Willow leaned against her locker, her arms crossed over her chest, her eyes scanning every student who passed her by for signs of injury. She ignored the sound of approaching footsteps, but Rune, who sat cross-legged beside her, looked up. Ed stopped and stared at Rune’s face for several seconds, his eyes going wide. Then he shook his head. “Well,” he said. “Now I know what’s gotten you all worked up.”
Rune rolled his eyes, the white of his right standing out all the more against the dark purple that surrounded it. “She won’t listen when I tell her I’m fine.”
“Someone hurt you,” she said, still watching the crowd flowing in front of her. “The black eye and bloody nose alone tell me you’re not fine. I’m going to find out who it was, and I’m going to make them suffer.”
Ed paled and stepped closer to Willow, grabbing her upper arm. “Don’t, Willow. You know what kind of problems that’ll cause.”
She turned to look at him then, her eyes cold and bright. “Ed,” she said quietly, though her voice made it seem like frost should have been issuing from her mouth. “This is none of your business. Now, let me go before I decide to break your arm.”
Her cousin dropped her arm and stepped back. Willow ignored him, looking back at the student crush. Rune sighed and climbed to his feet. He laid a hand on her shoulder, saying “Seriously, you need to drop this. It’s fine.”
“It’s not. I can’t just let something like this go,” she whispered, not looking at him. “What if, because nothing happens, someone else tries something too?”
“No one’s going to do that. Most people won’t even know what happened. And again, you keep acting like I just stood there and took it. I did fight back.”
“You’re underestimating how quickly rumours can travel.”
He snorted. “I know quite a lot about that. More than most people.”
Willow shook her head. “It’s too risky. I want this done, and in such a way that it’s a warning to others.”
Rune’s mouth opened to say something when it snapped closed at the same time his grip on her shoulder went from gentle to crushing. Willow glanced at him for a moment, before looking back at the crowd. There, walking towards them on the far side of the hall, was a familiar figure. Shaggy blond hair topped a solid figure, but what had Willow freezing in place, was the split lip and bruised cheek he wore. “Walter,” she growled.
Swinging in front of her without slackening his grip, Rune tried to interpose himself between her and the approaching boy. “Willow, you’re in the middle of the hall, in front of half the school. Now is not the time to attack someone.”
Ed hurried over to her other side, grabbing her free arm and nodding. “Your friend’s right. If you attack him, you’re the one who’s going to get suspended next. You know Marsden’s all anti-aggression. He won’t care why you hit him, just that you did.”
Willow’s fists clenched as she jerked her head to the side so she could keep watching Walter, feeling her veins turn to ice as her face went numb. “He can’t be allowed to just do stuff like that.”
“You can’t do this!”
“If you attack him without warning and without provocation, revenge doesn’t count, you won’t be any better than he is. If you were an adult being tried in a court of law, a cold, planned attack would get you far more than one that happened after you’d been provoked by the victim. And you don’t want to give him a chance to play the victim. It’ll set the wrong precedent,” Rune said, his grey gaze boring into her.
She glanced at him, her eyes caught by his. Willow brought her chin up, matching stare for stare. “And if I don’t care?”
“Then you wouldn’t be the same person I’ve become friends with.”
She flushed, her gaze dropping to the ground. Her arms trembled as her fists tightened until her knuckles were white. “He deserves to have his face beaten into the ground. Repeatedly.”
Rune shrugged. “There’s no denying that. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t be the one to throw the first punch. It might be interesting to turn the tables on him, and try and provoke him into attacking first. It would be such poetic justice.”
Willow looked up at her wickedly grinning friend. Ed shook his head, glaring at both of them. “Don’t you dare! Do you have any idea how quickly rumours of that would spread? Not to mention the trouble you’d get in if anyone found out.”
Two sets of eyes, one grey, one green, met Ed’s brown ones. “You can’t stop us. Not without following both of us around 24/7, and with the two of us able to separate…” Rune’s eyes danced.
“And you couldn’t stop me, not if I really want to do something. We both know I’ve kept up learning with Andre far more than most and that he’s given me extra lessons,” Willow added.
While Ed sputtered, Rune glanced over his shoulder. When Willow frowned at him, he grinned. “He’s gone. So you can drop the whole thing. Of course, if you do try to hunt him down, I can tackle you. I might not have the muscles of your hulking cousin here, but I have the power of the unexpected on my side. You never want to fight the crazy ones.”
For a second, Willow only stared, the warmth of amusement warring with the ice of her anger. Finally, her lips twitched into a smile. “Alright, alright. I’ll drop it for now. But if he tries anything else, anything at all…”
Rune’s grin had a razor edge. “Then I’ll cheerfully help you.”
YOU ARE READING
Silver Bound Girl
FantasyWillow's a Byron and they aren't just your average family. Not just because there are so many of them, but because they have secrets and traditions far outside the norm. Like spending as much time outside as in, and doing everything to keep rumours...
