~x~ Chapter 48 ~x~

"Hm…" I hummed and fell back onto the mats so that I could gaze at the ceiling as I reminisced about when I broke out six years ago. "I wanted to keep the name Kai no matter what. I wanted to keep something of me rather than changing completely so I thought about a bunch of names which would logically have the shortened name of Kai and eventually settled for Kylie. As for Valentine… I don't really know. I think it just sounded cool."

I turned my head so that I could see what Crispin's reaction would be. A pensive look settled on his face, and then confusion. "Why is your name Kai?" he asked, a confused frown occupying his face. "From your name, I would've thought that the right nickname would be Kal."

"Kai are my initials." I explained to him. "The 'a' stands for Adriana."

"Well, that definitely makes more sense," he chuckled in understanding. "There was one other name that I didn't quite understand. Why did Maria call you Skylar?"

"You're on first name basis with Maria?" I blinked in surprise.

"Thanks to Maxwell, I've come to be on first name basis with your family."

"Then why do you still call Joey 'Maxwell'?"

"It's a habit and he never insisted on otherwise. I generally call most male guardians by their surnames."

"That's really weird…"

"You're not so normal yourself," he teased with a smirk. "Are you going to answer my question?"

"You know my real name, right?"

He paused. A pensive expression settled on his face before it was replaced with a frown and then a somewhat sheepish expression. "No."

"You don't know my name?"

"I should, shouldn't I?"

"No necessarily… I'm just surprised, that's all. But then again, most people have been referring to me as 'the lost Ivashkov princess' for so long, basically since I left, so I guess there's no reason why you would know my name."

"Even so, I probably should've known your name considering who I'm friends with here."

"They wouldn't have mentioned my full name. The only one who uses now is Rosette." I scoffed. "Everyone's got their variations to my name. Anyway, my name is Kalani and apparently that means sky. One way or another, I don't actually recall how or why, Maria started calling me Skylar and it stuck."

"You sure do have quite a few names," he agreed. "How do you keep up with it all?"

"I find out what people are calling me and I get pretty accustomed to it quick. I had to considering I had so many of them."

"Does anyone call you Kal?"

I shook my head, taking a brief moment to stretch out before answering his question. "No. They said that it sounded too much like a guy's name like that so they took my initials and made a name out of that. Have you ever had strange nicknames?"

Crispin turned away from me for a moment, gazing up at the ceiling to think. "Thankfully, just two: Pin and Jenny."

"Jenny?" I sniggered. "That's really mean of whoever called you that."

"They never got round to calling me that more than once." Crispin scoffed, an amusingly badass gleam in his eyes.

"You silenced the poor sod?"

"I wouldn't call him that. We were pretty equal so I got injured just as much as he did."

"You mean you weren't always such a kickass fighter?"

"Everyone had to start somewhere, Val," he chuckled.

I blushed at my own stupidity. "There is that…"

"This happened back in elementary school so I was still learning."

"I hope you don't mind me asking, Crispin, but why are you here in this Academy?"

He turned to face me once more and I watched as he sat up, crossing his legs at the ankles. "It was because of the attack here."

"Let me guess, they decided that they needed more skilled guardians here so they snagged whatever guardian they could get their hands on?"

A grin tugged at his lips and he shook his head. "Not quite. Hunt did what he could to try and get the top guardians to come to this school since there are so many royals here."

"But of course, the top guardians would be assigned to court and around the King. I bet Martin tried to make a really strong case about having more of them here though."

"He fought as hard as he could, but in the end he only managed to get two from the court to transfer."

"Then what about you?"

"I heard about the attack and a guardian who knew me recommended me to Hunt who then filed in papers requesting for me to be stationed here as a teacher and guard."

I waited, not saying anything, because I could tell that there was more to the story than that. It was in his tone of voice, the slight guilt, grief, and self-reprimand was there, making his voice heavier and lower, almost chastising.

"When I was in High School, a guy called Enrique Lazar was in my class. He was a nice guy, not your typical stuck-up-and-pampered royal. But you know how people usually are. They either adore the royal like a fan, or try to be sneaky and get popular through the royal, or they treat them with the utmost respect and don't see through their royal title."

Crispin took a pause there, taking a deep breath and a moment to collect his thoughts. I watched his features changing constantly, becoming tight with grief and regret one moment then back to normal the next.

"I was the third group. I never saw him as anything more than a royal, someone who needed to be guarded at all times. I treated him almost like an object, disregarding what he might have felt and just did my job. After graduation, I was assigned to be his closest guard. I wasn't anything special back in elementary school, but when I got to High School, my muscles began to build properly and I was one of the best there."

"And it seems that you are one of the best here." I told him, giving him a small smile. "And apparently the best when it comes to pair work with Joey."

"We were unbeatable."

"Until a little runt like me popped into the equation?" I teased.

"You're not a runt, Val. A reckless girl, perhaps, but not a runt."

I laughed at the protest in his voice at the idea of calling me a runt. "Glad to hear that."

"I guarded Enrique for four years after graduation but we were never friends because I was too stubborn back then and refused to see past his title. I hardly ever took his feelings into consideration and yet he never stopped trying. He wanted me to open up, he wanted to be friends with me. He didn't want me to just be his guard, he wanted to be my best friend, but I never dropped my guard and in doing that, I hurt him for four years."

"Crispin, that's not your fault. You were just trying to do your job, and with the way that dhampirs are raised to pretty much worship the royal families, it's no wonder that you stuck to the rules. You seem like a rather stubborn person to me hence you get on so well with Joey. You're basically two peas in a pod."

"I'm not that stubborn."

"I might not know any examples, but I'm pretty good at reading people, Crispin, and I'm pretty sure that you probably are."

"You remind me a little of Enrique," he carried on. "He understood that I couldn't just treat him like anyone else partly because he was Moroi and partly because he was royal. He didn't expect me to just forget everything that I'd learned. He just wanted me to be less uptight. He just wished that the wall I'd build between us from day one wasn't so high. And for four years I hurt him by refusing and ignoring his attempts for friendship. It's a wonder that he didn't hate me."

"You don't come across as a hateable person."

He blinked in surprise before giving me a wide smile. "He said the same thing once."

"Really? Maybe he's secretly my brother?" I suggested jokingly when I knew that that wasn't possible. "See, maybe I'm not such a unique little oddball after all."

"No, you're not," he agreed with a small chuckle. "The worst was when I lost him."

"So I was right. Something horrible and painful did happen to you." I whispered.

"You knew?"

"I could see the darkness in your eyes. You're an upbeat and positive person, Crispin, but there is an unmistakeable shadow in your eyes. It's a gleam that someone has when they lost someone important to them. You might have never lowered your guards, but in your heart, Enrique had always been your friend from day one. That's why it hurt you to hurt him."

"Maybe if I had known you back then, you could've physically knocked some sense into me. You get violent when you get frustrated, don't you?"

"Guilty as charged."

"I didn't lose Enrique to a Strigoi attack. It was a car crash, an old admirer gone mad who thought that if she couldn't have him then no one else could."

"People like that still exist?" I grimaced at the thought of it.

"That's why counsellors exist. I had been driving and she hit the passenger side. He wasn't killed instantly. While the other guardian apprehended her, I took Enrique out of the car to make him as comfortable as I could." Crispin sucked in a breath and I could see the shadows clouding his eyes. "And do you know what he said to me in his dying moment? He apologised. He apologised for being so persistent for so long when I hated it. His exact words were: 'Thank you for putting up with me. I know that it was hard on you with my crazy antics.' He thought that I hated him for being so persistent. He died thinking that I hated him."

I didn't know what to say. There was nothing that I could say. There were no words that could ease his pain. What had happened had happened and nothing could change that. Instead, I rolled off the mats, stepped up to him and rested my hand on his.

He looked at me, staring at me, piercing me with his painful gaze filled with regret.

"I might still have never saved him, but if I had just lowered my guard just a little and been friends with him, I wouldn't have hurt him so much. He wouldn't have died with that kind of painful feeling. I'm not a royal so I'll never know what it feels like to be seen as just a title. But I vowed at that moment that I would never submit anyone else to that. I vowed that I wouldn't hurt someone in that same way again."

Understanding dawned on me and I rested my other hand on his. I gave him a soft smile, leaned forward and kissed his forehead. "Thank you, Crispin." I whispered. "No one is perfect. You weren't to know back then that you had hurt him as much as you did. We can't change the past and that shadow will always be there, but just don't let it consume you."

"The pain has eased over the years," he reassured me. "It will never fade away completely, but it's a reminder that although I have to respect the social hierarchy, it's much more important to respect the person if they deserve it. It's our job to protect you guys, but what's the point in protecting you physically if we're constantly emotionally hurting you? In a way, that might just be worse."

"It is worse." I murmured grimly. "It is far worse to be hurt emotionally than physically. An emotional pain is much deeper. I can't thank you enough for having that kind of attitude towards us royals. While there are certainly a lot of pampered and snobby royals out there, we're not all like that and a lot of us actually want to be respected individually rather than because of our title."

"I knew that you would be like Enrique, that if I were to treat you with guarded respect, I would end up hurting you the way I had hurt him. I saw it in your eyes at Hunt's office when you hit me."

"When you didn't even bother defending yourself, I felt everything break. It's only been a week, but I really like you Crispin. I didn't want to lose the strange easy going teacher-student friendship we had going."

"I have to say, Val. You really do pack one heck of a punch," he grumbled. "I have a bruise that will probably stay there for a while."

"You momentarily deserved it."

"I know. You have to understand, Val. I can't be exactly like before. I will value your safety now more than before but I do know that you are much stronger than the average dhampir let alone a royal."

"Are you likely to jump in the way Ali did outside of the school?"

"I don't know," he told me honestly. "It will definitely depend on the situation. If we do need your help, I won't be as irrational as he was. But I will hold you back if your help isn't absolutely necessary, Val."

"At least you're honest about it." I sighed. "I knew that we won't go back to how it was. That would be impossible and unfair of me to expect of you."

"I'm sorry for hurting you back in the office."

"It's alright. I got to hit you back so now we're even." I smirked. "You know, I think it's just as well that you've found out when you did."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, it was at a time when nothing was really going on. If there was some kind of a crisis or something then things might not have gone as smoothly as they did. Besides, I'll have rehearsals soon and I'll need to make trips out of school quite a lot. Since you and Joey are such a tag team, I'll bet that Martin would've assigned you and Joey as my regular guards to go outside and it'd be a whole lot harder to hide the truth from you later on since you're so observant and Joey would undoubtedly slip up at some point."

Crispin smiled at my jibe towards Joe and shook his head. "Maxwell tends to become a little careless around people he trusts."

"And he definitely trusts you. Otherwise he never would've let you talk to me alone like this." I scoffed. "He's far too protective sometimes."

"I've never seen him like this before. I did think that he was oddly bright and cheery, well more than usual, when he came back from escorting the four royals outside and brought you back. I didn't really tie two and two together until now."

"I worked hard at making sure that we weren't being too obvious."

"And with good reason," he agreed. "How much of the royal life do you know?"

I sighed and stared at the floor. "Enough to know that I'm not ready for it. The me now won't be able to handle the sneaky and cunning people who want to get close to me for merits and benefits. Not to mention, since I'm the last Ivashkov, dhampir or not, they treat me like some kind of treasure which is really freaky. They value me more than they need to and when my parents passed away, for just that one week, the pressure was crippling. As a pretty spineless kid, I couldn't deal with the pressure of being someone that would be approved by everybody."

"So even back then you weren't one to like conforming even though you were raised as a royal?"

"I wasn't raised as a royal, per se. My parents raised me like any other normal kid. They spoiled me, but they always chastised me if I ever acted pompous. I never got into the habit of thinking I held the world in my hands like some other royals did."

"And a lot of royals think like that, especially our current King."

"Exactly. Now, I have a spine, I can face up to the pressure. Yes, when the secret is out, I'll have to learn to appease people, but not in the same weak and pathetic way as I would've done back then. Now that I know who I am, now that I have built my character and confidence, they can't manipulate me anymore. That was what I couldn't bear the most. I knew that they were trying to mould me into the kind of puppet that they could use and there was nothing any of us could do. The others in the family had their hands full with their duties already and it wasn't as if they could backchat the royals. It was a vicious situation."

"Since I don't know about the kid you, I can't imagine you being spineless at all."

"I was pathetic as a kid." I grumbled. "I was a terrible fighter. I had to visit Rosette every other day because of training. Of course, I never gave up and always pestered Mum to give me extra training despite my injuries but I was really bad as a kid. The only thing I was good at was getting up to mischief behind the scenes with Ali."

"Considering how you broke out of the school, it's not difficult to imagine you as a prankster."

"I learned from the best." I smiled at him, going back to sit on the pile of mats. "Ali knew the best kinds of tricks and they were certainly useful when I got outside. I strengthened my spine, got myself together and built my strength with a more intense fervour than before."

"And then you slowly became who you are now."

"Yep."

"Are you still a prankster?"

"I wouldn't say so. I promised Martin that I would be good here. I promised him that I wouldn't cause more trouble than necessary."

"I think I can say on behalf of all guardians that we'll all be grateful for it. That last prank seriously baffled most of us and using cookies was lethal. Those two are now constantly wary of biscuits."

"Oops…" I grimaced. "I hope I can regain their trust again soon. That was just an emergency. I doubt it would happen again. Besides, I've never used the same trick twice."

"I'll let them know that, though I don't think they'll stop being wary anytime soon. It'll take a while for the suspicion to wear off."

"I won't say I'm sorry. It was necessary and totally worth it. I got to kick some Carlton ass."

"I haven't seen all that many soccer games before but even I know that that was one spectacular game. Congratulations again for winning."

"There was no way I was letting them win."

"You shocked us all when you took that hit to the leg, Val."

"Who's 'us'?"

"Guardians. We all knew that that hit wasn't meant for you, but you took it anyway. It was to prevent damage to the boy, wasn't it? Because as a dhampir you're physically stronger and sturdier than the average human."

"Tyce wouldn't have been able to play for at least a several months and he wouldn't have fully recovered for a few years. I couldn't bear having that kind of thought in my mind and we needed him to be in top shape to win. It was much safer for me to take the hit. Not to mention, I knew that I wouldn't have permanent damage thanks to the healers here."

"You took care of your team well," he praised. "The cheers they gave you at the after party were well deserved. You're going to make one heck of a team leader, Val."

"Crispin, as much as I would love it, there's absolutely no way that I'm going to make it to graduation with the secret still remaining a secret. In the next two years, who I really am will get exposed. There's absolutely no way that I'm going to manage to hide it for two years."

"You might manage it." From the lack of confidence in his eyes, I knew that even he didn't believe that.

"I won't. All the family members found out in a week, and you found out about me around the same time. I haven't even been through two weeks here and already so much has happened. It'd take a miracle for the secret to be kept for two years. And once the cat is out of the bag, there's no way they'll let me graduate as a normal guardian. I don't know what they'll have installed for me, but I know that it will be chaotic and I probably won't like it."

"We'll all have your back, Val. We might all be tied with our duties here as guardians but we'll always have your back."

"That's what I'm counting on." I smiled grimly at him. "The chaos at school will be bad enough and I'll be lucky not to go mental. There'll be a lot more rumours, a lot more whacky theories as to why I've kept the truth and all that. But the worst will be when the court finds out. I'll never hear the end of it, especially from the King."

"How much do you know about him? He came to the throne after you left so you can't possibly know all that much about him."

"I know enough." I grumbled. "I knew of him from my parents. When I was a kid, they used to have these serious chats about the heirs to the throne and who they thought would be the most appropriate to succeed as the new monarch. Neither of my parents or anyone in our little family unit wanted Wrylan Dashkov to become King. He was the worst choice possible and yet by some twisted fate, he managed it. Even as I kid, I knew from the things people said about him that he was bad news. He's a total schemer which can be a good thing, but unfortunately, he is said to love abusing his scheming talent."

"How do you know that much?"

"I might have only been about ten years old, but that didn't stop me from being perceptive about things like that. I inherited that from my dad, being able to tell if someone's going to be bad news or not. It usually works and that instinct rarely fails me."

"Though it seems that you've met your match."

"Pardon?"

"Cooper."

My expression twisted into a grimace and I twiddled my thumbs nervously. "Is it really that obvious? I mean, you're definitely not the first to point this out…"

"He's not an obvious choice as your partner, Val. In fact, he's a downright bizarre choice. He may appear to have a flawless reputation and generally admired by the student and teacher body, but he's not someone we'd thought that you would go for. Maxwell was more than surprised."

"I know. Joey and I had a sit down last night to talk about it."

"I told him about what I saw. I thought that I should, all things considered."

"He'd probably have tried to kill you if he found out that you saw something like that and didn't tell him." I scoffed.

"Tried being the main word," he chuckled.

"You be careful, Crispin. When it comes to being protective, Joey can suddenly get scarily skilful with fighting."

"I'll bear that in mind. So, why are you and Cooper together?"

"I've had this conversation way too many times." I groaned, pressing a hand against my face. "If my unease isn't reason enough to break off our compromise, you people badgering me to leave him is."

"Who else has voiced it?"

"You, Joey who didn't exactly state it in words but it was in his voice, Christian and Ozera."

"Chance and Ozera? You've managed to break past Chance's usually defensive but charming exterior?"

"What can I say? I'm a talented kid." I shrugged. "I'm helping him out with training. He's not half bad."

"He's one of the most talented and promising out of the dhampirs. In fact, he was the best until you came along and stole that title in a flash."

"I have my pride to uphold."

"We can see that."

"And what about Ozera? Between us teachers, we've all noticed that he's become interested in you, but to the extent of prying into your romance life? Now that is surprising."

"You're also not the first one to say that." I sighed, running my hand down my face. "Martin mentioned that first along with everyone else actually. Man, when Ozera finds out, he's going to freak and definitely more than you had. You didn't freak, you just momentarily treated me like a valued treasure before I physically knocked that reaction out of you."

"Give the guy more credit, Val. He might be indifferent. He'll be surprised, but he might react the least dramatically."

"Maybe, but maybe not. That guy practically idolises the Ivashkov princess and I am nothing like anyone would've imagined I would turn out. I was a shy and anti-social and spineless kid back then for crying out loud. No one could've guessed that I'd turn out to be… well, me. Even I hadn't anticipated that."

"Life does that to people. When you're that young, it's almost impossible to know how anyone would really turn out." Crispin reasoned. "Besides, seeing how the others treat you, you probably aren't actually all that different. You might have changed a lot, but fundamentally, your heart is still the same."

I smiled wryly at him, crossing my legs at the ankles to get comfortable again. "You really do have a way with your words, don't you?"

"It's all in the art of communication."

"Kylie!"