THE QUEEN'S CROWN [2]

02 : BURNING HATE

       She went to sleep in an awkward position in the armchair of the living room, refusing to leave Louis's side as he stayed unconscious on the couch. For the longest time, Lily couldn't drift off, instead curled up in a ball, staring at her boyfriend with a million things running through her mind. Apart of her knew that she had to tell him about why Kol had targeted him, that he wasn't thrown off the balcony simply because he was there. She knew she needed to tell him but as she sat there, all she could think about was the fact that she had no idea how she was going to do so without losing him. She knew Louis better than she knew herself but she had put the boy through so much and he had always come back. She could not see him coming back from this and she didn't want to lose him. She had lost enough people that she loved. She had loved so many people and she wasn't even an adult yet. She didn't want to lose Louis too.

He was her first real love.

Lily had had crushes before she started seeing her best friend, one of which being Jeremy Gilbert. He was a year and a half older, the brother of one of Charlie's friends and he had always been so creative and good looking and sweet. It wasn't until he started crushing on Vicki Donovan and she realized Louis liked her did she see that Jeremy only saw her as a little sister figure. Her crush on Jeremy was nothing like how she loved Louis. He was always there when she needed him, he had been patient and waited for her when she needed time alone and her heart had broken when she had briefly lost him when he was shot by Sheriff Forbes. He was the closest thing to a best friend she had and she had always thought that that kind of love only existed in fairytales and movies. She never thought she would actually fall in love with her best friend. She couldn't imagine losing him just because the universe decided that she was meant to be with someone else.

She also hated that the person she was tied to was someone like Kol Mikaelson. He was the opposite of the kind of man she would ever be with or even befriend in any way. She hated Klaus and she didn't doubt that Kol had done just as many bad things as the Hybrid had. Lily was scared that she would end up seeing him again and then maybe not hating him as much as she did right now. She was certain of it, but Charlie had hated Elijah at one point and now she didn't. She cared about him and Lily didn't ever want to feel like that about Kol. He had almost killed Louis, he had broken Matt's hand and he had already made her feel as if she didn't have a choice in the matter of being his soulmate. When Elijah first started pursuing Charlie, he didn't tell her about the bond because he wanted her to feel something without the obligation. Lily knew her bond with Kol wasn't romantic but with the way he spoke to her made her feel like an object, like she lacked a choice in anything that concerned the bond with him. It was a feeling she wasn't used to and she didn't want to get used to it either.

Throughout the night, she had had a dream that she was being chased in the familiar woods outside the Salvatore Boarding House. She had had no control of what she was doing because she knew the forest in that area very well and yet she seemed to be running around wildly, fear and panicked as a creature chased her. She was wearing an old-fashioned nightgown that Lily had never worn in real life once so she realized in her dream that it wasn't real, but even then, that fear refused to go away. It locked onto her tightly and it only seemed to make things worse. Then out of nowhere, she was attacked and shoved into a tree trunk, collapsing on the ground with a yelp. That was when she saw who her attacker was. Apart of her had expected Kol, since she had gone to sleep thinking of how much he frightened her and how much she didn't want to be around him. But it wasn't Kol that was standing over her with a bloodied face and sneering smirk. It was Klaus. He was standing over her for one second and then on her the next, a scream piercing her lips.

"Lily! Wake up!"

She awoke with a scream, sweat running down her head and she could feel her heart thumping in her chest. The second she saw that it was Louis shaking her awake, his eyes full of concern, she had thrown her arms around his neck, pulling him to her. He would've laughed if not for how worried he was about her. He leaned back, taking his girlfriend with him, his arms circling around her waist and holding her close to him. She wasn't wearing her gown from the ball anymore, instead having changed into a t-shirt of Louis's and a pair of Maggie's shorts that the eldest Harper had given her, knowing she didn't want to go home next door until she had visibly seen that her boyfriend was okay and awake. And he was. He's fine.