Voiceless Bird

Chapter 5

I Never Would Have Thought

At dinner everybody was showing off their powers.

Amie smiled and shot icicles out of her fingertips that missed Meraella by a hair. Primo melted into a strange coloured liquid onto his chair, startling some of us with the odd nature of his powers. Robin shot small flames from his hands that barely missed me, Meraella levitated the table and Remi teleported from one end of the room to the other.

"How about your powers, Willow?" Robin said my last name like it was a disease—I mean—I only walked a bit slowly up the stairs!

I looked to Meraella for help and she offered an encouraging smile.

"I, er..." I felt a flush crawling up my spine. 

Blushing was not a pretty or cute thing; it was horrible and to me, felt like heated bugs crawling under my skin. Robin, of course, smirked and finished off my sentence, "Don't have any powers? I don't find that surprising... I doubt you'll even make it past three weeks."

I looked down and ate my food slowly. By the time I had finished, everybody but Meraella had gone to the common room to see the scores.

Meraella chatted reassuring things to me as we trudged up the stairs, "Don't let Robin get to you. He's just stuck up because his parents are the current Ruling Royals, and what's more, he thinks he's so good and he that you're beneath him." 

Robin was the son of the Ruling Royals? Nobody told me that!

"I'm sure you did fine. Even if you have no Royal background, it doesn't mean you don't know anything about anything."

I sighed, I suppose Meraella was right. I still had quite a lot of knowledge, even if it had nothing to do with Royals.

**

Robin did have another excuse to pick on me. It wasn't even because I hit rock bottom... in fact, quite the opposite.

"You cheater!" Robin rounded on me the minute I stepped through the common room doors.

Great! What did I do this time?

Meraella answered haughtily before I could talk back, "No, she didn't. Even if anyone did, it would have probably been you."

His eyes narrowed at me. He seemed to have a hot temper but I could tell that this time, he was more than angry. Remi stepped between Robin and the both of us before things got any worse. 

"Robin. She didn't cheat. You didn't cheat. I didn't cheat. No one cheated. Alright?"

Fortunately for us, Robin saw sense and realised that in the Academy, it was impossible to cheat. That didn't mean he saw sense to stop picking on me though.

Looking up at the sign board, I realised why Robin was so angry:

First Year Assessment Test Results

1. Nightingale Willow

2. Robin Rochards

3. Remi Black

4. Amie Oars

5. Meraella Silver

6. Primo Wends

Staring at the results I heard Robin and Remi walk away behind me, "At least you got second place." 

It was Remi.

"That's just a nice name for first loser." Robin grumbled angrily.

Remi laughed.

"Well, you did want to be first."

I could almost see the scowl on Robin's face, even with a scowl he still looked good. I stopped my thoughts in its tracks before it could go any further and turned to sit with Meraella on one of the six comfy chairs around the marble coffee table. Amie was sitting opposite Remi, casually looking at him from the top of her book.

This was a recipe for trouble.

Unsurprisingly, Amie started to talk to Remi, "So... Remi, you like smart girls right? And you utterly hate idiots."

Remi was stretched stylishly across his chair idly flicking through one of the textbooks.

"Yes, I dislike idiots." He answered without looking up.

"You know, I scored higher than Meraella and Primo in the test. Don't you think I deserve to be called smart?" Amie smiled sweetly.

Meraella fumed silently and glared at Amie's feet.

Remi looked up, "So what if you are? I only said I disliked idiots."

I could see that Amie was wavering, but I knew she wasn't about to give in so easily. "Yeah. You hate idiots. Meraella's an idiot."

Remi shut his book with a snap that made everyone jump and said, almost inaudibly, "I suppose she is rather idiotic." 

With an incline of his head, he teleported away and left us in stunned silence.

I sat there with tension so thick in the air, I wouldn't be surprised if I took out a knife and cut it, it would give me a slice. I wondered what tension would taste like... salty, maybe?

Meraella was clearly struggling to control her temper and Amie looked slightly stunned that Remi responded to her insult negatively towards Meraella.

Then her lips curved into a triumphant smile.

"I suppose prince charming doesn't want anything to do with a commoner," She raised an eyebrow at Meraella, "He's known for ditching girls once he's sweetened them up. Of course, I'm going to change that."

With a flick of her hair, she stalked away.

**

Sitting on Meraella's bed with her sobbing into her pillow, wasn't how I thought Meraella would have acted. She had told me to not let Robin get to me, and here she was letting Amie get to her.

"I knew Remi was what Amie said he was, but I thought he was sweet to me because I was special to him! Not because he wanted to break my heart!" Meraella exclaimed, continuing to sob into her pillow.

Special? I didn't know that. Then again, I practically knew nothing about Meraella.

Noticing my confused expression, she wiped her eyes and started a muffled explanation.

"Remi's whole family is Royal, like Robin's, and Remi's parents wanted him to get into the Academy. So, his parents introduced him to my brother, who was the top scoring student in his year at the Academy.

"Of course, my brother told him all there is to know about passing first year. I joined in for fun as well and as we got to know each other, we began to become best friends. We would sometimes sneak off, but most of the time we would muck around in lessons and ignore my brother." 

Meraella sighed, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand. 

"Remi's mother found out and got angry with me and my parents. She called us commoners and listed off all the things that made her annoyed, and how 'commoners' should not mix with Royals. My mother pointed out that since Remi had not yet gotten into the Academy and passed first year he was a 'commoner' as well.

"Luckily, her husband arrived just in time to pick his wife and son up and intervened before things got heated. He apologized and said his family would not disturb ours anymore.

"Almost all of the Royals knew what happened and a few Non-Royals as well. As the years passed, I heard about the many, many, many times Remi broke a girl's heart coldly. I, naively, didn't believe that was the Remi I knew. I was right, it wasn't the Remi I knew."

With a last indignant sniff, she clenched her fists.

"He obviously changed."

Meraella had stopped crying and a frown was on her face. By the anger in her eyes, she was determined to get back at Remi.

The familiar bell rang and I trudged up to my room, barely noticing Robin as he narrowed his eyes threateningly at me. One thought never left my mind.

I never would have thought that Remi who was so kind to Meraella would be like that.