children of gold — julian &. sunny

Her arm still feels like it's on fire long after the medics carried her out on a stretcher.

She let them, wounded in more ways that one. Pride, it was what Le Roux's were built on, shattered at her feet like the bones she had splintered. Everything hurt so terribly that it took all of her strength to keep breathing, half-hearted attempts to blink back tears as she watched the blurred lights of the training centre turn into those of hospitals.

They saved her arm. Looked worse than it was, a doctor had said, they'd seen worse. Fixed worse. But she'd be out of the fighting pits for weeks, maybe months, and the last of Sunny's strength collapsed in on itself.

She cried in the shower, humiliated. Then furious. John Le Roux was a wicked man, so wicked he might as well have speared her stomach with a sword himself. If she didn't have the night, then what did she have? Nothing, just questions. You're just like her, John had spat. Like who? Sunny pleaded in her mind.

But she couldn't look that man  in the eyes, let alone speak to him, so she went to a place nobody would find her - the library. Arm in a sling, velvet dress covering her bandaged wounds, she finds Julian and smirks - "Sure it isn't."

A pause, and Sunny's smile falters. They've fought enough for today, no need to scrap over the last word. 

"This seat taken?" but she claims it anyway, carefully lowering herself into the space across from her brother. Breath escapes her nostrils as she leans her head against a bookcase and sighs, closing her eyes to hide the lingering embarrassment in them.

"Dad's a prick, huh?"