“Yeah. Heaps better.”
“Good,” he said, and each strand tingled along the base of my neck, my forehead and behind my ears, his deft fingers separating then twisting them into a loose plait. “You need to tie it up for training, or you may end up getting your head pinned to the ground by some knight’s knee. But this should be enough.”
I turned when he finished, and ran my fingers down the plait, resting it over my shoulder. “Thanks, Arthur.”
“You are welcome, my dear.” He stood a little taller and his eyes narrowed as he looked into the gardens. “You best be going. Someone is looking for you.”
He looked small from this high up, that knightly figure charging across the grounds, but his bulk frame and hair shining yellow in the morning light could not be mistaken for any other man. “I’m late for training.”
“He looks irate.”
“He probably is. He’s probably gonna make me run laps until I fall over.”
“Well,” Arthur said, offering the doorway, “we best be moving then. Can’t have you being punished for my keeping you.”
“It’s not the laps I’m afraid of—” I rolled my eyes. “It’s the lecture.”
“Lecture?”
“About…” Being alone with you. “About being late.”
“I’m sure you can charm your way out of a lecture.”
“You don’t know Mike very well, then,” I scoffed. “He’s resistant to my charms.”
As I turned away, Arthur grabbed my wrist gently. “Take care out there today, Princess. I will drop by to watch you train later, but, in the meantime, keep your wits about you—watch closely for anyone who watches you too closely and do not spar with any knight you feel you can’t trust.”
“Are you worried there’s a mole?” I almost laughed.
“That, I am.” He released my wrist. “Once I arrive, you needn’t worry too much, but I have a few things to take care of before I come down. Just be careful, please.”
I nodded. “Mike will be there. I’ll be fine.”
Arthur seemed amused by that. “Very well.”
I closed his door behind me and after four steps, enough to be directly in the middle of the corridor again and not so close to looking like I was alone with Arthur, Mike popped around the corner. “Ara!”
“Morning, Mike.”
“Baby, where have you been? I sent my knights up to collect you over an hour ago. Edgar told them you were getting dressed, but now they report back that you’re not even in your room.”
“I was in the shower.”
“Ara, they looked in there.” He smiled conceitedly. “Where’ve you been?”
“I went down to the kitchen.”
He looked at Arthur’s door then back at me. “Kitchen, huh?”
“Yes.” I pushed past him. “What is your problem?”
“You know damn well what my problem is.” He grabbed my arm, stopping me as I reached the stairwell. “I told you not to spend time alone with him.”
“Who?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Ara. I know you were in his room. I can smell him all over you.”
I shrunk a little. “Well, I can do what I want.”
“Yes, you can—except be alone with him.”
I yanked my arm from his grip. “You can’t stop me from having friends.”
“Ara, grow up. I’m not trying to stop you from having friends, but you know we can’t trust him. He was Drake’s right hand man for—”
“He’s not a mole, Mike,” I yelled, loud enough that Arthur probably heard. “He just wants to help.”
“Yeah.” Mike laughed sarcastically. “Help himself—to you.”
“Mike? Don’t be such a jerk.”
He dropped his arms to his sides, huffing loudly. “I’m sorry, Ara. I just—”
“You just what?”
“I hate that guy. He waltzes in here like he owns the place—tells me how to do my job, how to look after you, then wanders off with you and keeps you to himself all afternoon. I’m your best friend, and I waited so long to have you here, and now you are, I’m practically barred from seeing you, but those rules don’t apply to him.”
I clicked my tongue, folding my bottom lip in an exaggerated pout. “Aw, poor baby’s jealous.”
His mouth split into a grin, laughter coming out in one breath. “Quiet, you, or I’ll pair with you for sparring and give you a right smack on the bottom.”
“Ha! Good luck. I’m faster than you.”
He laughed and took my hand. “Come on, how ‘bout I show you this training hall I’ve been talking about for the last two months.”
Mike walked beside me, and the soft rain fell around us, making the countryside smell sweet, like cut grass and sugar. My mouth watered. It was a little colder on the coast for a summer, though, than it was inland. I wrapped my arms around myself to hide from the breeze as we stepped out of the trees and into a grassy clearing.
“How’s training been going with Emily over the last few weeks?” Mike asked from a step or two ahead. “She told me you’ve become quite a little expert with a sword.”
I shrugged. “A bit.”
“I ‘spose the ballet classes help there—given that fencing’s really a balance and grace thing.”
“Probably. Or just that I’m super cool.”
He laughed. “Let’s see how you do with a gun then.”
“A gun? We have guns?”
“Not yet, but we will.”
“What for?”
“Venom-filled bullets. Vampires are fast, but even they can’t stop venom infecting them if they don’t catch the bullet.”
“Cool. When do we get the guns?”
“In about a month or so. I’m putting a team of marksmen together.”
“Awesome. Do I get firearms training?”
“Uh, no.”
“Why?”
“Because ninety-eight percent accuracy on Halo does not give you the same skill out here in the real world. And besides, your dad would kill me if I put a gun in your hand.”
“Really?” I said sarcastically. “You’re afraid of my dad? We have a blood-hungry psychopath after us, and you’re afraid of my dad?”
He smirked. “Ara, you know what it’s like to sit under the glare of his disappointment.”
I shook my head. “And you think I have daddy issues.”He laughed. “Baby, you do have daddy issues.”
Hmpf! I folded my arms.
“Anyway, back to the issue at hand—stop distracting me,” he warned, with a smile. “How are you going with the speed thing? Emily said you’d pretty much taken a step backward—so to speak.”
“Yeah. I get dizzy.” I rubbed my head. “I tried to flip out of Emily’s reach the other day and ended up in the lake—saturated.”
Mike burst out laughing, covering his nose for a second. “She didn’t tell me that.”
Heat washed over my head, rising from the chest up. “I asked her not to.”
“I got the full story of your sparring with David, though. He talked you up a bit, I think.”
“No, he just went easy on me.”
He held back his amusement. “I know. Well, so we need to work on your combat methods with vampires, but, today you can spar with humans, so it should be a piece of cake.”
“You think I need a self-esteem boost, huh?”
“We can all use a little encouragement sometimes.”
“By fighting those weaker than us?”
“Weaker than you,” he said, and laughed. “But I wouldn’t be so sure you’ll win, baby. These guys might be human, but they’re Special Ops, most of them. They’re damn good at what they do.”
“Oh, joy,” I said. It felt good to be walking outside with Mike again, in the open air of the cool, shady day. It reminded me of bush walking back home in Oz. And Mike had a bounce to his step when walking on uneven ground, like he laid his foot down heavily, not calculating the surface at all. It was so human, so unlike David, who was so used to walking with the grace of a vampire he couldn’t even pretend to be as clumsy as a human anymore. Mike hadn’t lost that yet, and I really appreciated that about him right now.
“So, you know when we drove in on the driveway that leads to the manor?” Mike asked.
“After or before the big, scary gates?”
“After.”
“Yep.”
“Well, there’s a side road that takes you down to the training hall, and in the distance, about two minutes Lilithian-style run, is the barracks.”
“Where you spend all your time?” I grinned.
“Yup,” he beamed.
“I can’t believe the weather today,” I noted, looking at the murky sky. “It was so sunny yesterday—what’s with all this rain?”
“Hmp,” Mike laughed softly. “Probably to do with your mood.”
“My mood?”
“Yeah. Haven’t you ever noticed how, when you’re sad or upset or angry, actually, even happy—not that that happens often—the weather seems to change?”
“Uh, what, like I’m a mood-stone?”
He shrugged. “I know you’re moo-dy. But, I don’t know, I was thinking about it a few days ago—it’s just something I’ve noticed since I first came to America to stay with you. It’s not all the time, which is why I thought nothing of it ‘til now. But it seems to be happening more often.”
“Trust you to notice something so trivial,” I scoffed.
Mike laughed again, placing a supportive hand to my lower back as we splodged down a mildly slippery slope of grass. “When it comes to you, my pretty little princess, it’s my job to notice everything.”
“Fine. I’ll pay that—but the weather? That’s just weird.”
“Didn’t say it made sense.”
“Well, I hope you’re wrong.”
“Why? It’d be cool. If we want a sunny day, we’ll just bring David out to the manor.”
I smiled, and right at that moment, the sun shone down on a building in the distance, lighting up its red roof and white bricks.
Mike stopped walking, his brow lifting over a smug grin. “See?”
I cleared my throat. “Coincidence.”
He laughed softly and we started walking again. “So, that building under the spotlight of your joy—” he paused; I rolled my eyes. “Is the training hall.”
“It doesn’t look big enough to hold five hundred fighting soldiers.”
“It’s not for the entire Core. We train the Queen’s Guard there. The rest train at the barracks.”
“So, how many are in there right now?”
“The entire Guard. Fifty men of the highest skill and qualification. They stand watch around the manor to protect the queen and only the queen. The rest of the Core are having the morning off.”
“So, who are the four knights you always talk about—Blade and Falcon and that?”
“They’re your Private Guard. Personally appointed to be by your side at all times.”
“Whoa.” I stopped walking. “At all times?”
“Yup.”
“No way, Mike. I don’t need that kind of protection. I’m not the goddamn president.”
“No, exactly. You’re the queen—of a nation of killers, Ara. You need to be protected at all times.”
“No. I don’t. I need to live, Mike. I’m not having those guys follow me around everywhere I go. Especially not here at the manor. We’re heavily guarded enough as it is.”
“Mm-hm.” He kept walking.
“Mike? I mean it.”
“I know.”
“Mike!” I ran after him. “Damn it! You better not have them follow me.” But it was stupid to even say that. Of course he would, and once those men were turned into Lilithian knights, there’d be no knowing if they were following me.
“Nervous,” Mike said, turning to me.
“Don’t pretend you’re not in my bad books, Michael.”
He laughed, the warmth of his sexy grin making his whole face cuter. “I really don’t care, Amara-Rose. You will do as you’re told. Like it or not. So you can chuck a tantrum, go ahead, it won’t change things.”
“Oh, I don’t need to throw a tantrum.” I folded my arms. “I’ll find some other way to make your life hell.”
“Breathing pretty much covers that,” he joked, and I scoffed. We walked past the tall windows of the rectangle building then, but couldn’t see inside because the white glare of the sun reflected back the image of a short girl walking through a grassy field beside a bulky man.
He led me around to the front of the building, still smiling smugly, not saying anything. As we stood by the open entrance—about four doors wide—I took a breath to steady my heart.
“Baby?”
“What?” I shuffled my feet, my gaze on my shoes.
“Ara?” He took my hand; I looked up at his caramel eyes. “You know I was joking, right—about the annoying me by breathing thing?”
I let my shoulders relax a little, smiling. “Course I do, Mike.”
“What’s wrong then? Why have you got that pouting lip?” He ran the tip of his finger over it.