Luke was standing guard in the dim hall, trying to remember every note Princess Julie had played hours before. He was still in a state of dreaming, pressing his fingers together from the ache of playing a guitar for the first time in a while.
And her smile.
He had to take a deep breath every time he remembered it, like it was a baseball bat to the heart. For the first time, he had met the Princess Julie everyone had placed on a well-deserved pedestal. And after two hours of playing music and singing, Princess Julie went back into her room, giving him a small smile before shutting the door. She was otherworldly.
Luke heard the door to his and Reggie's shared room down the hall, and Reggie came stumbling out, crashing into the wall and pushing himself off. He was half-asleep but the hit seemed to wake him up completely. Luke chuckled to himself as Reggie walked over to him, still yawning. "2AM, dude. Ready to sleep?" Reggie asked him.
"I'm honestly not that tired yet," Luke admitted to him. Reggie leaned against the wall across him, putting his hands in his suit pockets. His tie wasn't tied yet, and Luke noticed that the buttons weren't lined up correctly. Reggie had a habit of dressing in the dark, and they always made him run extra laps at the academy when his shirts were inside out. It wasn't a habit that was meant to die out.
"I was tired," Reggie said, crossing his arms. "Played soccer with the Prince and his friends again. Every day I get beat by ten year olds."
Luke couldn't keep it inside anymore. "I played music with the Princess today. Sort of. I was on the balcony, but we played at the same time." Reggie raised an eyebrow as if he were still dreaming.
"Really? Doesn't she hate you."
"Not anymore." She did apologize. "I think." Luke ran his hands through his hair and let out a sigh. "I don't know." A part of him was scared that is was a one-time thing. An apology act. "She did tell me she was sorry. I like to think the Princess is one to keep her word."
"You never told me what happened after she ran away from you." Luke called Reggie right away and all Reggie could tell him was I don't know what to tell you, man. He just made Luke freak out even more.
"I didn't get in trouble. The entire kingdom was occupied with the man on the run, and the King told her to get over it or something like that. I got lucky somehow."
"You did get lucky. I had to take the Prince to a safe house. I had like thirty calls about making sure he was safe somewhere. I can't imagine you would've been able to get her to follow you somewhere."
Luke scratched his arm. "I just didn't answer any of those calls. I was running everywhere trying to find her and then I saw the helicopters and I was thinking, 'Oh god do they know she's missing already?' Then I ran into Brandy from the academy and she told me what happened, and I went straight to the castle. I got a call from the King when I was at the doors, and he told me he knew what happened and not to worry about it. Said something about there's bigger battles to fight."
"I think the King was venting to you, dude." Luke laughed; Reggie's comments always lifted his mood even when unintentional. "Lucky. I've been trying to be his friend, but he seems busy."
"He is ruling a kingdom."
Reggie touched his collar and realized his buttons were mismatched and started to redo them. "So," Reggie asked. "Is she good?"
Luke smiled. "She has the voice of an angel."
"Maybe she'd like going to the club." Every weekend, Luke and Reggie would go to this club house hidden down in the corners of the castle town, Montseratt. It wasn't illegal or anything, but it wasn't an advertised space. It was once a bar and was now just a place to hang out and play music or create art. You only knew about it when you were a certain age through word of the mouth and once you hit a certain age, you didn't go anymore out of respect for the younger generations.
"Oh yeah," Luke scoffed. "The Princess at the club. The King would kill me himself."
"Maybe he'd thank you for getting her out of the house."
"Calling this a house is an understatement. Either way, they're not supposed to be up and down. There is a call to war."
"You think it's actually going to happen?" Reggie asked him. Reggie was always more optimistic than anyone Luke knew, and he was ready to throw himself headfirst into anything to protect his friends. That's why they knew he'd be a great royal knight. He'd live by his oath.
Luke felt the weight of the thin silver chain under his clothes, and he reached up to pull it out and grapple it with a tight fist, adjusting it and rubbing against the sudden itch. He always forgot it was there. "I do."
"Our friends will be fighting that war," Reggie reminded him. "While we hide inside the castle." Everyone from the academy and the people that graduated before would be sent. Their kingdom's military wasn't stronger than King Caleb's kingdom, but they had a lot more allies who were just as strong or stronger. It was going to get bloody fast.
"We took an oath to protect them. We're also doing our jobs." Reggie gave him a weak smile and nodded, but Luke knew he wasn't convinced. "I'm going to head to bed now. See you at 8."
On Sunday morning, Reggie was already gone when Luke woke up. He didn't realize how tired he was until he was able to sleep through an entire knight without a shift change.
It had been a few days since him and Princess Julie had first played music, but she hadn't left her room for anything except for dinner or to walk Lady Flynn out. It disappointed him, but he had felt a lot more peace knowing they were on good terms.
Luke got ready for the day, and he felt weird dressing in his civilian clothes for the first time in a while. He put his leather jacket over his shirt before walking out, his phone clutched tightly in his hand. He looked down the hall before leaving to catch an peak of the Sunday guards, but he didn't recognize them. They were older knights who graduated long before him and Reggie. The they're boys comment seemed to be making more sense now.
He felt strange walking out of the castle's front door like if it was his house. Technically, he did live there but he would never get used to its aquamarine splendor. He went outside and let the cold air nibble at his cheeks as he made his way past the gates and into town. He said goodbye to the gardener and didn't look back. Knowing where he was staying left him with a sense of dread that didn't seem realistic at one point.
Nobody looked at him since he wasn't with the Princess, and he kind of missed the attention. He wasn't shy to admit he liked having eyes on him. He wasn't really supposed to attract an audience of course, but he indulged in it when he could.
He made his way to the bus stop at the edge of town and waited for a few minutes before a bus to Knight's Crest got there. He had taken it many times with Reggie and other students to go to the club there in Montseratt, and it was one of the few things he had memorized there. He paid his fare and sat down, looking out the window as the bus started taking him back to his original home.
The Knight Academy looked the same, and Luke felt silly for thinking it would change so much in two weeks. There was one difference, and it was that it was packed with new students. He wondered what the recruiters were telling them to encourage them to join. He felt an urge to warn the group of fifteen year old's he saw playing catch together about the war, but he wasn't looking for trouble with his previous superiors.
Reggie and Luke weren't granted a ceremony. It was one morning that Bobby came up to Luke and Reggie while they were on the monkey bars and said, "It's time to move up." And he gave them graduation certificates, shoved them in a car with a suitcase someone else packed of their stuff, and he rode with them to the castle while telling them they were going to be royal knights.
You didn't graduate until you were twenty or deemed ready. In their case, someone turned the oven up in hopes that the cake would be baked faster. Luke knew that the day was coming like he knew the days would all turn into nights. Bobby was always supervising him and reminding him to watch himself and when his classmates would ask Luke what Bobby's problem with him was, Luke would lie and say he once played a prank on him. It killed him to lie, but he got used to numbing out like his fingers after a 4AM run in the winter. Years were going by, and he was starting to repress unwanted memories. Specifically, memories that told him the truth.
Luke walked past the front doors and into the living area, a few of the younger knights jumping up when they recognized him. Everyone that was sixteen and up seemed to be gone. Reggie told him they had a rushed graduation ceremony, and they were shipped out to different areas of the kingdom. He had seen Brandy and a few other people in Montseratt to confirm the story. Seeing the academy emptied out so fast was the change he knew was going to come, and it sent chills down his spine.
"Hey, guys," Luke told him as he was surrounded by a trio of boys. They had all gotten there at different times and became friends so fast. They were called the triplets even when they looked nothing alike. "I came for the rest of my stuff."
"It's in my locker," one of the boys named Alejo said. "They were going to throw them out, but it's not your fault you didn't get to pack." He dug in his pocket and pulled out his keys, "10B." Luke grabbed them and thanked him, walking past them to the locker room.
It was a mess in there, but he ignored it and walked over it to get to the locker. He opened it and found his guitar safe in its guitar case, as well as a small bag closed with a small trophy from a tournament and a couple of guitar picks and a polaroid of him, Reggie, and his friend Alex. He didn't have a lot of things, but he was glad Alejo found them precious enough to save. He closed the locker, and he jumped back in fear, hitting his back on the locker when he turned around and saw Bobby staring at him.
He was standing there with a toothpick in his mouth, smirking at the fact that he had rattled him. "I thought it was you," Bobby said. "Just came to tell you that you're doing a good job."
Luke straightened himself out and tried to clear his throat as quietly as possible. "Thank you, Sir." Bobby nodded and walked out of the locker room, leaving Luke to kick a nearby locker in a storm of frustration.
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A/N: I'm very proud of this chapter's title for personal reasons that I know because I have this story outlined. I think this is my longest chapter, but I could be wrong. I really enjoy Luke's point of view. He knows more while Julie is left in the dark, so it let's me stress certain things better but that will change in a few chapters.
And FYI in the next chapter, we'll FINALLY have Alex :3 Thank you for reading!! Let me know what y'all think :) Wattpad comments really are superior.