Lionise.

I lionised her.

Even if nobody else did. Even if everyone else struggled to see past her scholarship kid status. Or treated her as an invisible fucking poltergeist because she wasn’t ’of value’ to be known at Eastbourne Academy. To me? There was nobody more important. As far as I, Elikai Raphael Delano, am concerned she is the sun, star and sky. She is the manifestation of all that’s beautiful in this fucking world and all the bad and ugly are sent straight from the deepest level of hell, by Satan himself, to combat the perfection and beauty she brings to this world.

Whether they knew it or not, they all benefited from breathing the same fucking air as her everyday. From setting their eyes on her in every lesson. From hearing her voice. From smelling her scent. From simply existing around her Because, whether they liked it or not, she was worth everything. Just like a lion’s the king of the Sahara, She’s their Queen-in-waiting. A princess. The poor fools just don’t know it yet.

She gives heaven, they give her hell.

Her soft hair brushes against the underside of my jaw as she snuggles herself closer to hear my heartbeat. My eyes flick down to catch a birds-eye-view of the way her face muscles move and how her skin shimmers and shines under the warm sunlight casting in from the floor-to-ceiling old English style windows opposite us. Under the staircase in the abandoned science building near the Tyche dormitory.

Her brows furrow for a second when she struggles to hear, lifting her head and brushing her hair out of her face, she tries again. This time, I bite back a smile when she gasps at how clearly she can hear it. Hell, even I can hear it. I continue running my fingers through her hair and ignoring the painful stings that emerge from the bleeding palm behind my back.