That night I lay restless in my bed, thoughts of how I acted and what she said spun in my head. I think back to my time with Jessica and can’t imagine any of that to be fake. It was the happiest part of my time on this world, and she claims that the love I have for Jessica is made up? Before I know it the sun is already up and Ryan stirs.

“Another nightmare kept you up?” He asks then yawns.

“I would’ve had to gone to sleep to have a nightmare.” I say. I didn’t realise I woke Ryan up every night when I woke up.” Does it bother you?”

“No, what bothers me is how you don’t talk about it.” He says.

I look down at the floor and then get off my bed.” I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it.”

He studies me, then gets up and gets ready. We say nothing while we change and as we walk to breakfast. I pass the courtyard where Edward and Claire are, but avoid looking in their direction. I’m still pissed at what happened last night. Beth is waiting for us at our usual table with a book in hand.

“Morning,” She says without looking up.

Neither of us say anything and we sit down in silence. I eat my food in silence and listen in on their conversation about healing runes and remedies for their classes. Nothing peaks my interest so I don’t join in.

“Did you get into another fight?” Beth says with her soft voice.

I look at her and say,” It’s nothing, just an argument.”

She looks at me and says,” Was it with Claire?”

I nod and she continues,” I saw her on my way home from the library, Edward was trying to calm her down. I saw she was crying, now I know why.”

“I’ll talk to her, she just really pissed me off last night.” I say. With that I finish and get up to go to my first class. In the hall I see Edward and Claire and they both avert their eyes as we pass. I sigh and think,” How am I supposed to protect someone who fights with me constantly?”

My first class passes and I realized that I payed attention to none of it. I was too deep in thoughts, lost in whether or not I should apologize for scaring her and memories from before. I ask a girl who was sitting next to me for the notes she took, she yelps when I approach her and rips the page out of her notebook.

“Should have seen that one coming, rumors about me seem to travel fast here.” I say. I pick the paper up and put it in my notebook. I walk out of the class and make my way to the courtyard to apologize.

“Claire, this is the third wand you’ve broken since school started, and this one lasted the least amount of time.” An older voice says.

“I’m sorry, I can’t help breaking them.” Claire says.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Learn some self control, young lady.” The other voice says. I hear their footsteps leave and then make my move towards Claire.

“What was that about?” I ask

She doesn’t look up at me, but says,” I broke another wand this morning.”

“How?” I ask,” I’ve never heard of a mage breaking a wand before.”

“It’s very rare for wands to break, but I’m told I have too much raw magical energy to be funneled through one wand.” She says still looking at the ground.” They say I need to learn how to control how much magical energy I put into my spells.”

“Oh, I’ve never heard of a mage having to limit the magic put into a spell either.” I ask and she nods. There’s a moment of awkward silence and then I break it by saying,” I’m sorry for scaring you last night. I have some issues.”

She looks up at me,” It’s my fault, I never should have brought that up. I heard about what happened and didn’t think about what I was saying.”

“So you heard about the King’s Shadow and its downfall?” I ask

She nods,” I also learned about Jessica from my father.”

“Oh, yeah she was the reason I kept getting up when I was knocked down, she was my everything for a long time.” I feel that sharp pain I get when I remember that night.

“If you need someone to talk to, I’ll listen.” She says,” I won’t be much help…”

I look at her and I remember what’s been bugging me since I met Edward.” Why did you give in to the whole arranged marriage? You used to talk about finding the right one.”

With this she looks at the ground and takes a deep breath.” My mother threatened to pull me out of this school and force me to marry a man of her choice.” She shifting when she speaks and averts her eyes, which means she’s hiding something.

“So you chose Edward to be your betrothed?” I asked.

She nods and pulls me by the arm to a more private place.” Sorry I can’t say this with anyone around us. Is there anyone near us?”

I switch my eye colors to my old red and green, focus on what I hear and smell.” Nobody within fifty meters” I say.

“I prefer those eyes” She says.” Edward and I made an agreement when we first met. We would be betrothed and then married in the eyes of our parents, but in private we would have someone we actually cared for.”

“So it’s a fake marriage type of thing? And I assume there’s people watching you two” I ask and she nods.

“Why did Edward treat you like that in the first week?” I ask.

“He told me he doesn’t know how to treat people like you do, he learned from his parents who are worse than mine.” She says

” And why did you say that love was made up for children?” I ask

She slumps,” Awhile ago I found out the one I loved found someone else….”

It was very obvious that it was me, but I decide not to say anything about that.” We both have love problems too I guess, maybe a nice chat about our problems would do us both some good.”

“Maybe we should…” She says. She looks deep into my eyes and I can see her body heat with my thermal vision. Her face was hotter than the rest of her body, her heart was beating, her eyes dilated, and she keeps fixing her appearance. All of these point to her attraction to me, but I can’t yet. My lingering feelings are holding me back. I hear footsteps and feel the relief of being able to escape come over me.

She moves in closer to me, and I start to panic internally. I can feel guilt in even considering kissing her right now. Then as I’m about to give in I hear footsteps that seem to appear out of nowhere.

“Some one’s coming” I say, relieved that we weren’t able to continue. If we did continue, I know I would have kissed her there, but for some reason I’m holding back on this feeling. I’m just glad I don’t have to face that reason yet. So I guess I was relieved when headmaster turned the corner.

“Ah it’s just the two I wanted to see.” The headmaster says to us.