Breaths heaving through my lips, I reached the top of the staircase, Ophelia on my heels. The ornate hallway outside was empty of any guards or servants, so we slipped out of the elevator room and pressed our backs against the wall to catch our breath for a moment.

  The hallways were massive—more than big enough for a full-sized dragon to walk through—and they were lined with large statues made of bronze, gold, silver, and other rare metals. Each statue was of a human or dragon, someone that had done something great throughout the empire's vast history. There was a time I could have named each one as I walked past it, an exercise my mother had almost beaten into me growing up.

  History is the greatest teacher. She had said. Never forget those who came before, and the mistakes and successes they shared with the world.

  Forget. The word nagged at me as if I had already forgotten something I shouldn't have. Gasping for breath still, I leaned out and looked down the hall to make sure nobody was coming.

  "Let's go," I said, motioning Ophelia forward.

  She followed without a word, her breath still ragged as she tried to pull in lungful after lungful. I wasn't much better off, in fact, I could feel my own weariness starting to creep over me, like a moss that had suddenly been granted a boost in growth somehow, its tiny little tendrils expanding over my muscles, threatening to pull me down.

  Remembering the potions that I'd had Irinda acquire for me, I fumbled with my satchel as I moved. The chances of us running into someone up here were high, and I'd had to use Swift Strike multiple times in my earlier fight. It didn't take a lot of Stamina to cast, but if I was feeling the effects already, then I'd be in trouble if we actually had to fight again.

  My fingers found their quarry and I pulled out the green potion and popped off the cork. The health potions had worked, so hopefully this one did, too.

  "What's that?" Ophelia asked between breaths.

  "Stamina potion," I muttered back before downing it between my own gasps for air. Heat radiated through my throat and into my body followed by a refreshing coolness that reminded me of jumping into a cool pool of water after a long journey through the sky.

  I felt wetness tug at the corner of my eyes as my mind flashed visions of my golden wings spreading above me, pushing me into the air. Oh, how I longed to soar through the clouds once more.

  I squeezed the tears and the memories away as the weariness faded from my body. I felt renewed, as if I'd just slept an entire night and awakened completely new.

  We followed the hallway for a time longer. It continued onward, passing by a t-shaped passage that sent corridors expanding off into four different directions.

  Without hesitating, I turned my steps to the left, leading us deeper into the palace as we passed more statues and stained glass windows. Moonlight peered in from the sky outside, painting faint colored shapes on the floor. Magelights dotted the tops of the wall, bathing most of the hallway in a dim but clean light that washed out the shapes.

  If anyone came down the hallway toward us, it would be almost impossible to hide from them, because of how exposed we were.

  I glanced down at the sword in my hand as I almost gave in to my instinct to sprint down the corridor. The rug that ran the center of the floor would muffle our footsteps, but even it would only do so much to hide the sound of our approach. So I walked instead, Ophelia's stride keeping her right next to me, her eyes sometimes glancing my way.

  The scuffle with the guards below had left both of us frazzled in some way, it seemed. I caught glimpses of the way that my hair stuck to the sweat that coated my face, in the reflections from the statues. Ophelia's clung to her cheeks, too, and her ragged breaths slowly gave way to steadier ones.

  It was still strange to see such a different face glancing back at me. I wondered if the one wearing my skin felt the same, or if she had settled into her part more easily. Who had she been before?

  Was this her skin? Or was she someone else? In my dream, she'd accused me of stealing something from her. Could she have meant her life? I had stolen nothing. The System had given it to me.

  There were too many questions, too many threads that I could pull at without any actual answers. I pushed them from my thoughts and focused. We were almost there. Just a little—

  "—About the attack down at the docks?" The words echoed down the hallway before us, the voice deep enough to make the stones around us grumble with their echo.

  I stopped, Ophelia coming to a halt beside me, her fingers already wrapped around the handle of her crossbow, the weapon pointing forward toward the approaching sounds.

  My fingers trembled around the hilt of the sword. I recognized that voice.

  "I did. Terrible thing, that. The thugs in this city are getting out of hand. The Empress has a plan she wishes to put into motion soon."

  The voices grew closer as we stood there, panic seizing my body, locking me in place like the statues that surrounded us.

  I recognized both of those voices.

  Ophelia's fingers closed around my upper arm, pulling me between two of the statues as the voices continued, slowly drawing closer.

  My view of the hallway completely cut off, I stared forward, eyes locked to the statue ahead of us.

  We were dead. There was no way out of this. The moment they came close enough to smell us, they'd devour us.

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  Or burn us to ash. Hopefully the latter.

  "I am still not sure about this. The things she plans to do, it goes against everything her father wanted for his empire." The second voice chortled, a low, deep sound that came out more like a growl.

  The ground began to rumble as their footsteps drew closer. Shadows stretched across the floor.

  "You know as well as I do, Vaelin. This is not her father's empire anymore, and Ariandre has very enticing ideas for how to handle the growing rebellions of the humans."

  I watched as the shadows expanded until white talons attached to large blue forearms appeared in the corner of my vision. My heart slammed against my throat. Fear threatened to choke me.

  Thornscale, one of my oldest friends and advisors, stepped up next to us. Just behind him, Vaelin, one of the most ancient still living of our kind, walked beside him. Both carried themselves in their true forms, tails swishing behind them, their hulking bodies taking up most of the expansive hallway. It was the first time that I'd seen a dragon since reawakening in this form.

  I could see why people feared us so much. Humans were so small—so frail—compared to dragons.

  I was so frail.

  I swallowed hard as their conversation continued. Expecting any moment for one of them to turn and glare at us. The only signal we'd be given that our death was coming.

  "I, for one, am pleased to see her taking more of a stance on the attitude of these humans.," Thornscale continued, "We have cared for them for centuries, always treating them as if everything we do must be done in some way to help take care of them. You have lost as much as I have in that crusade, old friend."

  I held my breath, the pulsing of my fear a living creature beating its fists against my ears. They continued beyond us. The spikes on Thornscale's tail brushed past us, colliding with one of the statues, breaking off a piece of it that clattered to the floor.

  My eyes widened and I stared at their backs, waiting for death. But it didn't come.

  I watched them walk away, eventually turning around one of the corners further down. Eventually the sound of their voices faded and my panicked heartbeat began to slow.

  Confusion settled over me as I stared at the broken bit of statue on the floor. How had they not seen us? Or even smelt us?

  Dragons had senses at least one hundred times greater than a human. I could smell myself, so it seemed unfathomable that they had passed right by us without catching even a whiff of our scent.

  My gaze turned to Ophelia, who had her eyes closed tightly, her hand still pressed against my arm—fingers curled and knuckles white as she gripped my arm hard.

  "Did it work?" She asked, slowly opening her eyes. Her voice was barely a whisper.

  "You did that?"

  She smiled a smile that seemed to lack the full confidence I'd come to expect from her. "I panicked a little," she admitted. "Started looking through my skills and noticed I had one called [Hidden Hunter]. The description said it could hide me from my target. I wasn't sure it would extend to you too, though."

  I let out a soft chuckle. "I knew giving you access was a smart move."

  Trying to forget how close we'd come to being discovered, I twisted around and peered into the hallway. The two dragons had vanished further down the corridor and I couldn't see anybody else. "We're almost there," I told Ophelia before starting off again. She followed.

  "What they were talking about…"

  "Yes?"

  "Is it true? What they said about you?"

  I thought about her question for a moment as we walked. I didn't respond until we came to a stop outside of the door to the Empress's chambers.

  "When I was my true self, everything I did was to protect humanity in one way or another." I looked her in the eyes when I said it, and she nodded, as if she actually believed it.

  Without giving her a chance to follow up, I pushed the door to the Empress's chambers open slowly, peering inside to make sure nobody was waiting on the other side. When we'd made sure the room was empty, we slipped inside and I locked the door behind us.

  "We're looking for anything that might give us a clue what I'm doing now."

  "Wait, what 'you're' doing? You're right here, though."

  "Yes, but there's someone else in my skin. Pretending to be me. I don't know any other way to explain it. But everyone keeps talking about the things I'm doing. But I clearly can't be doing them, because I'm not living in the palace, ruling the empire, now am I?"

  "Point taken," Ophelia muttered in response.

  I watched her turn and start shuffling through some documents on one of the tables that were placed around the room. I stepped over to the desk I kept in the room. One thing I was counting on was that whoever was masquerading as me was also continuing to do things similarly to how I had. I'd used this desk for most of my planning—both for the empire and its various scuffles with armies at home and in the cosmos.

  It seemed our luck had changed some, at least, as I found several documents on the desk that mentioned new laws which would be coming into effect soon. One law mentioned the forced enlistment of humans over the age of 18 winters into the imperial army, where they'd be required to serve at least four terms as a soldier.

  I frowned at the thought of sending young men and women to death in wars that dragons could easily fight. There were also notes about finding new ways to control the population, as well as some letters that alluded to moving the capitol from Caelthara to a new location deeper in the empire. Construction on the new palace and surrounding city was supposed to commence within the next year, with workers being pulled in from all of the major cities in the lands.

  I shuffled through more letters about trade routes, as well as some personal letters between the fake me and some of my closest advisors. One letter to Thornscale talked about dealing out harsher punishments against humans that refused to follow certain laws in the city, as well as permission to create a division of the army explicitly conditioned to fight humans.

  "This is terrible," I said softly, drawing Ophelia's attention to the desk.

  She crossed the room and started reading some of the pages I'd put aside.

  "They want to round up more humans? But if this isn't you, surely people won't believe it, will they?"

  I didn't know. Would they?

  I shook my head. "I don't know, Ophelia. I wouldn't expect Thornscale to believe something like this, and yet, here is his agreement with 'my' plans to create a division of dragons trained specifically to fight human armies. There is also correspondence from him suggesting limiting the advancements that humans can make, by limiting how much they help with the creation of siege equipment and even armor and weapons."

  I pulled the chair I kept at the desk back and sank into its plush cushions.

  "None of it makes sense," I reiterated, as if saying it enough times would make something different. "None of this is who I am, or how my father taught me to rule the empire. Everything I have done has been to protect humanity and to care for it. Everything."

  Had it? Had it always been about the humans and what was best for them? Had I truly always put them first?

  The questions nagged at me, along with something else. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on.

  Something was off about all of this. The conversation in the hall. The documents we'd discovered here.

  None of what the other me was doing made sense with who I had been these past few thousand years. Humanity might be disconnected from who I was, but the dragons around me—and even the humans around me— had known my love for humanity. The way I had risked everything for them so many times. Everything I thought I knew about myself and who I was before screamed that all of this was too much and far too quickly. I'd only been reawakened for a few days, a week at most.

  So how could this other me move so quickly without raising suspicion? Everything was wrong. Off.

  All of it was too… convenient.

  The word slapped into my mind like a sword blade against my cheek. I felt a sting of panic flush through me as the wall across from the desk slowly began to shake.

  Everything I'd thought about this quest—a quest the System had pushed me toward—had led me directly here.

  To this room.

  A room I hadn't used in over a hundred years.