Thad pulled up at the curb to the private all-girls academy, and I peered out the window as we waited for the school to let out. Cars and personal drivers all waited to grab their charges, nannies filling the space outside the building. ‘I’ll be right back,’ I said to my driver.
Hauling open my door, I stepped out into the brisk air. Spring hadn’t yet arrived, the last lingering effects of frost keeping the flowers from blooming.
I wondered if Thalia still twirled in the yard when she wasn’t surrounded by a black and white garden of flowers. The innocence of her youth was something I’d never known, something I couldn’t remember ever having myself.
Such were the differences between the expectations put on male heirs and daughters, whose sole purpose would be to be wed and bred, I supposed. While I hadn’t said anything, I’d seen the injuries on her knuckles. The scrapes and torn flesh, surrounded by various stages of healing that hinted at repeated abuse.
While I might not care for Thalia in the traditional sense, like a husband might his wife, she was still to be mine to care for. Something in the young girl would’ve made me want to protect her, even if she hadn’t been contracted to be mine one day. Those wide amber eyes just made me want to ensure that no harm came to her.
Her innocence needed to be protected for as long as possible.
To ask the questions that needed answering, I would have to catch her without the threat of her father looming over her. I needed her to tell me how she came to be injured.
Then I would have to convince my father to back me up when I stepped in on her behalf. He wouldn’t give the first shit that a girl was being abused, so it would take me some time to find a way. A bargain would need to be struck, and I hated to think of what I would need to sign over to my bastard of a father to protect Thalia.
Still, sometimes things needed to be done.
I watched as the girls finally emerged from the front of the building, chattering excitedly as they hurried through the cold to get to the nannies and parents waiting for them. Thalia was impossible to spot in the crowd, so painfully small for her age that I almost didn’t see her when she stepped out at the back of the group. With her eyes to the ground in front of her, she didn’t so much as glance at any of the other girls as she passed.
The innocent but lively and curious girl I’d seen in the two times I’d interacted with her in the last year was nowhere to be found, smothered by the sadness and dread on her face. Stepping toward the front of the gate, I waited for her to look up and see me waiting. For that moment where her excitement would peek out from under the quiet illusion she wore.
I didn’t get the impression many people cared about her thoughts or feelings. It bothered me more than it should that this girl I barely knew was silenced by the people in her life.
She never saw the two girls reach out for her, each touching a hand to a shoulder blade and shoving her forward. Thalia’s hands struck the pavement as she caught herself, and her face twisted with pain when one of the girls nudged her with a shoe and shoved her to her back. She stood over Thalia, leaning in to hiss something at her with a cruel sneer on her face.
I was already moving, closing the distance between us to stand with a foot to either side of Thalia’s head. The other girl looked up at me, blanching when she saw the raw fury on my face. Thalia was small. She was awkward and she suffered from color blindness. I couldn’t begin to imagine what that was like when so many people depended on color to identify and describe everything.
The last thing she needed was to be bullied by some snot-nosed kids who thought their shit didn’t stink.
‘Get the fuck away from her,’ I growled, my lips pulling back to reveal my teeth. Rage filled me as I bent down and grasped Thalia under her arms, hauling her to her feet in front of me and taking the backpack off her shoulders to carry for her.
It weighed almost as much as she did.
‘You are going to forget that Thalia exists. If I ever hear you’ve been bothering her again, I will find you and I will make your lives a living hell, you little shits,’ I growled, watching as the girls nodded quickly and raced off. ‘Are you okay?’ I asked, turning my attention back to Thalia. She nodded, keeping her eyes on the ground. ‘Little One?’ I reached out to touch her hand with one of mine, growling when she flinched back as if I might hit her.
Any doubt I might’ve had that her injured hand wasn’t the result of an accident fled in that moment.
‘I will never hurt you,’ I told her firmly, squatting down and being reminded yet again of just how small she was. I grasped her hands in mine and turned them over, staring down at the raw skin where she’d caught the pavement and the spots of blood that peppered her skin.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, snatching her hands away defiantly. I released her right one but kept my grip strong on her left, twisting it to stare at her knuckles pointedly as I raised an eyebrow at her.
‘These didn’t happen today,’ I said, scowling down at the scarring around her knuckles ‘Who did this?’
‘None of your business,’ she muttered, tugging until I had no choice but to release her. She grabbed the strap of her backpack and tried to yank it off my shoulder, but only glared at me when she couldn’t. Huffing a breath of annoyance, she crossed her arms over her chest. Even in her warm jacket, her arms were far too slim, and her knees were knobby where they peeked out from her skirt.
‘Let’s get you to the car,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Eventually, you’ll tell me who hurt you.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, breathing in a more subdued way, as if she truly believed that nothing and no one could change anything about her treatment.
I’d move the earth for what was mine, and, like it or not, Thalia was my responsibility.
We stopped at the car waiting for her, and I glared at the driver. I contemplated giving him an order that Thalia wasn’t to be harmed, but I refrained. I’d tell her father my fucking self. I imagined most teenage boys were afraid of the great Origen Karras.
There was nothing I hated more than a bully who picked on the weak, and it took a special kind of asshole to bully his own daughter. I swore on my life there’d be a special place in hell with his name on it.
‘What color are your eyes?’ Thalia asked suddenly, tilting her head to the side as that curiosity leaked back into her face.
I blinked back my impending rage, staring down at her as a smile curved my lips up. ‘Gray.’ She grinned at me, all full lips and big teeth, instantly reminding me of why she liked white flowers.
She didn’t have to feel like she was missing out on the color, and for one rare moment, she could look at something and know she saw it for what it was.
