The Shadow of Gloom

Chapter 37 - Healer at Heart

**new POV btw. Saint will have a more important role in book 2**

SAINT—

"Don't tell anyone we are here."

With a couple jars of herbs and vials of various colorful liquids in his grasp, Saint paused and looked over at Leuthar from above his glasses.

"Don't tell me you and Ronan kick up a hornet's nest again," Saint sighed as he turned to set the two small jars and four thin vials onto the table, putting his back to Leuthar.

Every time Leuthar or Ronan came to Merk, there was trouble not far behind them. It came with their territory since they were against the thinking of the younger mages in Laelmos, those that believed the Vale held unfathomable power that could be controlled one day. Saint believed in the Remnant's mission, yet it never stopped him from fretting over them day and night.

Saint was a healer at heart and only wished to not see others in pain.

After a heavy sigh, Saint glanced over his shoulder at Leuthar, tired of his silence.

"Are you going to stand there all day or are you going to say what's on your mind?" Saint asked plainly, but Leuthar held his silence, making Saint turn to face him. "You come here in the dead of night, looking pale as ghosts and with Ronan half-dead, and you have nothing to say to me, Leuthar?"

It was discourteous, couldn't Leuthar see that? He never could, hadn't since Saint had met him and had unfortunately taken a liking to him. Saint knew better than to fall for an elf mage like him.

"There's nothing that needs to be said that hasn't been said already," Leuthar grumbled then moved away from Saint and over to the hearth, stirring to life the dim embers. "You should focus on saving Ronan and not on past matters that nobody cares to think about."

Saint hid his frown as he put his back to Leuthar again as he removed the lid on the jars he had placed on the table. He measured out the herbs by memory, then placed each carefully into his mortar. Keyleaf, Winter Breath, the list went on. He crushed each with his mortar and pestle before scraping them into the bowl. It would take time for him to make the antidote for Ronan, but he knew he could do it. He had studied healing practices since he was a young boy fleeing from his home in what was once a peaceful Wyneir.

Saint knew from experience that mixing everything together was the easy part, the hard part came when he had to split the batches and add specific special ingredients to make parts two and three of the antidote. One had to be brought to a boil, then left to simmer all day while the other had to be frozen solid before it could be allowed to melt at room temperature.

Neither Leuthar nor August understood quite how volatile this antidote was, one mistake and your entire batch could be ruined. Perhaps it was a good thing they had a well-experienced master of healing to handle this process.

Before Saint had come to be a physician in Merk, he had grown up in a remote village in the Mountains of Noeland in Wyneir before it had become desolated under Isolde's reign. When Isolde had become deranged and lost to her madness, she destroyed everything within her kingdom, freezing everyone out of their homes and forcing them to flee to Krak or Eyrin to survive. Those who didn't flee became her puppets, enslaved forever to her and the Vale, becoming known as valemen.

Like it was yesterday, Saint could still remember the day Isolde had brought her wrath to his home over five hundred years ago. It had been at the peak of her control of when no one had come forth to oppose her yet, long before Aki had her frozen for two hundred years.

"Run, Saint!" Saint's sister Seren shouted, shoving him ahead of her.

Saint tripped in the knee-deep snow and landed on his hands and knees, just as a rushing noise flew over his head. Wincing from the cold that bit through his clothes, he picked himself back up and turned around. His legs trembled and he almost let himself give up when he stared into the lifeless, frozen gave of Seren. Ice covered her from head to toe, hanging off her in icicles as her limbs were stuck in the position she had been when she had pushed him.

There was no time to think nor grieve as the brutal wind whipped around Saint, stinging his eyes and exposed skin. The gusts knocked over Seren and several others who had been frozen in their fright to flee.

Then Saint saw the one, the one they had named the Ice Queen riding atop a white elk. The wind spiraled around her, snow kicked up in chunks, ice in spikes, and her hair, white as snow, thrashing around in the gusts. Her eagle eyes sharpened onto him, narrowing with an intense glare before Saint spun on his heel and fled. He fled because there was nothing he could do.

Saint had stared straight into the eyes of evil that day and had lived to tell the tale. Not many had been as lucky. His sister Seren had died that day. She had taken care of him since their parents had died of illness when he was young. Saint had every reason to be against the Vale and Isolde and wish to be able to save everything the pointless death that Seren had.

After the devastation in Noeland, Saint had gone to Darrose and fought to become an apprentice of any healer he could find. He had wanted to learn how to save people because he had never wanted to be helpless again and to watch those that he loved die.

Many years of struggling, hours of sleepless nights, and memorizing countless herbs, potions, and remedies, Saint had finally gotten his foot into Darrose's academy of Roefell. It had taken persuasion and much demonstration on his part, but he had won a position as master of healing and had become a professor there until he had quit a year after Ronan had been kicked out of the academy. That had been three years after Saint's placement in Roefell.

Three hundred years of dedication all washed away in a second. Hurtful lies, and rumors about Saint had sprung up, saying he had flirted his way into positions. It gave him reason to leave Darrose and make a new life in Merk where he had remained for the last two hundred years, still ever sorrowful that he had left Ronan.

But it was within that timeframe that Saint had reconnected with Ronan, which now led him to where he was now, trying to use every bit of his skill to save someone he considered his son. Saint would save Ronan, even if it meant he had to humiliate himself by being in the presence of an elf mage who thought he was a cheater, a liar, and a whore.

Ronan meant more than the hurt Saint held and he would do everything to save him. Saint had known since the day that he had meant Ronan that he was going to go on to do incredible acts in Laelmos, but he had to be alive to do that.

With every ounce of Saint's focus and depriving himself of sleep, he poured himself into the antidotes for Ronan. Ronan was in capable hands.