If she didn’t get her head back where it belonged, she was going to lose her job and what little bit of respect she’d finally managed to carve out of her mother’s hard heart.
Nothing was worth that. Nothing.
Breaking that temporary connection with him, she left the room.
Caillen felt a flutter of disappointment that the unknown Qill was gone. He had no idea why. She was not his type. Not by a long shot.
Yeah but at least she wouldn’t be boring. Which the pampered women around him were. Yes, they were intelligent and beautiful. But they had no idea what the real world was like, and he found that not only abhorrent and irresponsible for the people who made the laws that governed everyone, he found it naive. They mistook leisurely travel and overpriced education for worldly experience. In his existence, worldliness meant being able to scrape together a handful of beans to make ten meals that fed four people. Being able to repair your home and transportation with minimal parts at a minimum cost.
These people thought they knew what troubles were and yet they were as clueless as a three-year-old babe crying over a petty broken toy because to them that was the end of the world. True reality had never once touched them. Not really. Their money isolated them behind a protective wall that kept everything ugly on the outside.
Not having Mummy’s and Daddy’s love or getting into the right school or having the highest level of a job wasn’t a tragedy. He considered it a damn shame their selfish parents couldn’t make room in their overindulged hearts for their kids, but it wasn’t the catastrophe they made it out to be. Tragedy was watching a loved one die because you couldn’t afford one more day of a hospital stay after you’d already gone broke and homeless trying to pay for their treatment, or knowing people who’d sold their bodies just for their biweekly meals. It was having to bury your parents before you were ten and then having to make rent. Having to sell blood to pay for your sister’s medicine to treat an incurable illness that would kill her if you didn’t. It was going without food for days just so that same sister could have a necessary trip to the doctor that was weeks overdue and then hoping you could talk the doctor into taking a partial payment and not throw your ass out on the street in front of a waiting room full of people.
Those were real horrors. Not being able to buy the painting you “loved” because someone beat you to it wasn’t. But to the people around him, the latter was a tragedy of epic proportions.
I don’t belong here.
Honestly, he didn’t want to.
Feeling sick to his stomach, he cleared his throat to get his father’s attention.
His father looked at him expectantly and it hit him like a fist in his abdomen. Even though he’d only known his father a few months, he’d learned to love and respect him in spite of the worldhe lived in. The man cared about him and he didn’t want to disappoint him.
But this…
He just needed a break. “I’m not feeling well—”
“Are you all right?” The concern in his father’s eyes tightened his stomach even more.
“I will be. May I be excused?” He hated sounding like that. In his world, the exchange would have been completely different… “Hey, Dad, think I’m gonna puke. Gonna hit the head and snatch a nap, ’kay?”
But both his father and Boggi would faint dead if he said that out loud around this group.
His father waved a bodyguard over. “Take your time. Please let me know if you won’t be able to make dinner so that I can inform the others.”
“Yes, sir.” Caillen turned and headed away from the crowd with that annoying guard behind him. Like he needed anyone’s help protecting himself. Want to wipe my chin while you’re at it?
Darling and Maris met up with him in the hallway.
“You okay?” Darling frowned. “You look like you’re about to hurl.”
At least Darling used real speak. “How are you so normal having come from this shit?”
Darling gave him a lopsided grin. “My hellbent friends. I owe all my sanity to you guys.” Yeah, and what Darling failed to mention was the double life he lived. To everyone here he was royal. To their friends, he was a wanted renegade who protected the innocent victims chosen by the League. One who had a staggering price on his head.
Caillen glanced at Maris. “I know you’re not normal.”
Maris laughed. “I actually like the pomp and decorum. I find it refreshing to have civility in a universe where people routinely kill each other for profit.”