by Lola Gabriel
Oh. Oh. She wouldn’t be around only other fae students, would she? EMU wasn’t a school exclusive for fae folk; it was a school for all immortal species.
Kaia could barely contain her excitement. She was going to meet wolf shifters and vampires and perhaps even angels! There were very few of them, but there had to be at least one or two in her school, right? And even though the other fae students would probably know she was the princess, the rest of the campus population would probably not know. Kaia could be an entirely different person! She could redefine herself, be the way she truly wanted to be without everyone constantly looking after her.
She was dancing through the halls to her room on her tiptoes, not caring in the slightest about what the staff thought of her as she did so, so distracted by this joyous revelation that she didn’t notice someone else walking around the corner, until she crashed against them and stumbled back.
The other person caught her by the arms before she could fall, and Kaia breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thanks,” she said, looking up at whoever she had crashed into. “I wasn’t paying atten—”
She stopped mid-sentence when she saw who had caught her.
“Princess,” said Sebastian, his expression a mask of seriousness and veiled concern. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Kaia said, pulling her arms back from Sebastian’s grip.
“Please try to be more careful,” he went on. “You could’ve gotten hurt.”
“I highly doubt that,” she replied.
“You never know,” he said, although Kaia did know. How hurt could she get just stumbling upon someone inside the home she had lived in for twenty-two years? “Is His Majesty busy?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Kaia told him. “I just finished talking to him. Why, did you need him for anything?”
“He asked to see me,” Sebastian answered.
Kaia was about to tell him that there was no need for him to see her father anymore until she realized that the king had called Sebastian before he had known she’d been admitted to EMU, which meant that her father probably wanted to talk to Sebastian about something else entirely. Whatever it was, she doubted it had anything to do with her.
“Well,” she said, “don’t let me keep you.” She moved past him and continued walking toward her room. This was the happiest Kaia had ever been, and she was not going to let a small encounter with Sebastian, of all people, ruin this moment for her.
She had stopped dancing through the halls, but that was okay. There would be plenty of time to dance when she was at her dream school. At least, she assumed there would be. Since she’d been homeschooled, Kaia didn’t really know how actual educational institutions worked, except for what she’d seen in movies and TV shows.
Oh, well. That didn’t matter. Just because she was a princess didn’t mean that she was useless, or that she didn’t know how to take care of herself. Despite the king’s intentions and efforts throughout her childhood and teenage years, Kaia had learned how to avoid her caretakers, the mansion’s guards, and the fae warriors he’d tried to assign to her—except for Sebastian, of course.
She had always been more like the queen than the king: free-spirited, decisive, unstoppable. Now, as an adult, she was even more so.
Although Kaia had no idea of what the future had in store for her, she was perfectly capable of adapting to whatever EMU and the rest of the world threw at her, and she was not going to let anyone or anything get in her way.
2
Kaia had to admit that college life was really suiting her so far.
When she’d first arrived almost two months ago, she’d found out pretty much immediately that she was not the only royal heir attending EMU, so even the fae students weren’t surprised to see her. They didn’t really care about her being a princess, and Kaia was…actually relieved by the revelation. That was the reason she had been so against the idea of having a personal guard, because she wanted to fully experience what it meant to be a regular immortal college student, and it turned out that now she could!
“You could even meet the Dragon Prince!” one of her friends, Layla, had said. “I’ve never personally met him myself, but you could if you wanted to, right?”
“I mean, yeah, I guess,” Kaia had replied. “But dragons and fae folk don’t really mix all that well.”
She had nothing against dragons, and she was sure that the Dragon Prince must be a really nice guy; it was more of an age-old prejudice, tales passed down from generation to generation, with Kaia spending a lot of her childhood listening to her teachers reading ancient books and texts in which dragons fought the fae they encountered, and the fae fought back just as fiercely, if not more. There had never been any kind of war between their species—not like the ones between vampires and angels throughout history, for instance—but both still preferred to maintain their distance. Just in case.
Then again…perhaps it’d be nice to have other “royal” friends. At the very least, Kaia could introduce herself to the respective leaders or heads of the other immortals at EMU. They could simply be polite, diplomatic introductions.
Kaia couldn’t help smiling at herself. Her father would be proud.
“I guess you can’t really take the princess out of you, can you, Kaia?” another friend of hers, Carlie, had teased her once.
“Well, it’s not like she stops being a princess just because she’s no longer in her giant palace,” Layla had said, causing Kaia to let out an indignant scoff that had turned into a snort.
“I don’t live in a giant palace!” she kept repeating to them. Her father and mother had at her age, but soon after they’d gotten married, they had decided to get on with the times and settle for something less pompous than what they had grown up with.
“No,” Carlie had said. “You just live in a giant mansion.”
Kaia hadn’t wanted to admit that her friend was right. “It’s not a mansion—”
“Kaia,” Layla had interrupted, “I can assure you, with absolute certainty, just from the few pictures of your ‘house’ that you’ve shown us, that you definitely live in a mansion.”
They’d had a big laugh about it, and Kaia had felt even more relieved, knowing that her friends were not afraid to call her out if need be. Back home, some members of the staff were still too hesitant to scold her or put her in her place when she misbehaved for fear of getting in trouble with the king, even though Kaia had certainly known how to get herself into all sorts of problems and mishaps.
The only complaint she had about EMU so far was that her dorm was an individual one rather than a shared one with a roommate. She’d asked about it and been told that the royal heirs and children of prominent alphas got a room of their own, as they had since the university had been built.
“That’s just the way we’ve always done things,” the man at the office had said.
“Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right one,” Kaia had muttered. “Or that you shouldn’t change it.”
She hadn’t actually expected the man would listen to her or pay much attention to her words, but then he’d quickly added, “I-if you really want to have a shared dorm, Ms. Blackwood, I’m sure we could arrange for you to switch next semester.”
“Oh, no, no, that won’t be necessary,” Kaia had replied. She was sure she wouldn’t have gotten this far in the conversation if she hadn’t been the Fae King’s daughter, and since she had decided not to use her status to her advantage, it would be unfair if she actually got what she wanted just because she was a princess. So she had simply thanked the man and walked out.
“I think you should’ve pushed the issue, just for fun,” Carlie said as they headed to the campus library. “Like, how far could you have gotten, you know? You could’ve asked for a roommate who’s a different species from you—”
“Why would you ever want that?” Layla interjected. “Having a roommate who’s the same species as you is already difficult enough, why overcomplicate things?”
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“Having a roommate is difficult?” Kaia asked, genuinely curious. She had never heard either of her friends complain about their living situations, and having a roommate was one of the things she had been looking forward to the most before moving into the campus. “I would’ve thought it was just like having a friend who’s sort of always there. Literally.”
“Ugh, no, believe me,” Layla groaned. “You do not want a roommate. Especially if they’re either younger or older than you.”
“Is age really that big of a deal?” Kaia asked. She wouldn’t have thought it was, especially considering they were immortal and thus didn’t age or mature the same as humans did.
“Well, no, age is irrelevant. I meant more like, when they’re a either a year ahead or behind you.”
“Isn’t it basically the same as having a roommate of your same year?” asked Carlie. “What’s the difference?”
“For starters,” Layla began, “you can’t even complain about the same classes! Second of all, they think they’re so much smarter than you. ‘I never had any issues with being an immortal in the mortal world, are you dumb or something?’”
“Geez,” Kaia chuckled. “Your roommate sounds like an ass. Are you really having that much trouble with that class, though?”
“We’re one of the most similar species to humans!” Layla cried. “It’s not my faut that they can’t do the things we can and we have to watch ourselves around them!”
“I know there aren’t all that many tips to hide or disguise ourselves,” Carlie said, “but if you need help, I can give you some pointers. Why didn’t you tell me you were having trouble with it?”
“Because it’s embarrassing,” Layla answered. “It’s supposed to be one of the easiest classes at EMU, and I keep struggling with the reports and getting bad grades. Do you know what my parents will say if I fail the class?”
“You’re not going to flunk the class, Layla, don’t be dramatic,” Carlie said, patting her on the back.
Kaia realized that she didn’t have the same worries that Layla did regarding what her parents might say about her academic performance. Not that Kaia had given them any reason to be concerned. While she might struggle with a few of her classes, she wasn’t having any issues doing her work and assignments—at least, not as much as Layla seemed to have. Even if Kaia did fail, she didn’t think she had to worry about the king and queen’s reaction. Although she wasn’t being homeschooled anymore, so her educational environment wasn’t the same as it had always been before.
Oh, well. As long as she did what she needed to, she doubted her parents would be getting called into the headmistress’s office anytime soon.
Just as Carlie started saying that she could help Layla with Being an Immortal in the Mortal World if Layla would help her with Spells and Witchcraft, Kaia felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and she slowed down her pace. She didn’t know if this was true of all fae folk, but her parents had taught her from an early age that all members of the fae royalty had been born with a sort of defense mechanism that alerted them when they were in danger. It was an unconscious reaction of their body, accompanied by a sense of sudden uneasiness.
Every fae defense mechanism was different. For Kaia, it was the hairs on the back of her neck standing up, telling her that someone was watching her.
She was glad she had listened to her father about carrying a weapon with her at all times. She definitely felt safer with a dagger strapped around her lower calf, hidden beneath her jeans and resting right above her shoes.
“Hey,” she said to her friends, who had kept walking ahead of her, not noticing she had fallen behind. “Do you guys mind if I catch up with you later?”
“What, did you change your mind about asking for a roommate?” Carlie joked.
“Kaia, seriously, do yourself a favor and forget about it,” said Layla.
“No, no, it’s not that,” Kaia said.
When both her friends realized that she had grown serious, they did as well.
“Are you going somewhere?” asked Carlie. “I thought we were gonna get together to do our assignment for magic history.”
“And we are!” Kaia assured her. “I just…” She tried to come up with something, but her mind blanked on her. Fae folk couldn’t lie, and she wasn’t the exception. “I…forgot that I need to check something first.”
“What?” Layla asked. “Check what? Where?”
“It’s something kind of urgent,” Kaia said, which wasn’t a lie. She had to find out who was stalking her and why as soon as she possibly could. “But I’ll try not to take too long, okay? I’ll catch up with you guys the moment I’m done, I promise.”
Carlie and Layla stared at each other and shrugged their shoulders.
“Yeah, okay,” Carlie said.
“But don’t take long, you hear? Or we’ll start without you,” said Layla.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Kaia waved goodbye to her friends and turned in the opposite direction, toward the dorms building. She had to confront her stalker, preferably out in the open but without anyone around to witness anything.
Would it be easier for them to attack me in an enclosed space? Kaia wondered. Or somewhere close to one? Wouldn’t it be easier for them to take me somewhere no one could see them? Or would they risk attacking me outside?
As she was pondering over the hypothetical situation of her being attacked by some random stalker—since she was absolutely sure that, in a physical fight, she would beat her opponent—she felt that uneasiness again. She tried to look around her out of the corner of her eyes so whoever was stalking her wouldn’t realize she knew about them, but she couldn’t see anyone. Not a single person cloaked in a suspicious hoodie, no one suddenly hiding behind a pillar or a tree, no one caught following her on the stone path.
Kaia hummed to herself. This was going to be an interesting challenge, if nothing else.
When she was a few feet away from the entrance to the library, the closest building to where she had split up from her friends, she decided she’d had enough. She knelt down and touched the dagger strapped to her calf through the fabric of her jeans. She pretended to be fiddling with the laces of her shoes while slowly undoing the strap of her dagger. There were no other students nearby, so if her stalker wanted to strike, this was the perfect moment.
Almost as if on cue, her uneasiness grew louder, in a way—more prominent. Kaia didn’t know how to explain it, but she knew it meant her attacker was about to show themselves.
She grabbed her dagger, spun around on her toes, and threw it.
She had thrown her dagger in such a way that it would stab her stalker’s leg—not fatally, just deep enough to stop and immobilize them so she could confront them. But her would-be attacker caught her dagger with an expertise she had only seen fae warriors possess, and she didn’t have to look at the face of the man holding her weapon to know who it was.
“Princess,” Sebastian said, his hand wrapped around the pommel of Kaia’s dagger. “I must commend you. Few can throw knives and daggers as well as you just did.”
“Sebastian,” she sighed, realizing that the adrenaline had rushed out of her now that she knew who had been following her. “What the ever-living hell are you doing here? You almost gave me a heart attack!”
“My apologies, Princess,” he said, and already, his presence was starting to get on Kaia’s nerves. He offered her dagger back to her, and Kaia took it and strapped it back around her calf. “I didn’t think you would know I was here. I was careless and sloppy, you should’ve never known—”
“That’s not reassuring at all,” Kaia told him, and Sebastian pursed his lips into a thin line. “And it’s no explanation, either. What are you doing here, Sebastian?”
Sebastian took a deep breath, like he didn’t want to answer her question, but he couldn’t lie to her, and Kaia didn’t expect him to even try.
“His Majesty sent me,” he finally said, effectively silencin
g Kaia for a moment. That was the last thing she had imagined he would say, and she was having trouble processing it.
“Bullshit,” she hissed under her breath.
“It’s the truth,” Sebastian insisted, and Kaia blinked at him in surprise. She hadn’t meant for him to hear her.
“Th-there must be some misunderstanding here,” she said, more to herself than to Sebastian. “My father said I didn’t need a personal guard. He agreed that I’d come here on my own, without any sort of escort! He wouldn’t have sent you after telling me that! Or, I mean, even if he had, he would’ve let me know so I wouldn’t just throw a dagger at you! I could’ve stabbed you!”
“You couldn’t have,” Sebastian said. “I would’ve caught anything you threw at me.”
Kaia didn’t know what to answer to that. This was exactly the kind of awkward situation she had been hoping to avoid.
Sebastian seemed to notice the awkwardness, since he cleared his throat and continued talking. “His Majesty didn’t want you to know I was here. You shouldn’t have ever noticed my presence.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Kaia said. Her defense mechanism would’ve alerted her to any fae warrior’s presence, especially if they wanted to remain hidden and out of her sight, and her father was aware of it. Why send someone to spy on her without telling her?
“Perhaps,” Sebastian agreed, and then he didn’t add anything else, like the matter was done.
“This conversation isn’t over,” Kaia said. “Not until I talk to my father.”
Sebastian nodded his head. “I’ll go with you.”
Kaia thought about arguing with him, but if he was already here, and if he was apparently following the king’s orders, it was a losing battle.
“Fine,” she sighed. “C’mon, I need the privacy of my room if I’m going to talk with Dad.”
