A KINGDOM OF DEAD HEARTS [COMPLETED]

CHAPTER 14: RAIN RAIN GO AWAY

Some days had passed.

Dad had not called her, and she stood her ground and did not call him either. Xander did catch the change in her facial expression when she checked her phone and there was nothing on it from Dad. She must have had a concerned look, worried, or even sad, drawn on her face and Xander seemed to be a good reader of emotion.

He would come just a few steps closer, tilted his head slightly, and are you alright? was conveyed without a word.

She would just nod, throw her gaze somewhere else, and step farther from him. Her life with Dad was not something she was prepared to even begin to describe to Xander. Was she embarrassed? To have a drama like that with Dad? Maybe. Or maybe she was just too disgusted by her own dad. What kind of father does Xander have? was a question that did run a few times in her mind. She did not ask it out loud to Xander though.

Xander's wound healed well, the green powder worked wonders.

Airin took Lyanna to school too, to her class. The school management let her bring Lyanna for fun, she told them that Lyanna was a niece of Xander, a friend of hers, and her parents were undergoing a bitter divorce process, so she went to live temporarily with her uncle Xander to calm down and have a bit of rest.

Of course, Lyanna could never tell anyone about Halgard, or elegarii, to which she did a good job in keeping those a secret. She would do anything to make sure that she would not lose her new friends in the class.

Lyanna and Tasha were fast friends, the little girls clicked almost immediately, did a lot of things together in class, and the Halgardian princess clearly enjoyed her first time getting into a preschool. Her favorite sing-along nursery rhyme in the class was the rain song, she memorized the lyrics, and would sing on top of her lungs:

Rain rain go away

Come again another day

Little children want to play

Rain rain go away ...

From Xander, she heard that in the palace of Halgard, Lyanna had specially selected personal tutors to start preparing her for her reign as a queen someday, but she had always studied by herself, sometimes she played with the children of the palace officials, or with her nannies and guards. A classroom with a bunch of other children learning together was a new experience for her.

Xander was still quiet, but as days passed, he grew slightly more relaxed. He would walk with Airin and Lyanna to school, and spent the rest of the day just walking around in town, exploring, watching, learning, or just having a quiet time at the Greens, until the time Airin and Lyanna finished school time, he would show up at the schoolyard and went home with them.

However, Airin had to admit, there was a weird tingle in her heart when that day, after school, heavy rain fell. Tired Lyanna threw tantrum when her piece of drawing – a drawing of her and her father – from the class started to get wet from the water splash outside the school building.

It was then that Xander quietly kneeled down, took the damp paper, slid it inside his hoodie, holding one hand there to make sure it did not slide out. "It is safe there, Lyanna," he caressed his niece's cheek and Lyanna nodded hard and stopped crying. For that deed, Xander earned a glittery pink heart-shaped Well Done! sticker that Lyanna asked from Airin.

Airin could have sworn she saw a faint smile on Xander's face, a very thin, faint one as he put the sticker in his hoodie pocket. "I will keep it here ... to keep it save," that was what he said to Lyanna. The smile ended with that sentence.

Airin froze for a moment, her heart thumped in her chest.

"Airin!" a voice called out to her. She turned and saw Stella rush in the hallway to her.