Six hours later. In Princess Orchid’s private lab

"And done!" Anna exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air. Her joints popped loudly, and her muscles ached from sitting in the exact same position for so long. She rolled her shoulders back, groaning as the pain shot through her body, but the sheer satisfaction she felt far outweighed the annoying pain.

Pride bloomed in her heart and a big smile appeared on her face. "In my next life, I’m definitely going into STEM." She announced to the empty room.

Leaning back in her chair, she stared at the glowing stones laid out in front of her desk in neat, orderly fashion. Every single of them was now programmed and ready to be put back into the detectors they came from.

Thoughts of the incident at the inn rushed to the front of Anna’s mind as she recalled everything that happened just to get these stones.

I won’t let it go to waste! And I won’t ever be so blind again as to trust an enemy.

But for a traitorous second, Anna wondered what had become of Tristan. Was he okay? Or was he back to his AI beast family, terrorizing other beastkin and making life hell?

"Why do I care?" With a loud huff, she got to her feet. "He can die if he wants."

Her mind made up, she gathered the stones and put them inside a small pouch. She’d long since told Kai to leave, so she could work in silence. With no one else around, she took the pouch and returned to the palace. There she found a guard. After giving him strict orders to deliver the pouch to the barracks, she returned back to her lab to complete the rest of her work.

Once she was alone, the comfortable silence of the lab settled all around her. The first thing she did was arrange the tables covered in multiple books and equipment. But as she worked, her mind drifted right back to a few hours ago.

Kai.

She couldn’t get him out of her head as much as she tried. Even as the programmed the stones, she kept thinking about him.

He didn’t stop when I said no.

Rubbing her arms, she recalled the pain and anguish in his voice when he said that. And how bright he was right after. Like it was nothing, like it didn’t matter. Anna paced the lab, her cleaning long forgotten. Her heart filled with sadness and her fists clenched with anger.

I need to know what happened.

But how, how could she help him when she didn’t even know where to start from?

She tried again, searching through all the memories of Princess Orchid. None of them contained any information about Kai beyond the point Villis gave him to her. She didn’t even know where he was from, or if he had a family.

Fuck! Villis is dead.

On one hand, Anna felt furious at Tristan for killing Villis. Then she recalled how slimy she felt in the man’s precedence, and how just seeing him made Kai go crazy at the party, and her anger at Tristan ebbed just a bit.

Anna ran her fingers through her hair, her mind racing for an alternative.

Did Villis have associates? Can I track them down? Maybe Orchid had some written information about him.

Determined, Anna went back to cleaning up. Once she was done, she took out some old documents piled inside the desks and began leafing through them. Most of them were boring paper work, random observations, and the occasional coded language that the Princess used for as a personal joke.

At the bottom of the drawer, Anna’s fingers brushed against a thick leather book.

"Huh?" She frowned, taking out the book. "How did this get here?" It was the journal given to her by the System as a reward some weeks ago. Anna recalled bringing it to the lab but she didn’t remember putting it inside the drawer.

Curious, she opened it and began flipping through the pages. The handwriting was elegant but cold, lacking in soul. The first time Anna read it, she was horrified at what she found. But now that she had all of Princess orchid’s memories, she wasn’t so worried again.

The first pages were boring and normal, so Anna skipped through them. But at the middle of the journal, something changed.

The handwriting became more frantic. Like The Princess was in a hurry to get something urgent down.

The entry caught Anna’s eye. It had no date, no title, no subject, which was strange given how meticulous Princess Orchid was in her writing.

My heats are not a blessing. They’re a biological weapon, and I was foolish to think they’d ever help anyone.

"Biological weapon?" Anna frowned, her heart skipping as she flipped the next page.

They said I’m the Orchid beastbloom, the rarest of all Beastblooms. A rare fertility boost. They said I should be able to increase our birth rates. Fools. All of them fools. They don’t know what they’re talking about.

"What the fuck?" Anna gasped. Her heart picked up, hammering in her chest like a war drum. She sat down on the floor, too distracted and stunned to even reach for a chair. Her grip on the book tightened as she read more and more.

The journal was filled with Orchids deep anger and frustration at her own body. She’d written in full detail the difference between an orchid and a lotus beastbloom. In her words, my sister is the real fertility boost. She can control her heats. Her spores are better than mine. She’s the real beastbloom. Why don’t they hail her as such?

The more Anna read the more she realized one thing—Princess Orchid wanted to help. She wanted to solve the declining birth rates. She’d hoped to use her heats to do that. But for whatever reason, which wasn’t even written down yet, she couldn’t.

Anna’s chest tightened with each page she turned. Over and over again, the same theme repeated.

I’m a failure.

And down on the current page, written in blurred ink, were the words; I want to bring life back, bring children to the palace again, but I cannot even conceive a child of my own. My heat does nothing but destroy and destroy. My Leila...my sweet innocent Leila, I failed my own daughter.

Drax tells me everything will be okay. He’s a fool. I’m a fool. The southern idiots are all fools. Even Leon and Liora who—

Anna turned the next page.

It was blank.

"No no no no!" Anna exclaimed, flipping through the pages fast, as if doing so would bring the lost words back. "What do you mean a weapon?! What do you mean?!" She screamed into the book.

No one answered.

No memory sparked in her head.

The memories surrounding this journal were all fuzzy, like they’d been blotted out of the princess’s mind.

Anna’s heart sank. How could it end here?! What about Leon and Liora? What did they do? Was this entry written before Liora, Aka Lotus entered her coma? What happened before then?

Anna screamed, tugging at her hair as the questions echoed in her skull. Unease washed over her.

This felt wrong. Very wrong.

Princess Orchid, who was a meticulous and detailed person at heart, keeping record of everything, not finishing that record?

Why?

Anna checked the journal again to make sure a page wasn’t torn off. There was no ripped pages. No sign of anything being tampered with. The pages were empty.

"This doesn’t make any sense!" Anna got to her feet. Anxiety sparked inside her, and she decided she must know everything that happened.

She began tearing through the lab. Opening drawers, cabinets, pulling out every single journal she could find.

She gathered them all and laid them on the floor. For the next two hours, only the sounds of rustling paper and frantic turning of pages filled the air. Anna swiped through page after page after page till her eyes grew blurry.

And yet, she found nothing.

Nothing on the heats. Nothing on Leila. Nothing on Leon, or even Liora.

Nothing.

It was all records of experiments and random information that Anna didn’t care about.

Disheveled, Anna stood in the middle of the mess, her chest rising and falling rapidly. A cold feeling smothered down her spine.

Did someone tamper with Princess Orchid’s memories?

Was that even possible?

Anna’s mind when to the Dream Weavers. From what she’d eeen, they were the only beasts in this world capable of tampering with memories.

But why will a Dream Weaver tamper with the Princess’s memories?

Who sent it?

Anna’s mind raced and raced till she had a headache. Yet she wasn’t able to come up with a solid answer.

Only one thought stood out in her mind.

If there was one person who could give her accurate information about what transpired during Princess Orchid’s previous heats, that will be Drax.

And the last thing Anna wanted to do, the same reason she’d been avoiding all thoughts of him, was fear.

Every memory of Drax was intense. Filled with an all consuming love, devotion, and obsession. Anna’s head filled with these memories, all of them real, none of them belonging to her.

Goosebumps covered Anna’s skin and she hugged herself, trembling all over. Yet, even as fear twisted in her guts, she couldn’t let this to. This was too big, too intense to just sleep it off and let it go.

She needed answers. And for whatever reason, she felt like a clock was ticking down in her head.

"I’m fucked."