Just like the night before, Camille was in a pitch black room.
She had an audience with Timeless Djinn Tharion.
Off to the side, floating in the air at a waist length level height was Alexandrite. Her normally deep brown skin looked pale and her form looked rigid.
Unlike most people being put to rest, she was dressed in black as if mourning her own funeral.
Her eyes filled with tears as her friend's words echoed back at her, "I don't want there to be any more 'in loving memory' posters"
How ironic. In a cruel way.
"I don't understand!" She raged.
"I was promised to be able to travel to a novel in exchange for something precious I was willing to part with, why would my friend die!?" She demanded.
"If you were going to leave her anyway, what harm is there in making her the collateral for your request?" He challenged.
Camille shut her mouth after it fell open.
She couldn't argue.
She had planned to leave, that was the point of her wish.
"But- I thought you meant like - like all the jewelry I had or the designer shoes I have on layaway that are almost fully paid for!" She spluttered.
"But if you were expecting to part with those things, are they really precious to you?" He asked.
"Of course they were things I valued!" She exclaimed.
"Then it is your fault for not specifically stating what you wanted." He told her simply.
"Did you not claim to want to prove to your friend that your fascination could be as real and fascinating as you perform?" He asked curiously.
She winced at the projected circles playing back all the different romance novels she'd read and tried to hype up to persuade her friend to read. Little by little her friend had stopped entertaining her fascination with them. Eventually claiming romance novels weren't a book she favored in particular but would keep an eye out for something for her for Christmas.
"I didn't want her to die," she said quietly.
"But if you would transfer into the world of the novel you chose, and she remained on your original one, eventually fated to forget about your existence, how would you prove your wondrous claim?" He countered.
She felt he was raising an eyebrow at her.
She grit her teeth. "Maybe it wasn't about proving it to her. Maybe I just wanted to live like all those heroines!"
"Ahhh, a selfish wish..." The disembodied voice purred like it learned a great mystery.
She flinched.
It was a direct violation of the type of wishes he said that he would grant.
No wishes for personal gain. His voice had insisted.
"I'll tell you what, I've received payment already and it would be a waste to let it go," he glanced at Alexandrite's hovering form, still positioned as though she were laying in an invisible coffin.
"I'll make another deal with you. However I'll be calling the terms. They're fair and agreeable, and will bring back your friend, but you can't know them at this time," he paused.
"I don't want you to attempt to bend them to your clearly selfish whims,"
The sound of a heavy old book opening and its pages rapidly flipping caught her attention.
Just like with her previous wish.
She couldn't see a face but his sharp, unnaturally white teeth glinted in the light. It wasn't like she could really refuse.
She glanced at Alexandrite. 'It's my fault she's like this,'
"I agree to this deal," she decided. The world faded to white.
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"Thank goodness you woke up your Majesty!" A maid exclaimed at Alexandrite. Absently she blinked awake. 'A maid?' she wondered. She opened her eyes and a blonde haired maid wearing a floor length dress was standing in front of her.
She woke up in a beautiful room filled with ornate light fixtures, expensive looking throne like chairs, and an extremely comfortable bed.
Her nightgown were rather luxurious as well.
Made of some high quality fabric that probably cost a month's worth of paychecks.
"You have been unconscious for a week!" The maid was saying.
Alexandrite looked at her pastel yellow nightgown and twisted a little.
'This wound... The wound on my right side had been healed'. She could feel the slightly tight bandage on it but it likely wouldn't hinder her.
"The one of my chest is gone too," she muttered aloud distantly.
The maid faltered, wincing as if the thought pained her.
"What you chest!? Your Majesty! How have you gotten such a fatal injury?! The doctor mentioned no such wound!?" She asked.
"Oh that was just a dream, pay it no mind," she laughed weakly, but the maid seemed to accept this. Alexandrite in turn frowned, trying to remember what happened.
'I was.... I was helping Camille with her essay...' She thought slowly. 'I remember we got ready for work after classes ended.'
'It was a normal shift... And then....' Her memory escaped her.
She had no idea what happened after the first few hours of work.
'I was...' she reached over to check for her phone and didn't see it on the night stand. Her phone had been in her pocket hadn't it? Then it caught up to her that it wasn't her room.
Of course her phone wouldn't be there.
"U-uh has anyone seen my pho-"she started to ask only to be interrupted.
"You shouldn't crowd her like that!" A man's voice argued and pushed back the doctors and servants.
"Good morning, Aphrodite!" A male voice called to Alexandrite, sending her alarm since she didn't know many men. And certainly that wasn't her name.
"You're finally awake! I was so worried!"
Abruptly she was enveloped in a hug. She automatically relaxed at the comfort the scent of trees brought as she inhaled.
'Who is this-' she almost asked aloud but didn't, seeing his simultaneously relieved and heartbroken expression.
Her head filled with memories, 'this is...'
'This is my older brother who helped me throughout the war. Well not 'me' but rather the owner of this body, Aphrodite Olympian.'
"Good morning to you as well Marcellon," she greeted.
❃❃❃❃❃⍟❃❃❃❃❃❃
Walking down a hallway she vaguely understood would take her to her room, she slowed as she looked at the mirror.
She stiffened as she caught her reflection.
Her eyes widened at the familiarity and foreignness of the features she saw.
She definitely recognized her dark brown skin and dark greenish grey eyes. Those features felt rightly her's. But her black hair, aside from being far longer than it had been, was filled with strands of gold that couldn't have been her natural hair color.
It reminded her of the tinsel that was sewn into the hair of a doll brand that had ended awhile ago. The gold serving as highlights.
The features of her face and eyebrows had been shifted to something she'd seen before but didn't recall on her own face. Something serious and yet beautiful, a heart shaped face as opposed to her previous round one.
Her eyes blinked in disbelief backing away from the mirror.
"Your Majesty, Aphrodite Olympian, are you ill? You're staggering," the voice of concern from a maid to her right drew her frazzled attention and immediately she felt like the wind had been knocked out of her.
"I... I don't know what's happened,"
'Here your Majesty, allow me to escort you to your room. You must be exhausted after waking up from such an injury." The comforting female voice urged and they slowly made their way from the mirror.
Absently she noted that compared to the maid helping her she was rather tall. Possibly taller than she had been before.
All at once with a sickening clarity it had hit her. And she almost actually collapsed with this revelation.
She died before. When that gang member shot her and she bled to death in her friend's arms.
But how had she ended up here?
She hadn't even read the novel for all her friend's insisting and for all the trending videos from other readers and influencers on the internet.
She had no idea how she was going to survive here. It was only a matter of time before they realized she wasn't actually Princess Aphrodite Olympian. No matter how many memories she managed to recover.