Royal Reboot: Level up, Your Majesty!-Chapter 74: Blue (1)

Blue

1

Click.

Her apartment was close, just through the alley, and then home. A warm sofa. A cup of tea. A sci-fi episode.

The alley smelled of old metal, like leaking pipes and forgotten junk rusting away in the dark. Her heels clacked too sharply, too clearly against the brick walls because the night was too silent. No sirens, no traffic, just the distant whir of a helicopter somewhere above, like it was looking for something.

She could have driven. Maybe she should have driven. But it was five minutes. Driving, parking, driving, parking again…It was hardly worth the effort.

Yes, yes, she knew. A woman, alone, in the dark, taking a shortcut through an alley was as much of a cliché as screaming “Who’s there?” in a slasher film.

Click.

She stopped.

A breath of hesitation. A tiny delay. A footstep, trailing just a little too late. Not hers.

Not Louboutin.

Her stomach tightened. Instinct, before logic. That split-second reaction built into the bones of every woman who’d ever walked alone at night.

Click.

The second set of footsteps adjusted. Louder and closer now. As if whoever followed her behind interpreting her pause not as caution, but as invitation.

Melissa exhaled sharply through her nose.

Don't say it.

Don’t.

“Who’s there?”

Damn it.

She turned before she could curse herself.

A man stepped forward, peeling himself out of the alley’s deeper shadows. Impeccable suit. Easy smile. The kind that was meant to be charming; except for the sweat beading along his flushed skin made his face look slick, fevered.

Dubai Man. (Because she absolutely, categorically, did not give enough of a damn to remember his real name.)

Melissa’s irritation spiked. A blind date she hadn’t agreed to so much as been blackmailed into by her parents. The kind who couldn’t get through a sentence without name-dropping another penthouse, another yacht, another billionaire friend.

Men like him were routine. Her parents’ idea of an eligible bachelor because, obviously, at twenty-five, she had clearly surpassed the acceptable marriage age in their eyes.

But tonight, something was different. She had felt it during dinner, in the way he watched her between monologues. The same way she looked at her Coffin Bay King Oysters, assessing the best way to devour.

Melissa knew she was attractive.

But come on. Not that attractive. Not enough to make someone look at her like a goddamn meal at first sight.

She sighed, crossing her arms.

“Ah,” she said. “Dubai Man: The Return. The sequel absolutely no one asked for, and yet, here we are.”

He beamed, his face lighting up like she’d just confirmed she was totally into him. Of course he did.

Then he stepped forward, and the smell hit her.

Burnt. Acrid. Like the air after a lightning strike.

“Come on, Mel.” His voice was rougher now. He licked his lips. “It’s not safe for a woman to walk home alone at night. Let me at least—uh—walk you home.”

Melissa snorted. “I’d take my chances with the street.”

His smile twitched, but he forced it back, adjusting his tie as though it had started to strangle him.

“Look,” he rasped, licking his lips again. “I get it. You’re tough, independent, all that. But if you really didn’t want to talk to me, you wouldn’t—”

His voice cut off mid-sentence, severed by a sharp gasp as if he had choked on his own self-importance.

Melissa was moments from rolling her eyes when she noticed the way his pupils dilated rapidly, then contracted just as fast.

SNAP.

A spark flared at his fingertips, small but there. The scent of ozone thickened. A crackling sound followed, like a wire shorting out.

Melissa blinked.

Oh.

Right. That part of his file.

Her first reaction wasn’t fear. It was irritation.

She sighed, fingers already slipping into her coat for her phone. “Seriously? Is this a threat? Or just the most pathetic attempt at flirting I’ve ever seen?”

Her thumb hovered over the emergency dial as she assessed him. Calling the police seemed like the logical choice, until she got a better look. The veins pressing against his skin, the too-rapid pulse at his throat… maybe what he needed wasn’t an arrest.

Maybe he needed a doctor.

Or she could simply block his number and let natural selection handle the rest.

She studied him again.

Dilated pupils. Spasms. Skin flushed too red.

Neurological overload? Drugs?

Please don’t tell me my parents have become that desperate.

The sparks licked higher, biting into the seams of his suit. Designer fabric blackened at the edges.

Melissa groaned.

For absolute heaven’s sake.

This was exactly why she had explicitly, unequivocally, repeatedly told her mother she had zero interest in dating another Gifted.

A date gone wrong. With extra sparks. No puns intended.

And now, here she was, watching a six-foot-one investment bro glitch out like a malfunctioning Westworld host.

“Help me… Doct—or…” His voice rasped. A surge of bioelectricity flared, jagged and wild.

Melissa took a measured step back, heels clicking. Calm. Assess. Plan.

Stall.

“I would love to, but fun fact? Turns out, ‘spontaneous combustion in public places due to uncontrolled arcane discharge’ is, surprisingly, not covered by my malpractice insurance.”

Another arc of raw current crackled toward her feet. A direct hit.

Her brand-freaking-new, piano-black, thousand-dollar Louboutins.

Melissa inhaled. One, two, three, four, five. Exhaled for seven, because she was too dignified to curse.

The scent of burnt leather made her eye twitch.

“Honestly.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I have ten appointments tomorrow. If you think I’m rescheduling them because you decided to spontaneously, publicly, and with painstakingly disregard for expensive footwear, combust, you—"

CRACK. A fresh arc of lightning snapped toward her.

Melissa jumped back, her heels skidding against uneven stone, followed by a snap. This one she recognised immediately.

Her beloved designer shoe was now destined for a landfill.

Ugh.

Her foot twisted slightly; not enough to fall, but enough to make her hate everything.

Fine. Fine.

Professional bleeding-heart ethics, apparently, still won out over personal irritation, even when said irritation involved imminent Louboutin sacrifice.

“Mel… I need… you,” he breathed, electric energy surging toward her, crackling with deadly intent.

Melissa flicked her wrist. Water surged upward, forming a thick, protective barrier in front of her. The mineral-rich, perfectly conductive water guided the arcs of electricity away from her.

She shaped her water barrier with a twist of her fingers, threading it through the pavement’s cracks, pooling it near a metal street grate, giving the charge an exit.

“I need you to focus,” she ordered, now all business. “Control your breathing. Count backward from—”

His eyes rolled back.

Typical. No one ever listened to their doctor.

The situation was deteriorating faster than expected. If he kept hemorrhaging power at this rate, he’d experience cardiac arrest in under a minute.

She tapped her chin, considering.

“Well,” she muttered, “guess that would technically solve my dating problem. Silver linings.”

She was joking. Mostly. A dark, slightly inappropriate part of her brain appreciated the irony.

Melissa adjusted her approach, focusing on how power moves through his body. Blood, cerebrospinal fluid, neural networks. She needed to reroute the energy into the water.

But it wasn’t working fast enough. The charge kept building, neurons misfiring.

She huffed out a breath. “Alright. Aggressive intervention it is.”

Drawing moisture from the air, she condensed a precisely ionised sphere, designed not just to absorb power, but to stabilise it. She pressed the sphere to his sternum, forcing his bioelectric field into a controlled reset, like flipping a circuit breaker.

Except this one was made of neurons and magic.

A violent shudder ran through his body. His back arched, muscles locking up as the forced reset kicked in. Electricity surged along the water-lined path she’d created, snapping toward the grate and grounding safely into the earth.

Then, finally, his body stilled, steam curling off his suit.

Melissa huffed, already dialing triple zero. Her other hand pressed against his forehead, channeling a gentle stream of water onto his skin, then deeper.

His cerebrospinal fluid. It was a conductor, a pathway that extended even to the arcane heart, bridging the gap between body and magic.

From what she could tell, it wasn’t physical drugs corrupting his brain. This felt… magical.

But it wasn’t her problem.

At least, for now, he was safe from… well, from bursting into arcane fireworks again. The CSF wash worked its way through the lattice of his arcane system, diffusing the worst of the instability.

Another life saved. Another bill to send. Another unwilling episode of the badly scripted monster-of-the-week show that, ironically, she’d just remembered she wanted to go home and watch.

And definitely, absolutely, the last blind date she'd ever let her mother arrange.

She rose to her feet, wobbling slightly thanks to a cracked heel. Then something changed.

The air turned cold in a way that wasn’t natural. It wasn’t the slow drop of temperature that came with the night. It was instant.

Melissa’s breath fogged.

Then, a shift. No sound, no footsteps, but a presence.

She spun sharply.

And found herself gazing into a pair of piercing crimson eyes.

Moonlight caught the silver strands of the woman’s hair, making them shimmer like something out of a legend. The kind of beauty whispered about in myths, always tragic, always cursed.

Unfair, really.

Though, instead of wearing ethereal silks or medieval finery, she was dressed like a teenage anarchist: oversized leather jacket, short plaid skirt, and a black lace choker.

Melissa’s brain, proving itself thoroughly useless, paused for a single unsteady second to appreciate the aesthetic. Because, honestly? She had eyes. She liked nice things.

Sue her.

Wait. She was at least eighteen, right?

No, actually—focus. More important question.

Was this a post-electrocution hallucination? Because that would explain a lot.

“Doctor Melissa Le Bleu?” the silver-haired woman said.

Melissa remained silent, instinct told her she shouldn’t answer this.

Then, another step. Another presence. Melissa resisted the urge to groan.

And just like that, the genre changed. Sci-fi horror bled into dark fantasy. Cue dramatic lighting. Cinematic slow motion. The villain entrance.

Eydis.

She wasn’t the girl Melissa remembered; the one drowning in oversized glasses and ill-fitting clothes. She had been an enigma when they first met, but this time…

She wasn’t even trying to hide it.

Dark hair spilled over her shoulders, rippling like the night itself as she stepped forward.

Again. Not. Fair.

It was ridiculous to think this way about a teenager, but Eydis moved like she knew the shadows belonged to her. And when she reached the silver-haired woman, standing so close that their shoulders nearly but never quite touched, Melissa noticed something else.

The softening of those crimson eyes.

She blinked.

“Doctor Le Bleu.” Eydis’s smile was soft, almost warm. If you were stupid enough to mistake softness for kindness. A perfect lie. Because her words?

Anything but.

“What a coincidence. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were following me.” Eydis tilted her head. “Now wouldn’t that be a twist?”

“What are you even on about?

From the corner of her eye, Melissa caught the barest twitch of the silver-haired woman’s lips; a hint of something almost human breaking through all that impossible composure.

Her own heart, because it was deeply unhelpful, picked up a fraction faster.

Afraid? No.

Just deeply, deeply concerned that the universe had turned her life into a stress test for increasingly attractive disasters.

This night had already been a nightmare in slow motion.

And now it was playing in 12K.