17

                                    

                                          
Mia's POV
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It takes me a solid five minutes to find my way through the sets of stairs and winding hallways to get to my room. Turns out Knox's room is about five floors up from mine. It's still only about noon, but it feels like the afternoon. I have nothing better to do today, and I think I've had enough of the cold for one day. So I make up my mind that I'll stay in my room and do nothing. It's funny, how I can be bored even though I'm in a magical universe.
Well, not bored. By the time I get to my room, hang my cloak, and plop down on my bed, my brain is at full capacity with thoughts. And not the kind of thoughts where it feels like a hurricane. More like my thoughts are a bunch of strings knotted together, and they're so tangled it's hard to tell where one string starts and the next begins. If I try I can pick out a particular thought or train of thoughts. But It takes too much energy, more than I care to give right now, to untangle the knot, to have all my thoughts clear and thought through. So I do the only thing I can do to keep myself busy: I walk over to my bookshelf, pick up the book I've started reading, and sink into the leather couch by the bookshelf, letting the cozy lantern lights and stories of characters I have nothing to do with distract me from the knot in my brain.
It's funny to read adventure books now. To read about all these crazy things that happen to the main characters, how they fearlessly face danger and fight back, seeming to be immune to pain. That's not all books, but a lot are like that. It's funny because I feel like I am one of those characters. I got dragged on that precious adventure I so longed for before all of the craziness begun. I've had to fight and felt pain. I'm going on an adventure, and I have a feeling it isn't even close to over. But a lot of these books are unrealistic. They always talk about how the characters "Learn lessons and decide to fight, putting their fear aside and fighting." But the thing is, that's completely unrealistic for some people. Even when Elmer was trying to kidnap me, I was still scared. Sure, I might have been considered brave for fighting back how I did, but most of that was because of adrenaline. Adrenaline numbed me a little, but there was still fear at its core. 
Every time I've been in danger so far I have been scared out of my mind. To be honest, looking back, I'm not sure how I was as 'brave' as I was. And I felt pain, I'm not like some magical character who gets stabbed and doesn't feel it because 'their adrenaline numbed it' or some bullshit like that. I might not have felt every single scratch or bruise, but I sure as hell felt the ones that mattered. If a character from a stereotypical book got punched in the face like I did, they would probably feel brief pain, then they would pop up, 'remembering what they're fighting for' and finish the battle without another moment of pain described. I did get up, but I was hurting. Every step I took hurt, but I kept going because I had to. It hurt more than anything I've ever felt, even adrenaline can't numb pain like that. But I guess that's what books are trying to get at. It's not that the characters magically got healed of pain, but that they kept going even when they felt it. Not because the pain went away, but because they had to
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Turns out the book I had started reading is actually a really addicting series. Yep, one of the ones that makes you want to scream at aggravating parts and ones that make you want to jump into the book and tell the main character to stop being so stupid. And also make you want to squeal when your favourite characters have that big middle-of-the battle, do-or-die kiss.
Yeah right, cause that just happens.
So it takes me the rest of the afternoon to finish the next book, and by then my thoughts about my argument with Knox had settled. Still a knot, but a looser one. One that I would untangle after dinner.
As I head down to get my dinner Queen Rose strolls up to me, walking alongside me as I head down the 2nd floor corridor. Her dress flows out behind her as she walks, her crown winking diamond light as it catches the lamplight of the hallway.