At Last, I Shall Make Life Bloom.

***

Slightly earlier.

After the audience, Duke left Providence Castle at a brisk pace.

The bone fragment was still floating above his palm.

A faint sense of anticipation colored his steps as he moved away from the audience chamber.

‘If it isn’t a misconception.’

If what moved this world was not a misconception centered on Rex, but the natural order of things.

‘If this isn’t a dream.’

If this world, though its laws of physics differed slightly from those of the world he’d lived in during his previous life, followed the same laws of cause and effect.

To prove it, as soon as he left the castle, he cast a tracking spell on the bone fragment and tossed it into a flower bed...