Orange Roses

Chapter Seven: A Million Hearts and a Million Stars

Hmmm, this guy sure was acting calm about this. When Ari and I first met one another, we were practically jumping up and down; acting like when Romeo met Juliet at that fateful party before they fell into a sort of mad love, but this guy was acting like this was no big deal. I wondered how long this guy had his scars because I had a funny feeling that he hadn’t had them long by the way he was acting.

And by the way he was referring to the faeries as “them”, I felt like I landed in a comic book about zombies and the heroes referred to the walking dead as “them” because they’re so alien, but referring to faeries as “them” didn’t make things better.

I looked down at his hand and felt my body tense before I forced all of my muscles to relax. “What happened to your hand?” I asked as I saw the thick white bandage around it.

“Mermaid.”

I flinched. When you think “mermaid” the Disney version where the mermaids are all singing and happy is pretty much false-and yeah, they don’t wear seashells to cover their boobs either-because their scary as hell. They have seaweed in their hair along with eye balls that they ripped out of the corpses of lost sailors and they have these long claws that rip apart flesh. They have glowing eyes with no pupils along with the fact that they have these scary teeth “Oh, I don’t know...but I guess it sounds like fun.”

Ugh, my voice sounded way to freaking squeaky at the moment and way too sweet. It’s sort of disgusting playing this innocent helpless act, but John seemed to be buying it.

“It will be,” he said as he gave my knee a squeeze. Damn, if I didn’t know better I would think he was inviting me to a orgy or something. “But before we have fun, how about you tell me all you know about them? They seem to know a good amount about you.”

Well, guess the golden boy isn’t as stupid as he looks. “Huh,” I said, “I have some business with them.” Not a lie. “They call you, ‘the human prince’.” John pointed out. “The one that will balance all

three worlds and save us all from insanity...”

He’s done his research. I’m impressed.

I threw my arm over the seat and slouched a little to look a tad more relaxed then I felt. “Ah, truth be told, it’s a title that they gave me,” and I’ve been denying ever since I got it. I’m not a prince. I’m selfish and only fight for the ones I love. Hey, if it were up to me, a faeries could eat up all the girls at my school except for Ruth, me, and the other people I loved because they’re worth the effort. Not some strangers. I know it’s the noble thing and all, but lately I’ve been learning that nobility isn’t a big deal at all and it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. “I don’t know why this thing is such a big deal.”

Most of this act was based on some truth in one form or another, but he didn’t know that I may have tainted the truth, or at least for now.

The ferris wheel stopped then as we now looked over the top of the whole city. “Funny, seeing as how the Lunae lux court has sent you the “dragon” to be your

protector,” John said as I kept my mask up. Okay, this guy really, really did his research. “Wow, you’re not as stupid as I thought,” I said with a smile as he frowned slightly. “I

guess playing the helpless little girl was a bit much, huh? But I couldn’t resist. I wanted to know how stupid or smart you are, but since you’ve done your research you’re not so bad.”

His mouth twitched slightly. “I do hope you plan on joining us tomorrow afternoon at my house. We can talk some more and you can meet everyone. We can even talk about how to get rid of your faerie problem.”