I'll Protect You (Original Version)

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

My grandmother totally mastered the I-Can-See-Into-Your-Soul look. Hands down, she was the best user ever.

I didn't resemble my father or mother very much, save for my father's dark hair. But he had gotten that from the queen, of whom I resembled a lot. And not just our looks, our personalities (hers tainted with age, experience, and the consequences of ruling a kingdom) were pretty dang similar.

She had been a wild child, speaking in weird phrases, fooling around when she was young. She danced and sang, and snuck out of the palace grounds. She used to hate wearing dresses, but apparently, after growing up, she learned to tolerate them. And whatever happened, she was still the same, cynical, sarcastic, yet constantly beaming person.

Unfortunately, she was also the emotional-bloodhound.

No, like, the very one. Go find a mind reader, put him and my grandmother into the same room with an extremely impassive person, and my grandmother will be the first one to know whwat that person is feeling.

Yeah, my grandmother wasn't the best person to be around when you wanted to hide your emotions. .

"I am too bleeding!" I said. "I just got shot, and thank you for sounding very concerned, Grandmother." I lifted up the hem of my white t-shirt to reveal a small section of unblemished skin. "See?"

She rolled her dark gray eyes and smirked. "Oh I see. You must be in horrible pain." 

"I'm practically dying."

That earned me an amused smile from her, and she strode over to the windows in the arched windows that had no glass panes covering them. I raised an eyebrow, raking her outfit up and down and she raised my non-spoken thought away.

"You've grown up so much," she mused, a wistful look sparkling in her eyes. "Just two years and look how tall you've gotten. Your hair's much longer as well. You're beginning to look more and more like me."

"Are you calling me old?" I joked.

"I am not old, Park Mai Elizabeth!" she protested, humurously skimming the streaks of gray hair in her once lusciously dark strands. Elizabeth was my grandmother's name, and she got it from her grandmother, and that lady got it from her grandmother, and so on and so forth.

Like, I said. It was a family name.

Putting all laughter aside, my grandmother softened her gaze to look at me with kind eyes. The queen was normally a very cold person, with an icy exterior with Antarctica-like frost coating her heart. And soul.

I had to add the soul part.

The last time she had given me such a thawed out look was a very long time ago. And by that, I mean, seven years ago--when Archer was stripped of his heir-ness or whatever and the crown was passed to me.

"I haven't seen you so sad since the day your brother departed," she spoke, her voice low and gentle. "Did Logan say something?"

See?! I told you guys about the whole emotional bloodhound thingy. Scratch that, she's a freaking psychic! Am I descended from a line of Seers or something? She'd only been back in the palace for three weeks, and in those three weeks, I hadn't even spoken to Cross. And yet here she was, sitting calmly there, asking about something she should have no stinking clue about.

That's it; I have officially decided that this family has magical powers.

"You like him, but he doesn't like you back?"

Ooh, she shoots, she missed. Kind of. "No," I said. "We both like each other. Unfortunately for Cross, I am betrothed. And I don't know about anyone else, but that usually puts a riff between two people who like each other."