The Rise & Fall of Goldaria

Chapter Twenty-Six - Scarlett

✰✦✰ Chapter Twenty-Six ✰✦✰
" Scarlett "

LILIA TRIED TO hand me another towel but I didn't want it, so I ignored her and it, striding onwards. I was far too preoccupied with vicious, unrelenting anxiety to be concerned with the fact that—despite having changed into another blue dress—I looked just like one would suspect: that I'd jumped into a lake. My damp hair swayed on my bare shoulders and the Guards around us seemed to be particularly observant of the walls ahead of them tonight.

Darius didn't leave my side, and I would've screamed at him if he had. He stalked beside me and I really did feel as though we dominated the place we were walking in together.

According to the Guards that'd interrupted our midnight swim, the others had been attacked whilst at The Eleventh Mermaid on Sylva Isle, by none less than the damned Shadow Stealers plaguing our land like an illness. I'd not waited for them to tell me if any one of them was hurt, instead I'd just ran back to the castle. More like tripped, really. The only thing that had stopped me was Lilia, who had waited by the balcony doors and informed me that my naked body was very much visible through my dress. It didn't matter that the Guards were casting their gazes far away from me—Darius shielded my body from view as though he were a Guard himself.

It was nighttime. I should've been in bed, sleeping right now. With him. My friends should never have gone. I should never have let them go.

Echoes of comfortingly familiar voices in one of the living rooms breezed through the corridors and my heart plummeted past logic and straight into absurdly illogical emotion. Sarinne's voice was the first one I recognised, one I would recognise even in a few decades, even if one stripped me of my memory. "Bloody fucking. . ." Except she hardly swore.

The Guards by the double doors swung them open for me and the sight before me was nothing short of tragic: Miles sat on the snow-coloured carpet, supported by his palms with a lazy yawn whilst Luna slurred her words, lying on the ground with her head pleasantly in his lap. Sarinne, however, was grumpy as ever, with folded arms across her chest as she sat on one of the golden settees and Jacks leaning against the wall, staring right at her with what I could only describe as disquietness. Each of them—other than Luna—wore bruises somewhere or, in Miles's case, sported a dry-blooded cut on his lip.

He noticed me and saw that I was staring so he said, "I'm fine."

Rinne's frown vanished and her face relaxed into a relieved, bright smile as she saw me, jumping to her feet instantly. "Scar!" The moment she reached me, she flung her arms around me and squeezed me tightly. "Hey."

I couldn't not squeeze back. "Rinne. Gosh, you're hurt. Are you okay?"
"Are you?" she asked me, pulling away and holding me at arms length. "How come your hair's wet?"

"Are you joking? You're the one who was attacked! Just look at yours—"

"We're all okay," Rinne assured me, glancing over her shoulder at the others.

Luna clumsily stood up, her legs betraying her every now and then by swaying drunkenly. I'd never pegged her for the type to drink. Not that there was anything wrong with it, far from it, but. . .well, it was just that her parents didn't seem like the type to let her. Was I standing here like an idiot, missing something major?

"Hey, Majesty Gorgeous!" exclaimed Luna, supported by Miles who was holding onto her waist. "You wouldn't believe what happened—"
Miles leaned closer to her ear and said, "They all know, darling."

"They do?" Her eyes shot wide open. "Oh, but I didn't want to disturb them!"

"Disturb them? They weren't doing anything."

Jacks snorted, his ever so annoying grin erupting on his face as he made his way over to us. His cheek was all purple and blue. "I'd be willing to pay money that says otherwise."

Jacks Vilkov was lucky I cared too much about him and his safety to kick him for that. I didn't waste another second before embracing him tightly too. "You stupid prick."

His body shook with laughter. "I care about you too, Scarlett."

"I'm just glad you're all okay," I told him, looking over at Miles and offering him a nod. "You too, Gyatar."

He pursed his lips awkwardly but I didn't feel bitterly about it—we'd never really been close. Still, I'd never been happier to see him.

Jacks let go of me and I went to hug a droopy Luna. She kissed my cheeks one after the other for fifteen seconds straight and all I found in me was admiration for her. Even completely pissed, she was the loveliest girl in the world. After she hugged me, she went straight for Darius—who'd been welcoming the others back affectionately—and patted his head.

"You better have been sweet to her," she said.

"What are you talking about?" Darius nudged her.

"When you admitted your feelings to each other!"

Me and Darius froze, hesitantly moving further apart when I bumped into a troublingly smiling Jacks and a narrow-eyed Rinne, both of them staring into what felt like my soul.

"What the hell's going on?" I asked, panic laced to my tone.

"It doesn't matter," Miles glared between us all like a disapproving mother. "What does matter is what the next steps are."

"Tell me what happened first then."

So they did, recounting a story of them peacefully drinking together in the pub, about to leave when Rinne and Jacks went back in to get her jacket and the whole place was suddenly blown up, Shadow Stealers circling it from above, which they only saw once they were leaving. But I still had one question:

"Why's Luna so piss drunk?"

Luna, meanwhile, was flicking through the pages of the books on the shelves, as if she'd never been so immersed in a story before.

Miles rolled his eyes and his jaw at the same time and didn't even bother to try and hide the irritation in his voice when he said, "She was upset. The Knights were taken over by Hejov and he came to boast about it. He started the fight."

"Hejov?!" I gawked at them.

Luna waved her hand carelessly as she languidly made her way over to me. "That doesn't matter!"

"I think it just about does, darling."

My blond friend leaned in and gushed in my ear, "He calls me "darling" all the time, I've never been so in l—"

"Next steps!" I shouted out and the others flinched at the volume of my voice. Rinne frowned at me but all I could do was chuckle nervously, glad to have stopped Luna before she said something in Miles's vicinity that she'd certainly regret in the morning. "We should discuss them."

"Definitely," agreed Jacks. "Now that the whole country is bound to know. That attack wasn't exactly somewhere more isolated. It's public. Civilians were part of it."

"To be honest," I said, "I'll probably have to arrange another meeting with the other Heads of Isles to sort this out."