I'll Protect You (Original Version)

Quoting song lyrics? I really need a therapist....again.

Park

Another three weeks had sailed on by. Seven more days, and Cross and I would be hopping on plane to land back at the LAX, with a dream and a cardigan.

Great, I was quoting Miley Cyrus songs.

Seriously though, I had seven sunny days left, the last week of August, before returning to becoming my identical twin--Park Sparrow, ginger version. I heard that normal people usually go all out on the last days of vacation, doing everything that they wanted, sightseeing again, buying all those overpriced souvenirs sold in the brightly painted tourist shops, before going back home.

But I wasn't normal, so I was spending my final week with my family in the palace. On lock down. With the boy I hated the most morphing into a hermit day by day as he refused to come downstairs.

And really, by family, I mean my ghost-like grandmother who was seen less than a ghost, my brother who really needed to stop looking at alchemy books, and Alec Darkwood, who didn't know what the definition of fun was.

My parents were somewhere off in the world, enjoying their million-dollar honeymoon, and my AWOL older brother was still nowhere to be seen.

I was sitting in the kitchens, eating a bowl of cereal with a glass of orange juice and buttered toast by the bowl's side. In my hands was the letter Archer had written for the Sparrow family. Alec was across from me, his head buried in a probably fascinating book about the history of math.

Jasper was doodling with a pen he had borrowed from one of the butlers, random signs and runes that I was sure were used for voodoo.

Huh, maybe he'll let me borrow them one day.

The lovely Cross was probably locked in his room, doing homework (like the diligent prodigy he was--blech), refusing to even look at me. Still.

"You're doing it again," Alec drawled, and yet as he spoke his eyes never left the glossy pages of that textbook he was always lugging around.

"Being awesome? I'm always doing that," I said, flipping my hair and sending him a pageant winning smiling.

"You're glowering at your food, so you're either reading the letter again for the sixty-hundredth time, or you're cursing Cross into the oblivion of Hell again for the sixty-hundredth time."

Jasper snorted softly, and the symbol he was sketching was flawed, as the pen slid diagonally towards the corner.

"I am not!" I argued defensively, my voice rising just a tad bit as I shot Alec my award-winning glare. According to my grandmother, who had once randomly decided to show up to a chess tournament Jasper and I had, my piercing stare seemed to have reached new levels, almost reaching the I-Can-See-Into-Your-Very-Soul degree.

"Oh?" both Jasper and Alec inquired, simultaneously raising their eyebrows like those creepy twin villains do. Watch, a few more days and they'd be wearing matching shirts and finishing each other's sentences.

"Then what were you thinking about?" Jasper asked.

"Yes, do tell," Alec pushed, a mocking British accent in his normally Cimerian accented voice.

Shockingly, a Cimerian accent was quite similar to a British one, less heavy than an Australian, however. Cimerian was just slightly lighter than a regular British accent, almost as if we were singing instead of talking.

"I...." Come on, Sparrow, you need a good excuse! "I was planning on finding the queen. You know, some one-on-one girl bonding time."

That sounded perfectly normal.