Chapter 22 #2
“Lexie!” She rushed over to us. “Lexie, you did so well! I had no idea you had any healer training!”
“I don’t.” She looked shocked, so I added, “Andrei gave me the basics, but otherwise, nothing. How is he?”
“He’s going to be fine. You bought us enough time to stabilize him. They’re working on transferring him to the healing wing now.”
I sighed in relief.
“Healer Abgrall!” a demanding voice called out.
She made a face. “Gotta go!”
Freya scurried through the crowd that had formed, drawn by the excitement.
Finn approached us. “Heads up. Lady Ambition is looking for you,” was all he had time to get out, before we were set upon by the person who was quickly becoming my least favorite person here—after Zachariah. Aine.
“Griffin,” she cooed, her eyes immediately taking in his bare arms. She pressed against his side, one hand trailing along his bicep. “I heard you saved that poor little soldier boy.”
I wanted to kill her.
Griff took a deliberate step back, dislodging her wandering hands. “That was all the princess.”
Aine’s eyes flicked to me with barely concealed disdain, taking in my bloodstained clothes and disheveled post-training appearance.
She sniffed delicately before she moved in again and placed a possessive hand on his chest. “How can you even spend time with her Griffin?” she wailed.
“She’s so… rough. So… unrefined. So… common. ”
Finn made a choking sound that might have been suppressed laughter.
I was starting to vibrate with the effort of keeping myself contained. I really wanted to kill her.
“I have no idea what you mean.” Griff kept his calm facade, but I could hear the steel and irritation underneath. He removed her hand from his chest with deliberate precision.
Aine’s lower lip trembled. “She attacked me during Ignistar! She burned my arm!”
“I know exactly how much power I hit her with,” I thought to Finn. “It would have faded within a day if it left a mark at all.”
“Our little schemer will take any excuse,” came his amused reply.
“You need to think long and hard about accusing the princess of bodily harm.” Griff’s voice was ice.
He thrust her aside, as her mouth fell open in shock.
“But, Griffin,” she spluttered, “we were so good together! Think of what we could accomplish! What we could do for Serentyn—”
“Serentyn,” Griff interrupted, his tone brutal, “does not need schemers like you.” He roughly shouldered her out of his way and, to further cement his point, held out his hand to me. “Princess.”
I took it gratefully, blood-stained and all. Followed by Finn, we left her gaping like a fish gasping for air.
Finn could barely contain his mirth as we entered the passageway back to the main castle. “Did you see her face?” he was chortling. “That was delicious. And to think, she tried to accuse Lexie of causing physical damage to her. What is she thinking?”
Griff was a thundercloud. “There’s nothing funny about this situation. She accused the princess of assault.”
“With what evidence?” Finn was still laughing as Griff turned to me.
“Did you burn her, Lexa?” His voice was intense.
“Maybe a little.” I held my ground as his face went blank, and not in a good way. Really? He was going to take Aine’s side without hearing mine?
Maybe I was just a duty.
“You can’t just go around burning anyone who irritates you.” He spoke to me like I was a child who had been caught misbehaving.
“Are you the same Griff who told me ‘I will not be held responsible for what happens to people who touch you without permission’?” I asked him incredulously, pitching my voice low to mimic his tone.
“She was touching me without permission. And refused to remove her hand, despite my asking her to do so several times. If she was a man, you would be applauding me for defending myself. So tell me, Griff, is this because she’s female or because she’s your lover? ”
His eyes went wide. “She is not my lover.”
“So I’m only allowed to defend myself against men. Got it.”
I started to walk away, but Griff’s arm shot out and captured my wrist to prevent it.
“Lexa—”
I looked pointedly at where his hand was on me and he snatched it back.
“Excuse me.” I was proud of myself for the politeness of my voice.
As I strode down the hall, I heard Finn muffling his laughter. “Well done.”
“Shut up,” Griff snapped.
I didn’t have time for Griff’s shit right now.
I focused on thinking over what I could have done differently with the boy.
If I could have acted faster. If my actions had doomed or saved him.
The other part of my brain was still dedicated to puzzling through why Cormac had that same tattoo on his arm.
There was nothing I could do about Cormac, but there was one thing I could do. One action I could take.
It still amazed me that I had figured out my way around here.
I made it to the healing wing—maybe not via the most direct route, but I didn’t get lost on the way.
Everyone was busy and I didn’t want to interrupt their important work, so I settled into a chair and prepared to wait.
As soon as I sat, the energy expenditure caught up with me and I groaned, every muscle feeling tight and weak at the same time.
I’d had no idea healing could be that energy-intensive, but it made sense.
“Lexa?”
I came back to myself. I wasn’t sure if I had dozed off or just zoned out, but I looked up to see Andrei’s kind face.
“Lexa, are you alright?”
I hastily stood. “The boy. The soldier? How—”
“He lives.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.
He put his arm around my shoulders, leading me down a hall. “You did good work. Quick thinking with him. You bought him time he desperately needed.”
We paused outside of a room, and he pushed the curtain aside slightly to reveal a bed with the boy asleep but clearly alive.
“Freya said so, but I didn’t believe it.”
He dropped the curtain. “Believe it, my dear. You were a hero today.”
We started to walk away when I halted mid-step, Andrei stopping alongside me.
“Can you teach me more?” I asked, perhaps impulsively, but feeling deep in my bones that this was important.
“Clearly, the basics were beneficial, but if I had more knowledge… I’d like to do something good with all this power. ”
His smile lit up his face. “I’d love to teach you. Yes, there is certainly more we can do.”
Feeling slightly more confident that I would at least progress in one direction under Andrei’s tutelage, I finished my day, only to find Griff waiting for me outside my door shortly before dinner—remarkable because normally all three of them just let themselves in.
He leaned against the wall, a picture of composure, except for the tension in his neck and the clench of his hands in an otherwise relaxed stance.
The feelings from earlier crashed through me as I wordlessly opened the door and he followed me inside. Shutting the door more heavily than required, I crossed my arms and stared at him. For once, I was going to make him speak first.
He winced slightly at my expression and roughly ran a hand through his hair. “I apologize, Princess.”
He stood there, just staring at me, shifting his weight to his other foot, and I waited.
“I overreacted. You were right. If I had been there and she hadn’t removed her hand from you, I would have…” He trailed off, his eyes focused somewhere beyond my head.
“What would you have done, Griff?”
His eyes snapped back to mine. “I don’t know. But I would have done something.”
I uncrossed my arms and drifted toward him. “What did you ever see in her?” I asked, my voice surprisingly steady.
His eyes flicked away, then returned to my face. “It was right after my father, and… I was lonely.”
“What happened to him?”
His face shuttered. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
That list of things he didn’t want to talk about was a long and frustrating one.
“Are you lonely now?”
He hesitated, looking down at the floor. “The Champion’s road is a solo one, Princess.”
I took another step closer to him. “It doesn’t have to be.”
“Yes, it does.”
And there it was. I shoved past him. If he was going to push me away, I was done. He was my Champion. I was his princess. Done. End of story.
“Forgive me?”
There was something about the way he asked it that made me pause. I looked back at him, but as always, couldn’t decipher what that was in his eyes. “Yes.”
And I did. For this fight, at least. But there was something between us now. I didn’t know if it was his comments to Finn about us just being friends, or his defense of Aine, or something else entirely, but there was distance that hadn’t been there before.
And so when I crawled into bed later that night, I stayed on my side. And he stayed on his.