Black Knight (Royal Elite #4) by Rina Kent

I taste salt, and I realise my cheeks are soaked with tears, too.

“Stop, M-Mum!” Xan trips, but he catches himself and continues sprinting. The sounds he makes are winded and so guttural, it’s like an animal breathing.

The car disappears around the corner. Xan doesn’t stop. He keeps running and running, even when Aunt Samantha and her monster car vanish from sight.

Even when it’s only the two of us on the long road adjacent to our neighbourhood.

His foot catches and he tumbles forward, falling to his knees, crying so loudly, I feel every sound in my bones.

“Muuuum!”

I rush to him but stop a small distance away, hugging his flip-flops to my chest. Then slowly, too slowly, I crouch and put them on each of his feet. The skin has turned dirty and one of them has a cut from which blood coats his small toe.

“G-Green?” He stares at me through the tears that glisten as they flood his eyes.

Xan calls me Green because it’s my favourite colour. Where other girls have pink bedrooms, I have a green one.

“M-Mum is g-gone.” He sniffles.

I force a smile. “She’ll come back.”

It’s a lie. I also said Nana would come back after I slept, but when I woke up, she still wasn’t there.

Adults don’t come back when they leave.

“S-she won’t! She said she doesn’t want me and Dad anymore.” His lower lip trembles, even as he tries to stop crying by turning away from me.

“Xan…” I reach a hand for him and wipe his tears with my sleeve.

For a moment, he lets me as they become fatter and never-ending.

The gelato is now dripping on the ground, and I would usually devour it all, but my entire focus is on Xan and how he can’t stop sobbing.

I also thought I’d never stop crying about Nana. That I’d cry like a princess in one of her books and the tears would kill me.

I eventually stopped, though.

Daddy says nothing is permanent. Everything changes.

He’s wrong. Xan and I will never change. I’ll always be his Green and he’ll always be my knight.

We made it official after all.

Xan places a hand on my shoulder and shoves me, then stares at the ground. “Go away, Green.”

“No.”

He glances up at me. “No?”

“I don’t want to leave you alone. You didn’t leave me when Nana died.”

Slowly facing me, he watches me closely, his blond brows pinching as more tears slide down his cheeks. “Why are you crying?”

I sniffle, wiping my face with the back of my hand, mixing his tears with mine. “Because you’re crying.”

“Don’t cry, Green.”

“You don’t cry.” I sniffle.

He hiccoughs. “I hate it when you cry.”

“I hate it when you cry, too.” I inch closer and put my arms around his neck, keeping the one with the melting gelato away so I don’t make a mess out of him as well.

My knight is beautiful and can’t have dirt on his armour.

Xan wraps his arms around my waist, hides his face in my neck, and sobs. He sobs so hard, I feel the vibration against my skin.

I cry, too, because his pain feels like mine now. His pain is so real and close, it’s as if I’m the one hurting, not him.

When Nana left, Xan hugged me while I cried. He stayed with me until I fell asleep and didn’t leave my side.

Now, I’ll hug him until the pain goes away. Until he can smile and show me his pretty dimples.

“Green…” He sniffles in my neck. “Promise you’ll never leave me.”

“Never. You’re my knight, remember?”

He nods.

“From today onwards, we’re one.”

“We’re one.”





1





Kimberly





I’m not good enough.

I’ll never be good enough.

You know that feeling when words keep hammering in your head until they form a suffocating fog? Until they’re all you can think about and all you can breathe?

When you wake up in the morning, they slowly condensate around you like they’re your life-long companions.

They’re the first thought you wake up to and the last thought you sleep on.

That’s how it’s felt for years now.

That’s how my battle starts, and every day, I tell it not today.

“Kimmy!” A small hand pulls on mine as my baby brother drags me towards the entrance of the elementary school.

Kirian reaches my waist now. His pressed uniform has a wrinkle on the shoulder that I smooth with my hand.

His sun-kissed blond hair is in a short bowl cut that he takes pride in because it’s ‘the thing’. His bright brown eyes are so shiny, you can almost see the world through them. A world so pure, you’d want to mass-produce it and freely distribute it.

“What is it, Kir?” I ask.

“I said, you’ll do me mac and cheese later, right?”

“I can’t. I have school until late.”

He pouts, his hand turning lax in mine. If there’s anything I hate in the world, it’s killing that spark in his features.

“Marian will do it for you,” I bargain.

Kir loves our housekeeper and spends time with her when I’m not around.