I’d always marveled at those rare people you met in life where you had almost an instant friendship.
I wondered if I’d feel the same when I dug a little deeper into who they were. For now though, I would not dwell too hard because I could really use some allies in this scary new world.
“Come on,” Nolan said, half carrying me as he ran. “I’m starving, and the food is so damn good here.”
At that thought, my poor abused stomach rumbled, but in a different way, to the sick swirl of alcohol abuse. “I could eat,” I admitted, surprised to find it was true.
When we reached the cafeteria, which was at the back of the school in a huge, stand-alone room, I ground to a halt.
“What in the fuck…?” I trailed off as my mind tried to correlate this room with what I knew of eating in schools. I turned to Nolan. “How is this a cafeteria?”
He laughed, loudly, and I figured that my expression was both impressed and dumbfounded.
“They don’t like us to suffer the peasant life,” he said, putting some pomp in his tone.
Understatement. Arbon’s cafeteria was more like a million-star restaurant. The huge room was lined with dark purple curtains that were topped off with gold tassels and gathered together in some sections to allow sunlight to stream through stained-glass windows.
Round tables that sat eight were scattered across the huge space, and each of them was adorned with a white table cloth, glassware, and a huge vase of long-stemmed flowers that most definitely had to have been grown in a greenhouse.
“Come on, new girl,” Nolan said, still chuckling. “You’ll get used to all this soon.”
I somehow doubted that.
A lot of the tables were full, and a lot of faces were turned toward us. “Does everyone have the same lunch hour?” I wondered. This school wasn’t particularly huge because, at the end of the day, there were only a small section of the world that could both pass the entrance requirements and afford to send their children here.
“Yep,” Nolan confirmed. “Same start and finish time and same lunch hour. They run the school similar to a work day in the real world.”
“For those of us who’ll work a regular day job,” I said dryly.
“Right,” he added with a laugh. “I’ll probably work twenty-four hours a day, but at least I’ll get a ton of blow jobs as a reward.”
Jesus. More laughter burst from me. “Wow, the crown prince perks are awesome.”
He winked. “You have no idea, new girl.”
By then we’d reached his table, on the far side of the room close to a window. Outside, the world was white, but the sun was out today, casting a magical vibe across the winter wonderland. Nolan didn’t hold the chair out for me, and I appreciated that about him. I handled my own chairs, thank you very much.
“Who taught you?”
Nolan’s question startled me, and I almost ruined my independence by toppling off the velvet-lined, high-back wing chair. “What do you mean?”
His green eyes, so very like his twin’s, were serious as they remained locked on me. “Who taught you to move the way you do? To watch your surroundings like that?”
I swallowed hard because I had a very scary idea of what he was asking me now. This observant, smirking guy was closer than anyone had been to discovering something about me that could spell my death.
“How did you get that wound on your side?” I countered, my chest tight as my heartbeat hammered in my ears.
He fell silent, the openness wiped clean as he adjusted the wine glass in front of him. “Sports injury,” he murmured, and I wondered what sort of “sport” he played to get a wound like that. I mean, soccer wasn’t exactly one where you got a deep cut regularly. A cut from a weapon.
Admittedly, there was nothing illegal about a royal possessing a weapon—after all, the royals were above the law—but it sure as shit begged the question of how he came by an injury from a blade. I somehow doubted he slipped while polishing his ornamental swords.
Me, on the other hand… if anyone found the Damascus steel blade concealed in my ratty duffle bag upstairs, I’d be executed without trial. Anti-weapon laws weren’t something thatanymonarchy fucked around with. If the common people couldn’t fight, they couldn’t rebel.
In fairness to the law, millions of lives could have been saved during the Monarch War had untrained civilians not joined the killing. The people had fucked themselves over in that sense, now it was only logical for monarchies to keep anti-weapon laws in place. Because it made their jobs all a hell of a lot easier. Democracy had gone the way of the dinosaurs, so anyone caught challenging a monarchy was instantly put to death.
The world was overpopulated anyway.
“Don’t,” Nolan said softly, his voice breaking through my troubled thoughts.
