ROYAL THIEF

CHAPTER 3

"Who are you?" I widened my eyes, still laying on the ground.

"No. Who are you?"

The guy's voice came out as cold and contemptuous, while his eyes, with the same grain of the water, looked at me frowning.

There was no way I could reveal my identity, especially to someone like him.

"So?" He went on, nodding to me with  his chin.

"A human. What about you?"

I reciprocated the coldness of his eyes, keeping up with a prideful and resolute gaze.

"I'm a Kelpie." The guy said finally, getting up

In the Realm of Nymand humans and mystic creatures coexisted, but after the war between the two of them it wasn't common for a magical being to reveal its identity and, in nineteen  years of life, my encounters had been quite limited.

"Now, don't you think that'll be good manner to excuse yourself and tell me your name?" He went on annoyed, obtaining as an answer my arched eyebrow. I was baffled.

"Imagine being in my shoes, champing the grass in complete peace, but then a crazy girl jumps on you, starting to kick you and pulling your hair. It isn't pleasant, is it?"

I thinned my lips as a gesture of fault, but my pride unable me to excuse myself.

"How I might have know, that you weren't a horse?"

"I'm not a horse, in fact. I'm a Kelpie." Suddenly his tone of voice became more serious.

"And what's the difference?"

I had underestimated that topic, but when I found it out was already too late. The glimpes on his eyes changed quickly and, with a movement way too fast to be seen, he pulled me up from the ground grasping my neck.

"Do you think that a horse is capable of doing this?" And said so, he thightened his grip around my neck, while I kicked the air and tried vainly to loose his grasp.

"Kelpies are the most powerful mystic beings of the Magic Realm. Even if we have the animalesque appearences of a horse, we aren't one. We lure humans, seducing them, bringing them in the dephts of the waters and then we devour them, without leaving not even the bones."

His eyes became gold and the grip on the neck so thight that i couldn't even move my limbs. I felt a strong pressure on my head and the eyelids struggled to keep open, while my lungs seemed like oppressed by the lack of air.

"L... t m... o." My voice wouldn't come out and my breath was running out.

"...e ...e g..." I went on until I could and an unesprected electric discharge wrapped my neck, freeing it from the hand of the Kelpie.

"What did yo-?"

As answer I started to cough, while his gaze went from me to my hand.

"My seal."

Thight in my hand there was still the broken chain that, for the first time, I had the time to observe: at the end there was a lock, now open, with a G engraved. Still shaken by the cough, I looked once again the Kelpie, now frowning and puzzled.

"I beg pardon. My name is Gideon and from now i'm your servant." 

He kneed down, resting his fist on the collarbone.

"What are you babbling about?! You have just tried to kill me!"

Everything was just destabilising. A moment before i was a thief running out my onw erands and ending up escaping the Royal Guards, the moment after I was almost being killed by a bipolar Kelpie, that now was coming out as my servant.

"Do not believe that I'm gaining pleasure from all of this!" He said all of a sudden, became again the fierce beast he was.

"It's the Law of the Magic Realm. You made me free from the seal and now I've to be loyal to you."

"And how can I trust you?"

"On the first hand, my human form showed when you broke the chain and on the second hand the discharge freed you from my grip. I cannot hurt you, unfortunately." 

I chuckled.

"At least you were honest."

"So tell me, Sparkle. What were you doing into the wood, during the outbreak of a storm?"

"Sparkle?" I echoed him, both amazed and irritated.

Gideon pointed to my hair; sometimes I forgot that I had a red head of hair.

"I'm Lyra." I said coldly. "And I was running away from the Royal Guards."

"Mh... what a enterpising girl. What have you done to stand against such men?" He said, rubbing his chin.

"I stole." I sumed up.

"How come you are a thief?" Gideon kept on teasing me, with his interrogation.

"Now stop playing with fire. You might end up burned." I went one step further.

"I'm a Kelpie, water is my element. I'll make you slowly drown until I won't extinguish even the last gleam." He mimicked me,  moving forward with a wide stride.

"You can't hurt me. Or am I wrong?" I raised an eyebrow, challenging-like.

Our distance was at its minimal.

"Not yet." He backed off, submissive-like.

Some time passed, in which none of us spoke, then i broke the silence.

"I don't know if you are, but I'm freezing  and with this rain it's impossible to light up a campfire. We need to find a place for the night."

"I already have mine." Gideon laid his back on a trunk, arms crossed.

"Great. And it is...?" I asked, fining again some hope, that diminished when the Kelpie pointed to the river in flood.

"I sleep on a tree." I said finally, starting to walk into the wood with my head up, to find a tree bushy enough to keep me sheltered fom the rain.

"As you like. You know where you can find me." 

And without any word more, he jumped into the stream.