Black Knight (Royal Elite 4)

A world I’m leaving her alone in.

“Xander, you said you’ll miss me. Where are you going?” she insists.

I take her hand in mine and brush my lips against her scars, and like every fucking time, she shivers, as if I’m not kissing her skin but her soul.

“To heal,” I say against her most beautiful part. The proof she’s a survivor.

“T-to heal?”

“Rehab. Dad and I agreed on the thirty-day program, but it could go to the sixty-day one.”

“Oh,” the word leaves her lips in a breath. She’s happy about it, but like me, she has that imminent doom lurking in her expression.

The fact of our separation.

I stroke her green strands back. Another beautiful part – her quirky old self shining through. It’s proof that the little girl is still there, broken but able to pull her pieces together.

“Then there’s the whole shitstorm with my mother. If she carries on with her threats, we’ll be under a lot of scrutiny for being siblings and I don’t want you in the middle of that.”

She places a hand in front of my mouth, cutting off my sentence. “I don’t care what the world says. You were never and will never be my brother. I have one sibling and it’s not you.”

I kiss her fingers before removing them. “Thank fuck for that.”

She bites on the corner of her lip. “Dad says we might have to leave the country altogether.”

“Mine did, too.”

“I don’t care, you know.”

“No?”

She threads her fingers through mine. “It’s not places that keep me rooted, it’s people. This place is my home because you’re all in it. If we go together, we’ll just be relocating home.”

I’m glad she’s thinking like that, even though she’s forgetting important things – like our friends and everyone we know.

But I keep that to myself and change the subject. “If this shitstorm had never happened, where were you planning to go next year?”

“Imperial College, and I was going to take Kirian with me. There’s no way in hell I was leaving him with Jeanine. Now that Dad is around, my plans have slightly changed.”

“To what?”

“I don’t know. The sky is my limit.” She strokes the back of my hand. “What about you? Do you still want to go to Harvard?”

“How do you know about that?”

She blushes. “I heard you talk to Lewis once.”

I smirk. “Stalker.”

“Shut up. So? Are you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I only wanted to go there because it was the farthest place I could go to be away from you. I chose it to escape you. Now, that won’t be happening, even if you beg for it.”

Her smile is contagious and I can’t help pulling her cheek to me and kissing it.