleep in the trees, then you have to expect to have birds around sometimes.”
“Birds that try to adopt me as one of their own every time?” Zach asked.
Pete chuckled. He’d programmed one bird to fall in love with Zach, and every time Zach ventured into that part of the forest, the bird followed him around and tried to nuzzle him and get him into her nest.
“That bird could come in handy as an ally sometime,” Pete said. “And I expect a huge thank-you when that happens.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you have a God complex, Pete?” Zach asked.
Pete laughed. “Have you ever read or heard an interview with me? It’s pretty well established that I have a God complex, Ashley.”
“Clear the way.”
Zach’s father came through the swinging door from the kitchen with the enormous Thanksgiving turkey and set it on the table next to the potatoes.
They had cleared out the costume shop and were using the dining room in Kiera’s grandmother’s house as a, well, dining room.
Temporarily. The material, hats, weapons, and mannequins would be back in the morning.
But for now, they were having a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all of their friends and Zach’s family.
Kiera’s parents had been invited but hadn’t been able to make it. But it didn’t bother her. Looking around the room, she realized that her true family was right here with her now.
“Let me get that for you.” Dalton shoved his chair back and went to relieve Aimee of the bowl of stuffing she was carrying.
“Thanks.” She gave him a big smile.
But Kiera knew that Dalton didn’t have a chance. Aimee was very much in love with Cody.
Cody noticed Dalton’s attention on Aimee. He stood and took her arm, pulling her around the table to sit next to him. And as she settled into the chair, Dalton came around and sat on her other side.
Kiera just shook her head and took her place between Rob and Zach. Maya and Sophie pulled out chairs across from her, and Zach’s mom and dad were on the end. The table was full. And so was her heart.
“I’d like to propose a toast,” Zach said as they got comfortable.
Everyone reached for their glasses and held them up.
“To new traditions, new friends, and new outlooks on the world,” he said. Then he looked at Kiera and said, “And to metaphorical pancakes.”
Kiera lifted her glass. “And to real-life heroes…and virtual perfection.”