Page 83 of Hidden Kingdoms

“Good.” She smiled at me, and I felt as if I’d just passed some test I didn’t know I had been taking part in.

“Tell me what happened.” Her voice was calm, but there was no doubt it’d been an order.

Taking a moment, I gathered my thoughts before speaking. “He was waiting for me when I came in from the garden, said he was my guard now. He touched me, and my magik wouldn’t respond, so I kneed him in the dick?—”

She cackled with glee, and I turned to her in shock. “I heard you were fond of punching people in the face but kneeing someone in the dick is even better.”

It only took a second to realise she was talking about Bastian. That I had punched the fucking prince of this kingdom, and I groaned at the memory. How many people knew about that?

“Sorry,” Alouette said, mirth still in her voice. “Continue, you kneed him in the dick and then…”

“And then I ran. He caught me and then he… well, he caught me. When my magik finally responded, it—” How do I even describe what I did?

“It smashed his piece of shit body into the wall so hard, you cracked the stone?” she offered, and my eyes flew wide.

“Did I really?” Granted, I was more focused on his mangled body, but surely I hadn’t cracked stone?

“I dunno, you might have?” she said with a shrug and an easy smile. “Too much blood for me to know for sure. I’ll ask Marcellus when he’s done handling his emotions.”

Up ahead, sunlight filtered into the corridor from windows that looked out at the vast forest I could see from my own window. We must be on the right side of the castle now.

For once I was looking forward to being in my room.

I needed to be out of these clothes, to burn them if I could. I needed to rid my skin of the memory of his clammy hands on me.

“How do you know Marcellus? Are you a guard, too?” I would use her as a distraction to not be alone with my thoughts before it was absolutely necessary.

“I am definitely not a guard. And neither is Marcellus, so don’t let him hear you say that, or he’ll get his knickers in an even bigger twist then they are now.” She smirked at me, leaving unspoken what we were both thinking, but I couldn’t understand how it could be true.

That his anger hadn’t been because I hurt someone. It was because someone hurtme. There was a tiny flutter of magik inside me, like butterfly wings on my soul, that was preening at that fact.

“As forhowI know him,” she started, her teasing coming to an end, “I grew up in Aerius, though I wasn’t born there. I wasa scrappy thing back then, and one of the High Court found me, decided I could be of some worth if I was trained up a bit. When I met Marcellus, he trained me, too. I… left, for a while and when I came back, I was even better than before so he asked me to join him here, and I did. I’ve been with him ever since. Notwithhim, with him, of course,” she added with a wink.

“That was a lot of words for very little information,” I said, and she snorted a laugh.

“It was. Much of it isn’t mine to tell, so I won’t.”

Fair enough.

“Marcellus was born in Aerius, wasn’t he?” The information I’d gotten from Kaius was starting to help.

“Did the howling wind give it away?” A small smile played on my lips.

We turned a corner that I recognised and saw the guard standing against the wall outside my room, looking in the opposite direction. From here, I couldn’t tell if it was the one who had taken me to the gardens.

Had they been in on it together? Was I going to be left locked in that room with this man outside who would try and do the same thing?

A noxious mix of disgust and anger filled me as magik trickled into my hands. I wouldn’t let that happen again.

Alouette gave me an approving look before a pulse of calm radiated from her; it nudged into my side, reminding me of when Titan would bump into me back home. Too soon it was gone, and I ached for its comforting touch as the guard turned our way. It was the same one from this morning, his face scrunched into deep lines of confusion when he saw me.

“What—” he began, before Alouette lifted a hand and he clutched at his throat, eyes popping wide with shock.

“Is he the guard from this morning?” she asked, as his eyes whipped back and forth between us.

“Yes.” I held myself high, because if he was in on it, I wouldn’t let him see he had affected me.

His face began to turn red, and he scrabbled at his neck, desperate to break the invisible bonds cutting off his airway as he sank to the floor on his knees. Alouette’s finger twitched again, and the man gasped, sucking in harsh breaths as his face began to regain some colour.

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