Daughter of Stars and Nightmares (The Eternal Bond Saga book 1)

The Fallout

November 8th

A week had crawled by since Julia's mom had dropped the bomb about her true lineage in her lap. Julia was still coming to terms with the shocking revelations. She sat on her window seat, with a blank expression on her face, staring out at the woods and scrubbed at her eyes. They burned in protest to the plastic annoyance in them. She had to wear hard contacts, because soft contacts just weren't up to camouflaging her fiercely silver eyes.

Edrys had told Julia that it would be best to wear them all the time, so she wouldn't forget to put them on when she went out. Not that it would've mattered, her social life had been executed by her mother grounding her until further notice. Which she knew translated into her being under house arrest until she was thirty. Ren was also giving her space to deal with everything.

Julia only had two sources of relief to her boredom. One was the two hours she was allotted with Abby and Ella when they were allowed over and the second source of relief to her boredom was Damien. He visited her in secret for a few hours every night. And seeing as how Abby and Ella left fifteen minutes ago and Damien never popped by until 10:00pm Julia had resigned herself to yet another evening of utter-mind-numbing-boredom.

Even Alex was avoiding her. He hadn't shown up at her window since the truth came out. He was also skipping classes. On the days he had bothered to turn up to school he was too busy with Véronique to even glance Julia's way. It made her heart ache not being able to be near him, or touch him, or kiss him. He completed her and now that he was avoiding her; she felt empty inside and her heart throbbed all the time in his absence.

Not that she could blame him for avoiding her. It wasn't as if she'd made his life any easier. She kept asking herself why he would want to associate with someone related to the very person responsible for killing masses of his family members. And was surprised he even talked to her.

As for Véronique, she now had the excuse she wanted to vent her hate toward Julia. When Véronique wasn't telling Julia what an absolute freak she was; Véronique avoided her like the plague. Damien was the only one of them that seemed to still care about Julia.

She was grateful for his visits each day but, his attempts at trying to get her to take their friendship further were getting tiring. Julia didn't know how many times she could give him the I-just-want-to-be-friends brush off before she snapped and said something mean just to get some breathing space. Between Alex's cold shoulder, and the relentless voice in her head demanding she only have feelings for Alex, and Damien perusing her and her own mixed feelings about both boys she felt as if she was being pulled apart at the seams.

She huffed, frustrated by how her life just kept getting more and more complicated. I should've never tempted the fates by begging for something exciting to happen in my boring life. Figures they would have a damn good laugh at pulling the rug out from under my feet in the process of granting my request.

As if the fates were listening to her moaning and not happy that she wasn't thankful for their gift; a pair of bright silver eyes greeted Julia as Damien climbed on the roof by her window. He gave her a warm smile and reached through the window, stroking her cheek with his thumb. "Today I've come to rescue the princess from the tower."

She stifled a groan and looked up at the sky, seriously? You can't give me a tiny respite from complicating my life. Julia rubbed at her irritated eyes, wanting to tear the stupid contacts out and grind them into dust. Then tried to muster a smile to match his enthusiasm but gave up and let her lips slide back into their natural resting position. She desperately longed to see Alex and wished it was him crouching at her bedroom window instead of Damien.