She didn't really expect him to retaliate, so she didn't even have time to turn before a snowball hit her in the chest.
"Get him," she yelled, bending down to scoop up more snow. The few kids who had been in her group joined her, and they all made snowballs and threw them at Lex. Eventually, even the boys from his own group joined in. But whenever he threw one back, he only aimed at Aria.
In the end, he was beaten by sheer force. It was ten to one, after all.
After about half an hour, they stopped. All of their cheeks were red, and Aria's fingertips felt like they would fall off. Lex told one of the guards to take the kids inside to warm up and eat.
Aria couldn't help but feel happy. It was the most fun thing she'd done in weeks.
But after the kids left, and it was only her and Lex, it didn't seem so fun anymore. So she made her way inside, trying to forget that he, the king, just spent the morning playing with orphans he let live in his palace. And the stupid way the snowflakes tangled in his dark eyelashes.
Chapter 34
A few nights later, Lex didn't come to dinner. She and Grace ate in silence, watching the others.
"Where's Lex?" Aria asked. Mostly for something to say. The silence was becoming awkward.
"Why do you care?"
"Excuse me?"
"I said, why do you care? Haven't you written him off?" Grace asked, her voice angry.
That pissed her off. If anyone should be angry, it was her. And her friends. They were the ones that had been lied to for months.
"Do you have something to say to me, Grace? Are you seriously mad because I haven't forgiven him for lying to me for months?"
"I don't give a shit, Aria. He wanted to tell you. You know why he didn't. And I knew you'd react like this. I knew you wouldn't understand."
"Well, sorry for not being understanding, Grace. My mother-"
"Yeah yeah. Your mother. He tried to find her. You know that."
"I don't care," Aria yelled. "If he would have just told me-"
"What would you have done? Gone after them? Hah!"
"Fuck you, Grace."
"Did you forget about the fact that you guys would have all been killed if it weren't for us? If it weren't for him? We saved you. And he tried to do the same for the others. So don't act like some ungrateful little-"
"I didn't forget," Aria yelled. A few people looked up, hearing the two of them arguing. "But that doesn't give him, or you for that matter, the right to lie to us."
"Whatever," Grace said, getting up. "All I know is you've brought us nothing but trouble. We've lost our own people because of you. And you dare to sit here and act all angry because you were lied to. Like you've always been so honest. You lied to him too, remember that? You lied to protect Ben. The difference is, he didn't tell you because he was worried about how you would feel."
Aria watched her leave. She was tired of people lying to her for her own good.
After dinner, she went to her room and found Lex in bed, looking sick. She placed the back of her hand on his forehead. He was a little warm.
"You're sick," she said, shaking her head.
"I'm fine. Just a little fever, is all," he said, shrugging it off.
"You haven't eaten anything," she said. She wasn't really sure why she cared. He's the king, and you're the queen; you have to care, she told herself.
"I'm not hungry," he said back.
"Yeah, because you're sick," she said, rolling her eyes.
She left their room and went down to the kitchen. She asked one of the women to make him some soup while she went to the doctor for some medicine they were giving people to treat colds.
She (kind of reluctantly) made him some tea and put it on a tray along with the soup, and brought it up to their room. It's because you're the queen, she told herself. You have to care.
She set the tray down on her vanity table and told him to get out of bed. After a few exchanges of rude words, mostly asshole and dumbass, he got out of bed and made his way to the couch, where she placed the tray in his lap.
"Thanks," he said.
"Whatever. Just eat the soup and make sure to drink the tea," she said before heading to bed.
He did.
She urged him to stay in bed and rest the next day, and they argued for the first time in weeks. He didn't stay in bed. But he drank the tea she brought him and made sure to eat a little food during meals.
The cold passed, and he was back to his usual snarky self within a couple of days.
Aria was sitting on the couch wrapped in a thick blanket, reading one of Lex's old books when he walked into the room a few days later and placed a decent sized wooden box next to her.
"Here you go," he said. He walked away, going to his side of the room to change before she could say anything.
"What is it?" she asked.
"A present."
"A present? For what?"
"Can't a man bring his wife a present," he said, rolling his eyes.
Instead of responding with her own snarky comment, curiosity got the best of her, and she grabbed the box. She opened it and found it full of calligraphy pens, stencils, and paints.
She picked one of the paints up and opened it, finding a royal purple shade inside.
"Wow," she said, "art supplies. Why?"
"Just a thank you."
"For what?"
"For being a stubborn woman and helping me when I was sick."
"Oh," she said, dipping her pinky into the container she opened. "What will I draw on?"
"Whatever you want," he said, getting in bed.
She thought about it for a while. She opened every single thing so that she could look at all the stuff he'd gotten her. It was...it was
