Chapter 21 #2
The auburn-haired girl’s hands shook as she covered her mouth. Obviously, neither of them was used to seeing any sort of violence. To be fair, fights never broke out at Woodvine Academy. And if they did, they were usually of the hair-pulling variety.
“Is he okay?” she whimpered.
I glanced down at Eric, groaning on the ground as he held his hand to his jaw. “Motherfucker. You’ll pay for this,” he mumbled through what I knew was a bruising headache.
“I’m terrified.” I rolled my eyes. “Now, get up and leave. Don’t even look at her again, much less speak to her.”
“Fuck you,” Eric spat with red saliva dribbling from the corners of his mouth.
“Sorry, but no thanks. Now, get the fuck away from us.”
Eric scrambled to his feet, glaring promises of sweet human retribution as he backed away, the two girls flanking both sides of him as he did.
I held his scowl with an amused smirk until they all disappeared from sight. Once they were gone, leaving Gray and me alone on the playground, I looked at her, appraising her from head to toe for any harm. “You okay?”
The princess deadpanned. “I’m fine. That was nothing, and I could’ve handled it on my own.”
“I know you could, but you don’t have to,” I responded with a shrug.
“I don’t need a bodyguard to follow me around.” The conviction in her voice began to falter.
I shook my head. “No, you don’t. But a friend wouldn’t hurt.”
Gray met my eyes. All her emotions rippled in her oceanic depths. “I…I don’t think I’d make a very good friend.” She hugged herself tighter, dropping her heavy gaze to the ground.
“You don’t have to do anything. Just be you. I’ll be a good friend for the both of us.”
“That doesn’t sound very fair,” she murmured. “I may not have many friends, but I know that friendship is a two-way street.”
I took a small step closer to her. “Yeah, usually that is the case. But having friends means they’re there for you when you need it most. To be your strength until you can be your own.”
“I can be my own strength…”
I shook my head. “No, Princess. You can’t. Not right now. And that’s okay. I’m here to help you with that. To remind you that you’re not alone anymore.”
“I just…don’t understand. I can’t figure out why you’re being nice to me. Are you planning to trick me or something?”
With a gentle smile and shake of my head, I reassured her. “Not at all. I’m here to help you. Protect you. Train you.” I took her palm in mine and placed the necklace in the center. “To be your friend.”
Gray’s fingers closed around the black crystal just before she peeked up through her lashes to hold my gaze. Hope shone in her icy stare, but it was accompanied by fear. Fear of betrayal. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“No need to thank me at all. It’s what friends do. I wasn’t going to let weak humans treat my princess like that.”
Gray snorted. “It’s nothing new. The humans here have always treated me like shit,” she said with a shrug.
I narrowed my eyes. “Why, though?”
“I guess because I’ve always been quiet?
Different? I don’t like being in crowds or having attention on me.
Never have. So, I’ve always tried to avoid it.
But it only seemed to attract them more.
They used to make fun of my glamoured hair.
They called me all kinds of names because of it.
Said I was too skinny. I suppose I’m weird for humans.
Maybe there’s just something wrong with me that makes people—”
“No.” I insisted. “Gray, there’s nothing wrong with you. Do you hear me?”
The princess rolled her eyes but forced a smile on her face anyway. “I hear you, but I don’t believe you. When literally everyone in my life is intent on showing me how shitty I am, I’m going to be inclined to think that I’m the problem.”
“It’s not everyone in your life, though,” I argued, searching her eyes, watching her steel walls firmly construct itself behind her blank expression. “I don’t think that. Not at all. And like I’ve told you before, there are others who are on your side, but the king…”
“Yeah,” she huffed, breaking eye contact and the moment with it. “I know. The king likes to exaggerate things about me a bit—”
“Not that,” I interrupted. “He threatens those who seem sympathetic to you. Basically, endangering their livelihood or reputation if they go against him.”
“Well, there’s a great deal more of our people who are in his corner.” Gray ran her fingers down her pleated skirt, adjusting the tie our uniform dictated we wore. “Doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“It does matter. Don’t lose hope.”
“I’m not allowed to hope, Slate. I don’t get that luxury.”
My heart sank for Gray. I wanted nothing more than to take the princess far away from the cutthroat society of Kinetic royalty. I wanted to protect and hide her if only to give her a chance to have hope and experience genuine happiness in life.
I looked around the empty playground and furrowed my brows. “What are you doing out here anyway?”
Princess Gray shrugged again and turned, heading for the swings. She grabbed the chains on one before sitting on it as her feet dug into the dirt beneath the sawdust.
I couldn’t help but stare at how pretty she was, but just beneath her helpless exterior lay a faint level of danger. When she shot me a questioning look, scrunching her brows, I snapped out of my stupor. I started toward her on the swings and took a seat beside her, relieved that spring was here.
The chain bit into my palms, reminding me of some of the trainings and missions I’d been on which had involved metal restraints. “So?” I pressed. “Why’d you come out here?”
“Reminds me of…” the princess started, “of a certain memory that is super fuzzy. I keep hoping if I come out here enough, it’ll jog my brain to remember the details.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding. “Must’ve been a good memory then?”
Gray chuckled. “Hardly,” she retorted but smiled wistfully to herself anyway. “Well, it kinda was in a weird way.”
“What happened?” I asked, wondering if it was the memory from all those years ago.
Gray breathed in a deep breath, sat up, and walked the swing backward so she stood on her tiptoes before she jumped, plopping her butt in the seat. She swung forward, then pumped her legs back, climbing higher and faster as her ice-blonde hair whipped around her face and the chains she clung to.
“I was being bullied by some kids. Nothing unusual. But a boy showed up. One I’d never seen before.
I could tell he wasn’t human. His eyes…his bright blue eyes were so unnatural they couldn’t have been normal human eyes.
He stopped the bullies. With his magic. He said he was ten, but his magic literally destroyed the playground,” she explained, her breaths growing shorter with each pump of her legs.
She looked at me from the side as she swung back and forth in a reclined position, her long hair sweeping the sawdust beneath her. “Do you remember?”
“I do.” My head shifted from left to right as I watched, mesmerized, as she swung in a carefree freefall, thinking this was possibly the lightest I’d ever seen her.
My heart did somersaults as I sat enthralled.
I cleared my throat. “The playground was quite the spectacle when I saw it later that day. It was an Elemental kid, right?” I asked, playing into the false information that Forest had spread about the event.
“It was an Elemental, yes. I remember that much,” she mused, tipping her head all the way back, gazing at the clouds. “But that’s where it’s weird. I can’t…really remember much else about him. But he felt…familiar. Like I’ve met him before somehow.”
Alarms went off in my head, wondering if she could regain her full memory of that day, and if she did, would she piece together that the Elemental boy had actually been Chrome Freyr. And if she learned of that, what would that mean for her regarding her father?
“Perhaps you’d just seen him on the playground before,” I suggested.
As Gray’s swing slowed, she sat up straight again to begin pumping her legs. “Maybe…” But I could tell she didn’t quite believe the idea.
The bell rang, cutting short our conversation and signaling for us to return to class. Instead of slowing the swing to a stop, Gray jumped from it and soared through the air, her skirt flying up at her waist. On instinct, I turned my head out of respect.
“See you in the morning,” the princess said as she landed on both feet. She pulled the necklace from her pocket and carefully tied it around her neck. “Thank you again for getting this back.”
I questioned if she would actually show up this time.
For the past few weeks, she hadn’t shown up for any of the trainings.
I began to wonder if the decision for her training had been pulled by the king, but my father insisted that it wasn’t the case.
The only reason I could fathom was that she was being punished for something.
And I assumed that withholding her from training was now part of that punishment.
“It’s what friends do.” I offered a soft smile and rose from the swing. “See you in training in the morning, I hope. You’ll be there this time, right?”
Gray’s eyes lit with excitement. “Yeah. See you in the morning. It’s a Saturday,” she said. “I never get to leave the suite on Saturdays.”