I found myself being yanked forward. I let out a sharp shriek as Kai grabbed me and deposited me between his bent legs. He held me in place in front of him, his face thunderous.
“What the heck are you doing?” he shouted.
I wanted to cover my ears and hum a tune to block out what was happening like I did when I was a kid. “Take me home, please.”
“I...” he was at a loss for words. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want to have an argument right now and we’re incapable of spending five minutes together without getting into a screaming match.”
“Alright, calm down.”
It was like he had never had a normal conversation before. “Don’t tell me to calm down! All I did was space out a little and suddenly you’re angry?”
I’d never seen his eyes bulge like that. He wasn’t exactly the poster boy for laid-back but there was always something precise about the way he reacted. Right now, it seemed like he was losing control. He funnelled it into a scary kind of pretend-calm.
“Suddenly?” he said, like I was too stupid to understand what words meant. “Suddenly? I tell you I love you and you don’t speak for five whole minutes and now I’m the one being yelled at.”
“What are you talking about? I did say something.”
He did that no-talking eyes-closed meditation thing again. “No, you did not.”
I tried to recall what had happened right after he spoke. It was all fuzzy and scattered. I thought I’d said something, but there was the off chance I had just filed it away in my brain-vault with the things I wanted to remember forever.
“I...” My throat clogged. There would be no going back. His eyes peeled open. He watched me like a predator, and I didn’t shrink back. Spoken or unspoken, it wouldn’t change the way I felt.
“I love you, too.”
I waited for someone to jump out at us from the bushes and yell “just joking.” Or to wake up from this dream. A wide grin broke out on his face. He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me.
“Was that so hard?” he asked, with that arrogant glint in his eyes.
“Yes,” I said with all of the walls stripped down. He crushed me against his chest.
“It’ll get easier,” he said. “Once the Council realises I’m not going to change my mind, they’ll have to get with the program.”
“What if they don’t?”
“They have to.” Spoken like a true prince. He never even considered the alternative which would result in various shades of awful for me. Like him cheating on me with Chanelle whether he wanted to or not.
I shivered at the prospect. He took off his outer shirt and wrapped me in it. Without streetlights to disrupt them, the stars and moon were out in profusion. There was enough light to see the soft smile on his face.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked him.
“How do you know I wasn’t thinking about you?”
“For one, you’re not scowling.”
He hugged me closer. His palm splayed on my shoulder blade. Right below where my heart was situated. “I don’t know if it’ll help.”
“Let’s just see if it does,” I suggested. “If not, you can stop at any time.”
So we sat there for half the night while he told me about his family. When the cold started to make me shiver, he used his angelfire to warm me. It was a strange sensation I’d never felt before. It wasn’t unpleasant, but I could feel my magic reacting oddly. Like it was trying to decide whether it wanted to allow this intrusion. I wriggled a little in his hold.
“Too much?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “What kind of magic is that?”
“The same kind as always. Maybe you’re just tired.”
I had been drifting off a little. But I didn’t want this night to end.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
“But –”
“It’s okay. This isn’t the last night we’ll ever have.”
“Maybe for just a second.”
I fell asleep in a heartbeat.
My magic was no longer fighting his. Angelfire seeped into my skin, blanketing my senses in a feeling of warm euphoria. I wasn’t sure how I ended up in my bed, but I turned my face to the wall.
The dream materialised all around me. My whole body tensed. I had been conditioned to expect awful things to try and reach me here. Instead, I watched Kai step out onto the ground of the Academy. Dawn was breaking through the early-morning sky. He had on sweats. He was just about to lift off when his head turned towards a figure approaching from the direction of Pantheon.
And here came the nightmare. I knew it couldn’t last.
Chanelle picked her way across the damp grass in a long black trench coat and bare legs. She wasn’t even wearing shoes. I wasn’t sure why, but I was suddenly hit with a notion that she might be nude under the coat.
Kai turned as though he might pretend he didn’t see her. I felt his consternation as if it were my own. She called out his name.
He stood stock still. She reached him. If she were anyone else, he might have met her on the grass so she didn’t hurt her feet on the stone path. I felt his temper fraying at the edges.
“You were gone all day,” she said. “I was hoping to see you for your birthday.”
It was a far cry from what she’d said to him on the last birthday they’d spent together. He smirked as he remembered she’d also tried to throw something at him. But it wasn’t out of sheer passionate anger the way I had. It was because he’d forgotten he’d agreed to go to some party she had thrown for him. And her anger was rooted in a sense of shame.
