When vengeance strikes in the form of a bullet out for the princess's blood, Princess Aleia VonAuclair must flee the heart of her country in order to protect the people she loves and take back the pieces of her soul she'd lost to the girl she once l...
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The bell above the door chimed as I stepped through into Salmah's diner at nine o'clock in the evening. It was an hour till closing, but I figured I could wring out as much work as possible before then. The library would be at its peak at this time of the semester, and I really was not in the mood to glare at noisy chatters or constantly glance at them in hopes they'd take the hint.
Majority of the time, they did not.
Most of the booths and tables were empty at this hour. Salmah's was a great breakfast and lunch pod, but a lot of the students opted for something within campus gates after dark. I had Bryan, so the short walk over wasn't quite as eerie or creepy as it would've been without a hulking bodyguard.
I moved a little further to the back of the diner. There was a booth there I preferred for no particular reason - just that it was tucked a little ways away from the main area and it provided a certain kind of curtain of privacy.
My steps paused though, at the familiar figure, clad in a backwards hat and sweater, reading an ancient, leathered book in said booth.
A line creased his brows as he furrowed them in concentration, his eyes shifting along the page of the book as he read and I probably would've stayed there had the voice in the back of my head told me I was watching him like a creepy stalker. I turned back around but...
"Peaches?"
Crap.
Maybe if I could pretend-
"What are you doing?"
Double crap.
I whirled to him and smiled sheepishly.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you."
"You didn't. I was just about to order anyway."
Edrian chucked a piece of scrap paper between the pages he stopped at and stood from the booth. A jolt of electricity sizzled through my veins. He angled his chin to the empty cushion on the opposite side of the booth.
"Seat's empty."
"Oh, it's okay. I can sit somewhere else."
Edrian's lips pinched and he grabbed me by my bag strap before I could even take another step away.
"Sit in the booth, Aleia. I know you like that one."
My brows shot to the sky.
"How'd you know that?"
He shrugged, the movement disrupting the planes of his broad shoulders.
"You're always there. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out."
I blinked.
"Are you stalking me, Mr. Rousseau? Because if you are, that's considered a felony."
A wicked smile slashed across his face, and it made my stomach drop with heat. The whorls in the forest of his eyes clouded over as he bent down to whisper in my ear.
