A KINGDOM OF DEAD HEARTS [COMPLETED]

CHAPTER 12: AWAY FROM HALGARD

Xander went and sat next to his niece. The little girl hugged him and he startled before clumsily hugging the sobbing girl back.

"Uncle Xander, please promise we will go home to Halgard. Please promise me, Uncle!" Lyanna spoke in between her sobs.

That is not a killer. That is just a man, who is thrusted suddenly into a role that he has never prepared himself for before, that of a caretaker of a young child, Airin thought with some certainty that managed to calm her down.

Xander held Lyanna for some time, and Airin just stood, unsure how to act or what to say, suddenly feeling so foreign in her own living room.

Lyanna slowly drifted off to sleep again in Xander's arms, and Airin nodded at the direction of her bedroom, wordlessly telling Xander to bring the girl there, to which Xander complied.

"None of what I have told you is a lie, Airin," Xander stated as his gaze pierced a point in the rain outside. He stood by the window after he put Lyanna to bed in Airin's bedroom.

"You do understand that what you have told me is just so ... strange, right?" Airin sighed, she already made herself a cup of tea. Her hands hugged the cup and she enjoyed the warmth on her frosty fingers.

"Listen, this ... I can prove it that I am from Halgard, that I do not mean any harm to you," Xander shut his eyes tight, and opened it again. Airin tilted her head, fell deeper in her own confusion.

"Listen. Hephaestus is the god of fire, of volcano, of metalworks and blacksmiths. He was so thankful to Metiocles for helping to capture Ares, thus salvage bits of his honour, that he granted a little gift to Metiocles, and to all his direct descendants. A special skill ..." Xander explained.

"Special skill? Like what?" Airin tilted her head, knotted her eyebrows, and she sounded stand-offish, but she did not care anymore. She had to be sure.

"Do you have a coin? A metal coin?" Xander asked.

Airin sighed, this got weirder and weirder. She nodded, and went to get her purse, and from the purse, a coin of fifty cents. She handed it to Xander.

Xander twirled the coin with his right hand, rubbed the surface with his right thumb, and gave it back to Airin.

Airin took the coin, grabbed it in her palm for a few seconds, for some reason she dared not look.

Xander waited.

The coin felt cold within her sweaty palm, and Airin took a deep, long, breath, and opened her palm.

A gasp, and then a quick look at Xander's face, and quick look back at the coin in her hand.

The surface of the coin was now smooth, with no sign at all that it was previously a fifty-cent coin. Well, not completely smooth, because there was now an engraving on it, an engraving that was a replica of the tattoo that was on Xander's forehead.

"Wow ..." Airin took a look at the coin with even more focus. Her eyes did not deceive her. Her fifty cent coin had turned to be a smooth coin with an engraving of a strange character.

"I can work metals with my bare hands. A strange skill, isn't it?"

"Strange. You bet."

"Do you believe me now?"

"Wait. Coin is easy. You could just be a very good magician. Who knows? Now do the same to this!" Airin rushed to her kitchen, grabbed her iron-cast skillet, and handed it to Xander. "Make the same symbol. In the middle of that skillet!" she ordered.

"Are you sure, Airin? I cannot turn it back to the way it was. You will have a skillet with the engraving of the symbol of the House of Metiocles there."