“So allow me to ask you… what do you wish for the most?”
“I wish I could go somewhere else,” I whispered, my eyes stinging as I clutched the stone in my hand. “A world like I’ve only seen in my dreams. Somewhere I can call home and feel like I belong. I want to love and be loved for who I am, not who others want me to be.”
But nothing in life was ever achieved by wishing for it. As awesome as it would be for Lupin to be some wish-granting wizard, things like that didn’t exist in real life.
Only in books.
Tomorrow was a new day.
But I knew I’d still be the same me when I woke, stuck in the same old life.
Chapter Two
Evan in Hottie Land
“Boy,” a deep voice said before something nudged my leg. “Wake up.”
I opened my eyes to a bright, sunny sky and groaned at the assault on my poor retinas. I rolled over and closed them again, resting my cheek on the soft grass.
Wait. Grass?
I flung upward and smacked my head into something hard.
“What the fuck?” I rubbed at my forehead and cracked open my eyelids. A dark shape hovered in front of me. As the sleepy haze cleared from my vision, I made out a pair of broad shoulders and something shiny covering them, like metal. Well, that was the culprit. The metal had made a littledingsound as my head banged right into it.
“You don’t look to be bleeding,” that same deep voice said before he touched my head. His face then came into view, and I forgot all about my aching noggin. He had a sharp jawline and blue eyes surrounded by long, dark lashes. Short black hair was swept back, though a strand of his bangs fell forward. “Who are you?”
“I was about to ask you that same question.”
His brow tapered. “I’m Maddox, captain of the Second Order of Knights. Now, state your name.”
Captain of the knights? I tore my gaze from him and checked out my surroundings. I was in a grassy field with a forest to one side of me and a dirt road on the other. In the distance, smoke spilled out from the chimneys of small wooden houses—some made of stone—with a backdrop of rolling hills.
What the hell was this, some kind of LARPing retreat? It was a form of live-action role-playing where you dressed up in full costume and gear and went on quests, usually with a group of friends. The events sometimes took place in the countryside to add to that medieval-fantasy atmosphere.
I’d never been to one but had, secretly, wanted to.
“Look, Mr. Captain of the Knights, I have no idea where I am right now. Mind breaking character for a moment to tell me how I got here?”
Last thing I remembered was leaving the festival and going home. How did I go from being a blanket burrito in my bed to lying in a field in the middle of freaking nowhere?
“Breaking character?” he asked, hand moving to rest on the hilt of his sword. Damn. This guy was the real deal. I’d handled enough cosplay weapons in my life to know the real thing when I saw it. He must’ve spent a small fortune on his costume. “You are on the outskirts of Bremloc. You’re fortunate you weren’t attacked in the dead of night being this close to the dark wood.”
“The dark wood?” I glanced at the forest. “Ah, are you on a quest to vanquish the dense fog of miasma poisoning the people of, what did you call it, Bremloc? Do demons live inside the forest and attack anyone who enters? I’m not sure what the rules are for this role-play.”
“Role-play? You say such strange things. Yet, you have yet to tell me your name. I suggest you do so now.”
“I’m Evan. Lord of the Muffins.”
“Lord of the… Muffins? I am unfamiliar with this title.”
“It’s new.”
His gaze moved down my body in a way that made my face hot. “Why do you dress this way?”
“What way?” I glanced at my hoodie and jeans. “Oh. I’m not in costume.”
He touched my hoodie sleeve. “Is this how people dress where you’re from? How strange.”
