A thousand daggers didn't match the pain that Nadine was feeling. She was laying on a fur on her stomach. Her arms, shoulders, back, spine, had all felt like their tendons were sliced.

Her eyes drifted open in a drunken daze. Blurred were the objects around her.

"It hurts," she whimpered to the empty chamber.

"I know," a deep but gentle tenor voice acknowledged. Her green eye opened wider at the sound of it.

"Having damaged wings isn't a joy ride, and neither is losing your job," they spoke.

"How damaged?" Nadine muffled.

"Ripped. Your wings are shredded, shattered, the dusted lining is torn away, you can't fly anymore," the same voice said.

'You can't fly anymore, you can't fly anymore, you can't fly anymore...'rang through her sleepy head.

Tears rolled out of her eyes.

"I'm sorry,"

Nadine's vision became clear to see the man she was talking to. Taven Argalos.

"No you're not. It's all good unless it happens to you," she sassed angrily. "And why is it, whenever your near something bad happens to me?"

Taven's light green eyes widened in surprise. He didn't expect the young fairiette to remember him. She did give him a strange look when she served the drinks. Until that moment, he thought he'd never see of her again. True, he had gotten her fired, and her wings were broken, but that wasn't his fault. "It's not my fault Miss...?"

"Nadine," she mumbled with discourage and laid her face into the pillow.

"Fine, Miss Nadine...I think you just have a stroke of bad luck," he said.

"Bad luck? BAD LUCK!" she cried out lifting her head. "THE ONLY REASON I GET BAD LUCK IS BECAUSE OF ROYALS LIKE YOU!"

"Hey now..." Taven said trying to calm her.

"NO! First of all I was a messenger, until one day they decide to send me to Ashant Burrow with a message. I can't ride a messenger bird because of upper-class snobs and the prices on birds. So I get there and fall into a jar because my wings are tired from flying that far. Well that gets me banned and the ROYAL sends another ROYAL to get me fired. I'm jobless. I have no way of eating, until I get another one. So I land a job here at the palace. The cranky waitress yells at me for being slow since my wings are still dead and then this horny pig ROYAL tries feeling me up while I'm serving drinks. The cranky waitress yells at me to move and then I get away but my wings don't," Nadine cried and burst into tears again.

Taven stared at her. She had a lot of problems with the Royals.

"Well, I'm sorry," was all that Taven could say.

"You're as sorry as they come," Nadine grumbled. She didn't know what had happened to her. She was usually a quiet intellectual but now she was on an anger streak.

"Shit happens," Taven shrugged and sat down next to her.

"Why are you still here? I bet you have better things to do than to waste your time with a handicapped Underclass," Nadine said looking at the wall.

"I wanted to make sure you were okay. The healer said…he said it would have been fatal if I hadn't gotten you in when I did," he said quietly.

"You...carried me in?" Nadine turned to look at him.

"Well, yeah. No one else was doing a damn thing. You looked terrible, with your wings all shredded. That one Royal who was bothering you just sorta took off, ya know fled the scene," he explained.

"He would, he didn't care. All he wanted was what was under my top," Nadine whispered.

"Those kind of Royals are slime buckets that don't care and try to lay all the Underclasses they can," Taven explained.

"What about you?" Nadine looked up at him.

"I care," he smiled at her.

"About what? Underclasses?" Nadine asked puzzled. Why would a Royal risk caring about them?

"No, you. It's obvious you needed help. What the 9 hells, I could care less about orders of the class, it's all bull shit. Underclasses, Royals, the Dynasty...all bull. One couldn't survive without the other," he said.

Nadine thought about it.

"You're right," she smiled at him. She had a feeling Taven Argalos and her would get along fine.