"Guy. Selan. You too are fated to travel and do battle."

The floor was pulled out from beneath her. The sun fell out of the sky and her heart dropped into her stomach.

She heard Selan and Guy form some words, no doubt in surprise and happiness at being "fated" to travel alongside Maxim. But what about me? she asked herself. Asked Iris too, in a way that couldn't be heard and was spoken with eyes instead of lips. What about me? Where do I go?

She played with the thought of just running out of the tower, running down past all the monsters and all the traps with only her chain whip to defend her. Not a single tear would rain down, however, because she was a dried well inside. She would never cry again.

But she could grieve, and would grieve, because this was it; this was all her fears confirmed. Ever since Parcelyte, ever since that time they spent in the shrine to the north searching for that golden sword, she'd acquired this horrible internal monologue that nagged at her whenever she thought about Maxim. He could never be with you, it would say. You're a world apart.

Yet of Selan and Maxim it would say, Destined. Fated. Written in the stars. Two of a kind. Lots of ugly comparisons, verses from a poem she would never normally read, but so numbingly addictive that she couldn't close the book and forget them. She wasn't blind; she could see. She could see that Selan and Maxim were almost like two halves of the same being.

Damn, more poetry. She bit down on it with a force that shone in her dark eyes, normally soulful but now burning with rage. The green fires of jealousy: perhaps her eyes were now jade instead of their normal brown.

She threw a glance at a smiling Selan. Tall, beautiful Selan. Oh, she had been green-eyed from the start! Even Guy and Maxim saw it. It was a moment full of flushed cheeks and put-offs murmured in undertone. She wished she could forget it, but just like the poetic promises of a romance between two others, she could not dismiss it. It was as persistent as she was. It was a part of her, acute observations her own mind formed while traveling with the others. The internal monologue was her own. It was warning her against an inevitable heartbreak.

Iris never once spoke to her directly. It was as though she was ignoring her somehow, or visibly making it apparent that she didn't consider the fighter-in-training to be worth addressing. Or including. The worst feeling in the world: to be shut out.

I hate you, she thought, and she knew very well that she had addressed multiple individuals with that statement. Iris who ignored her. Selan who was too nice to her to hate completely. Guy who alternately ignored her too or treated her with kid gloves. And Maxim, in whose eyes she no longer saw the sun rise. Instead, their navy depths spoke only of a nighttime devoid of starlight.

Maxim turned around and said something. "Tia...are you okay?"

His words were only an echo.