Your Narrator Does Not Meet Alex

A/N: Apologies for the unintended update gap. This should be regularly updating again this week (and it's an exciting arc, the story's really kicking off now!). If you've enjoyed the story so far, I'd really appreciate comments or review! As a first-time Webnovel writer, it'd mean the world to hear your thoughts, and that way I can know what to maybe give you more of ;)

I come to the gates of the Keep, huffing and puffing, just as the sun is dipping beneath the horizon and painting the sky blood-red. Behind me, the celebration in the square is full swing. Torches ring the perimeter, and in every direction, bodies move in time with the buskers’ music.

But the moment I’m spat out by the crowd in front of the guards—it swallows up the space I leave behind immediately—, I realize I have literally next to no plan.

“Um, hi, sir,” I say. I try to focus on their stern, bearded faces, but my eyes can’t help darting to their extremely sharp-looking weapons. “I know you’re not supposed to let anyone in until after sunset, but—“ But by then it’ll be too late, I can’t say. The sentence awkwardly peters out.

One of the guards—the captain, probably, with his fancy-looking helmet and general aura of authority” makes a sharp upward motion with his hands. I instinctively flinch back—but the heavy wooden gates behind him begin to creak slowly open, as the two guards flanking them begin to push at them.

“I thought you’d never show,” the guard captain says. He rolls his eyes. “Our honorable Alexandrius has been sulking all over the place, looking for you.

“Er, I say. I smile uneasily. “Great. Thanks, I’ll, uh, fill him in?”

The captain waves me forward without turning away from the crowd, and I scuttle through the gap between the doors before he can change his mind.

The gates slam shut behind me.

It’s a different world inside the Keep.

It’s not any less crowded, really—everywhere I look, there’s a servant bustling about—but everything feels orderly, with even the chatter feeling focused.

I bite my bottom lip, weaving aimless between the busy servants and the tables laden with caskets of wine and baskets of food. I guess the best thing to do would be to find Alex? [1] He’s supposedly very into Aurelia, surely he’d at least consider what Aurelia / I tell him, especially if I look distressed enough? And I’m plenty distressed.

Okay, right. So where would an extremely attractive, blond-haired blue-eyed guy with a brooding, borderline psychopathic air be hiding—

Someone claps me on the shoulder. I yelp, jumping ten feet into the air, my elbow knocking straight into some pitcher on the table next to me. It spins dangerously, then tumble off the table lip and sideways towards the ground.

A hand darts out lighting fast, and catches the pitcher around the neck just before it smashes into a thousand pieces. One single splatter of purple-red liquid sloshes onto his heads and jacket sleeve.

I stare, open-mouthed, at most handsome man I have ever seen [2] cradling the unharmed pitcher.

Blond hair, blue eyes, as expected, except—his eyes aren’t icy, like I’d envisioned? They’re more like the blue of a calm lake? When combined with his serious mouth and aquiline nose, he just looks so… honest and kind. Also, he was seriously broad and tall, his shoulders practically parallel the ground and even in Aurelia’s body, I have to tilt my head up to look at him.

“Alex?” I say dumbly.

His mouth quirks up. He places the pitcher back on the table, and shake off the stray drops of wine on his hand and very expensive-looking clothes [3].

“It’s rare for anyone to be able to startle you,” he remarks. “Last I saw Alex, he was in the banquet hall muttering about you being late.”

“Oh, right,” I say. Well, if this isn’t Alex, it can only be—

I hesitate. “Thanks… Luke?”

He smiles faintly in response. Lucius Silverwood it is then. The eldest son of Lord and Lady Silverwood, the heir to Silverwood Keep and all its lands, groomed from childhood to take on all the responsibilities while his younger brother got to run wild. In the books, I lost count of how many times Alex talked about him being compassionate, steady, learned, talented, everything Alex thinks he isn’t [4].

Alex also had many nightmares about Luke’s body being found after massacre, speared through with a long sword and collapsed next to a group of children he’d been trying to protect.

So—as much as I’d like to linger and stare stupidly for a bit—, if I don’t get a move on, Luke is going to be as dead and Mrs. Morrell and me very very soon.

“Great,” I say. “Thanks, uh, Luke. I’ll just head off and find Alex them.” I step around him and to the right.

Luke gives me an odd look. “The banquet hall,” he repeats, and points in the exact opposite direction.

“Oh, hahaha,” I say awkwardly. “The banquet hall, of course, I’d thought you’d said. Something else.”

He furrows his brows. “Is everything all right, Aurelia? It’s not like you to be late to see Alex either—”

“Of course not! it’s the Autumn Festival! The greatest day of the year!” I squeak. “See you, bye!” I run-walk away as quickly as I can.

The faster I get out of the sight of those beautiful, puzzled eyes, the better.

===

1. I mean, the other alternative would be just to scream into the crowd, “Attackers are coming! Everybody run!” But I’m pretty sure that’s a bad idea, for the same reason that screaming “Fire!” in a theater is a bad idea. Either I’d be thrown into the dungeons for reckless endangerment, or I’d be crushed in the stampede. Neither is really conducive to the whole staying alive thing.

2. Yes, this includes all the Chrises in Hollywood (But does not include any Kpop stars, because they’re like, on another-plane ethereal, I’m just comparing blond-haired, blue-eyed types here. You know, apples to apples).

3. For the record, those are tunic, jacket, breaches, leggings, you know, all the medieval staples. Only while all the people around him are swathed in drab grey wool, he’s in black velvet and leather, accented with panels of blue cloth. So he definitely has money—which is good, because I don’t think Aurelia's family can afford replacing any of his clothes. Also for the record, he carries all of the clothes off very well.

4. Seriously, Alex mentioned it so much I almost chucked the book across the room. There’s only so many pages of inferiority complex angst and painful memories of lost family I’m willing to put up. Like, I’m aware the Luke and Alex are meant to be foils, and that Alex’s bloodthirsty survival and triumph is meant to say something very Deep about survival of the fittest but it was so heavy-handed and overly-dramatic, no one can be worth that much headspace. Now that I’ve seen Luke though. Well.