SONGS AND TRAILS (Book 1)

CHAPTER 6

Arabella quickly found strength in her and overturned Mia, putting herself out for it. But nothing hit her. Nothing hit them. Something hit the floor next to them, and her blurry eyes and mind, looked at the cut tail.

She fell on Mia and Mia struggled to get off from under her.

The last strength of the dying Clove Beaver had sent its tail after her. Caldor had instinctively thrown his whip of fire to intersect it and cut it. He also hadn't seen it until it was almost late.

Luckily he was fast enough to act.

He would've been damned if he had jumped and disappeared away too early.

Losing a trainee was bad enough, but losing a princess was worse.

*

As soon as Arabella got up from the infirmary, the healer gave her orders to go see Caldor. She hadn't been out for long, and she wasn't too hurt, so it wasn't hard for the healer to revive her. She still had a bit of her strength. But she also told her to keep seeing her just in case she had hidden injuries. But so far, she was fine after her examinations of her.

She got into Caldor's office and found him pacing. The room felt too hot, scorching. His anger was emitting his Dragon energy around that she almost hissed at the wave of flames that invaded her. She wondered if he'd been pacing the whole day since the fight.

She started, "Master Clint?"

He looked too angry to even notice her presence in the room. He turned to her.

"You called for me."

He snarled, "I know."

This took her aback. "Did I... did I do something wrong?"

He narrowed his eyes at her in disbelief. "Are you..."

Arabella now hissed to the risen heat in the room.

He rubbed his temple and the heat in the room soothed as he tried to calm himself down but he scolded nevertheless. "I believe you remember what almost happened to Princess Talari."

Then it hit her. "Oh gods..." Her eyes widened from the memory. "Mia... is Mia okay?"

Caldor frowned. "She's fine. Alive. Do you know, the trouble you would have put the institute in, if anything were to happen to Ms. Talari, or worse, if she would have died?"

"I'm sorry, but she isn't hurt." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Is this about her helping me?"

"What is wrong with you? This is not about you." He was now furious.

"Then what is this about?" She was confused.

"You've endangered a trainee's life because of your arrogance."

"Arrogance?"

"I told you to call out, Miss Heydar, because no one can fight a Clove Beaver..." he stopped himself and then went on. "...with only knowledge. But you just wanted to prove me wrong so badly that you endangered another trainee's life. Gods know what would've happened if I had jumped away a second too soon. Why do you have to be so arrogant? Can't you just be like the others?"

She scoffed in disbelief. "Have you even met Eron? And I'm the one being arrogant?"

Caldor leveled a glare at her.

"You're the one who's been hell-insistent on me fighting that... thing. I've never fought a Clove Beaver in my life and you knew that I only knew the basics of it."

He snarled "And if you hadn't been an insufferable miss-know-it-all in my class, I would've dropped it."

She looked at him in disbelief but mostly hurt. Caldor looked away and ran a hand on his hair in frustration.