“And what?” Annabeth nearly screamed, smacking her clenched fists against the table. “This isn’t easy for me, Wyatt! Do you think this is a joke? Something to laugh about and make fun of me for?”

  “Not at all. I’m not certain I’ve said anything to insinuate that,” Wyatt said, tilting his head. “Do you feel like something I’ve done has given that impression?” She sucked in a deep breath, and he held up a hand to halt her. “Before you respond, are you imposing your insecurities on the things I’m saying?”

  “Of course I am!” she blurted. She covered her mouth. “That’s… not what I meant.”

  “No, you meant what you said. I don’t blame you,” he said, shrugging. “Takes a lot of practice to know when to take someone at face value and when to be skeptical. I’ll state my motive, and you can decide what to do or how to react from there.”

  She lowered her hands and rested them against the table, eyeing him with great intensity. “Why do you want to work with me? You’ve been too—”

  “You asked the question, so let me answer,” he interrupted.

  Her lips pressed into a firm line.

  “Thank you,” he said, shaking out his nervous hands. When he figured out what to say, he cleared his throat and leaned forward. “I want to have a fun adventure before I die, whenever that may be, and you seem like a fun person to have along. I have no plans to go easily into the next life, and I’m going to fight against all of this,” he pointed at his eyes and then gestured towards the rest of the cafeteria, “with everything I’ve got. I’m not going to just be a tool in some messed up game of destiny, Angels, or Devils. Whatever I choose, it’ll be my choice from here on out. I’ll pave my path forward, regardless of if you’re with me or not, but I want you to be there. I’m not trying to control you. I never have and never will.”

  Blinking twice as her face reddened, she leaned back on her seat, pulled her head up, and pulled the straps. The hood tightened until he could only see a small part of her chin.

  “I don’t remember you being that easily embarrassed. Like, are you for real right now?” he asked. When she didn’t respond or show any signs of becoming less of a turtle, he grinned as he stood and switched to the other side of the table without making a sound. He straddled the bench and leaned against the table on his elbow, waiting for her to come out of her hidey-hole. When she took too long, he poked her in the ribs. “Boo!”

  “Ah!” she screamed, leaping up and away.

  Her butt smacked into the dome and threw her forward. Like a rubberband, she rebounded. Thrown off balance, she let out a startled cry as she fell forward face first.

  Wyatt caught her in his arms, and his back smacked against the side of the table. He hissed in pain for a short second before Annabeth began squirming in his arms. Her efforts resulted in both of them falling to the ground, but Wyatt made sure he controlled the descent so neither one of them got too hurt.

  He groaned as his back smacked against the tiled floor, his breath leaving his body as if scared away by a ghost. When the dust settled and they stopped moving, she straddled his stomach, wide eyes staring down into his.

  Somewhere along the way, the glasses had fallen off. Here’s to hoping they didn’t break.

  Then Annabeth’s arms wrapped around his neck and buried her head into his shoulder. The familiar softness of her clothes and body against his made his mind quiet for the first time since coming back in time.

  Wyatt sucked in a sharp breath as she squeezed tight. She must have some kind of passive enchantment card, because her strength crushed him. His already gasping breaths turned suffocated when she squeezed tighter. “Anna… beth… Killing me…”

  With painful slowness, she started to peel herself from where she’d clung to his neck. Even with the hood hiding most of her face, he could tell embarrassment and shame colored her face ruby red.

  He sighed. “Lesson learned. No playing jokes on you.”

  She smacked his arm.

  “What a way that would’ve been to go out, though,” he said with a chuckle. “Death by fiery bombshell.”

  His thoughts shifted to Cameron’s disintegrating form. A tingling sensation crossed his skin. The image of having his body eat him from the inside out until he decayed into nothing but dust and rot—

  No thanks. He’d take death by pretty girl over some self-righteous disintegration sacrifice. Nope, no way, not a chance.

  “Th—thanks for catching me.” She spoke so quietly, Wyatt struggled to hear her, but the message came across loud and clear.

  “You’re welcome. Honestly though, I didn’t expect you to respond so strongly. A harmless joke meant to break the ice turned into something like this.”

  A giggle escaped her lips. “You know, I still had fun. You just caught me off guard.”

  “That was kind of the point,” he said, running a hand through his messy hair. “So… are you getting up sometime today?”

  “No.”

  She snuggled in closer to him. Her hot breath tickled his nape as her soft body pressed against his. Fiery strands of her glowing locks drifted in front of his eyes and tickled his face.

  “We’re in a public place where people eat, Annabeth,” he muttered through clenched teeth. He hated having to break up the moment, but this level of… whatever the hell was happening would draw unwanted attention—and fast. “If you want—”

  “No time,” she said, shaking her head.

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  A sneeze tickled the back of his nostrils, but he used weaponized force of will to subdue the sensation. The last thing he wanted to do was sneeze on her and ruin a chance of—

  What am I thinking?

  The memories of a future romance and his current situation warred in his head. Looking around gave him the answer he needed. Pretty much all eyes in the cafeteria stared their way. With a little bit of wriggling to get Annabeth’s hair out of his eyes, he saw the teachers on the second level investigating the sudden disturbance. Instructor Plight was among them.

  Never before had Wyatt heard the cafeteria so quiet.

  Ah, crap. He clenched his eyes closed and breathed out slowlike to calm his quick heart. “Please find the glasses for me.”

  She wiggled on top of him for a second before the plastic material touched his chest. In the next second, he had the glasses back on. Those two seconds felt like the longest moment in his life, knowing that his Double Awakening might’ve been discovered.

  Now that the glasses rested on his face and hid the glowing eyes, he opened them again and checked the surroundings again. People still stared, but with more disbelief that Wyatt and Annabeth would do… whatever it was they were doing so publicly. No matter where he searched, he couldn’t see any hints that he’d been outed.

  But the uncertainty caused his skin to prickle and the back of his neck to sweat profusely. The mistake had ruined the moment for him, and he now wanted to be anywhere else. “Drop the barrier. Let’s head to Applications.”

  His body remained tense under hers as she groaned in his ears, and no matter how hard he tried to relax, he couldn’t. With gritted teeth, he gently moved her aside so he could look her in the eyes when he spoke again.

  “Since you’re so interested, you’ll be fine continuing this back in my room later, right?” he said with a force smirk. He didn’t want to show her how much the momentary slip bothered him, but the longer they stayed there, the more every glance his way caused him to breathe deeper. Threats were everywhere, or at least that’s what his mind and body told him.

  “In your dreams, Wyatt. That’s not happening!” she grunted, harrumphing as she smacked her hand on the table.

  Wyatt left the rest of his NutriGrub for the NaviSys to take, and when it scanned the bowl and found its remaining contents, it squawked at him. “Wyatt Calloway, your nutritional intake will suffer if you do not finish your meal. High stress detected!”

  Another chocolate bar dropped from a shoot and landed on the table for a brief moment before Annabeth snatched it up and chased after him. He’d already made it halfway across the cafeteria by the time she caught up to him. She seemed far more at ease and completely unbothered by the eyes that watched them pass.

  Wyatt barely kept his cool as the eyes burned holes into him. He ignored them to the best of his ability, and those that looked a little too hard, he committed to memory. Instructor Plight was among them, leaning over the second floor railing, his gaze fixed to them like a hawk.

  When Wyatt and Annabeth exited the cafeteria, the chilly winds smacked against them like a physical barrier. Annabeth, as always, seemed completely unfazed. He thanked the mountainous weather, as it helped him clear his mind and wash away much of the fearful paranoia that had begun taking root in his mind.

  The two cards in his pocket burned like coals. Were a teacher to come after them after that display or his strange behavior after, they could search him. A teacher like Instructor Plight. Without proof of how he acquired the two Legendary-rank Cards, the staff had every right to confiscate his most trusty summons.

  He didn’t want to meander any longer and made a quick pace across the campus to their next class. Probably a little earlier than necessary, but he doubted anyone would bother them for showing sooner rather than later. If anything, they’d probably be impressed by mistaken enthusiasm and then go into some lecture about how to not be so eager to throw away their lives.

  Whatever, he groused, trying to stabilize his fluctuating mood. He went over the plan in his mind. Stay under the radar to the best of his abilities, get his license, then restructure his deck into ten cards that would unlock some Class options that would allow him to…

  What? Defeat an army of Devils himself? Accept the duty placed upon him by the Angels in their fight against the Devils?

  “Hey!” Annabeth shouted in his face, dragging him to a stop outside the Applications building. “What in the name of Riacore is going on with you?””

  He clenched his jaw and stared at her. What was bothering him? He took a few moments to introspect and found the answer quite obvious. “I don’t feel safe anywhere.”

  “Oh, I get that,” she said with a grin, then saw his disapproving scowl. “It’s not funny, just relatable. If my father knew I was here, he’d kill me.”

  “What?” The question slipped out unbidden. He’d had a lot of time to think about the girl he’d been fascinated by for nearly a decade. That retrospection had made him realize he’d known very little about her. Not her family, not the real reason behind why she searched for the answers to Riacore’s mysteries, almost nothing. “Surely it’s not that bad?”

  She grimaced. “You don’t know my father. He’s a real piece of work. Where I come from… I ran away when I was a kid, you know?” Her eyes trailed up to the cloudy sky, unable to meet his gaze. “I’ve been on my own, always looking for a sign that his men had finally caught up. Analyzing each and every face for a trace hint of more than what one would expect from rural villagers, citygoers, or whatever. I know exactly what it's like to see everyone as a potential enemy, a threat. There is nowhere safe for me should people know who my father is.”

  Wyatt let her words hang there. She didn’t offer anything more after that, wistfully glancing at him, then elsewhere. He nodded to himself, his chest bubbling with so many things he didn’t know how to handle. This was progress though. More information about where she’d come from than he’d ever known before.

  But why?

  He put that aside and went back to her original question. “You don’t remember him, but we used to have another student in our classes, Cameron.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” she said, her lips thinning.

  He nodded. “Nobody else seems to remember him, except Instructor Plight. His eyes kept lingering on the empty seat next to me where Cameron kept sitting. He is… was my best friend, but as it turns out, he kept a whole lot of secrets.”

  “Right, in this future you lived through.” She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment. “What does it mean that he’s not here now? What did he do before? What changes now?”

  Wyatt took a deep breath, collecting the paranoia into his lungs, the fear of exactly the answer to that question, and exhaled. “It’s been less than half a day since I woke up in this life, and I can confidently say the answer to that question is… everything. Everything changes. And I don’t know what he did before. He was powerful, always had been. A prodigious Paladin. He’d go out on these days long trips, supposedly to meet with a mentor, and had the clearance from the administration to do it—or so that’s what he used to tell me when I asked.”

  She grunted. “If we assume everything he told you was a lie?”

  “That’s… what I’m wrapping my head around.” He organized his thoughts, looking around to make sure they still remained alone, then answered. “Cameron was an Archangel, Annabeth. Split into pieces to hunt down fragments of another.” He tapped his chest. “And I’m the vessel. So I’m guessing that’s what he did when he went on those trips, but since I have no idea where the other Archangel’s pieces wound up.”

  “So let me get this right. This guy, Cameron, might’ve been delving into Riacore to wipe out a bunch of baddies, one dungeon zone after another, or dealing with Incursions on this side, and now he’s not here to do all that?” He gave her a moment longer to think, and her eyes widened.