Page 58 of Wicked Dreams (Fallen Royals 1)

She chuckles. “Okay, well, I’ll check on you after our first class. We’ll see how you feel.”

When I get to homeroom, I shouldn’t be surprised that Caleb and Amelie are so close. She’s practically on top of him, leaning against his desk while he sits there. Her hand on his arm, his hand on her waist.

My phone vibrates.

Unknown: Told you to stay away. The weakest sheep get eaten by the wolf first.

I frown, glancing around the room. Half of the people in class are on their phones.

Me: Who are you?

Unknown: You’d like it to be that easy, wouldn’t you?

Yeah, I would. But I guess that would be too much to ask of an anonymous bully.

At least Caleb does it to my face.

I manage to successfully ignore the way Amelie brushes Caleb’s hair away from his face, and the hooting of Eli, and their friendly ribbing. Just kidding, I hear it all. But it gets easier after my first two classes. I don’t have anything to do with Amelie or Caleb until last period.

And because Robert decided to have us do our projects out of class, there’s no reason for us to even look at each other.

“You okay?” Robert asks.

I realize that the whole class is empty. “The bell rang a few minutes ago. Did you even hear it?”

I stare at my paper. We had been working on blending techniques with watercolor paints, and it’s a mess of muddled colors. “Sorry. I just had a bad day.”

He drags a stool over and sits next to me. He points to one of my groups, where I’d managed to make green fade into blue. “You did this one right. You can see the blue and the green, but there’s also the middle space where it becomes a new color entirely.”

I nod. “Yeah, it’s the only one I managed to do okay on.”

He shakes his head. “No, it just takes practice. Like this?” He taps his pencil next to the orange-into-pink one. “We don’t see the two separate colors. May I?”

“Sure.”

He cleans my brush and dips it in the pink. He pulls the brush down, the pink almost the same size as my little ombre square. He repeats the process for the orange, everything bigger… and suddenly I can see it.

“I was close.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to see the big picture when you’re so zoomed in.” He glances at me. “A lot can be said about taking a step back.”

“Like impressionism.”

He laughs. “Yeah, like that. Or relationships. How you see people, and how they see you.”

I mull that over. “Do you ever think you and Lenora are too… muddled?”

“Not often,” he answers.

God, is this my first relationship talk? With a father figure?

“I used to try to only see the good in her, but it doesn’t work like that. You have to accept every part of someone.” He taps my colors again. “Just like this. The colors are nice on their own, but if you only focus on the pretty parts, are they still beautiful?”

“I don’t think someone will accept all of my flaws.” I keep my attention on the paper, not ready to see whatever is going to come across Robert’s face next. They’ve been nice—more than nice, really. It feels like I’ve been welcomed into a complete family.

But maybe I’ve only been looking at the good pieces to convince myself that I belong.

“Someone will,” he says firmly. “And not just in a romantic sense. Lenora and I are lucky to have you, too. I’m sure Riley would say the same.”