From Ashes and Snow

The Choices We Make.

Chapter Five: The Choices we Make.

Magister Fyr Lockley didn't flinch at the name 'Birchwood.' She would have known that it was a Half-Blood's name. My kind were not allowed to carry the name of our parents. It was to ensure that those of impure blood didn't carry on the family-line, and to let everyone who met me and who heard my name that I was not pure.

She began to hum under her breath, a warble of a lullaby that mothers sometimes sang to their children and I wondered if she was doing it to try and comfort me somehow.

"Why is there a Zentin here?"

She unscrewed the lid of an unmarked jar and sniffed the contents. "Because he wants to be here."

"Is he allied with the Paladins or Magins?" I stiffly let myself down onto a high set chair, my legs trembling as the took the weight from them.

She paused for a moment, her eyes flashing towards me before she laughed. "Kohen? Allied?" She stifled her laugh, her lips pressed into a smile. "No. He does what he wants. There are no strings attaching him to us. He just decided to stay."

And that didn't make her suspicious? I kept my eyes on her. Maybe it did, and she was just pretending? Humans were sneaky like that.

The Magister turned back to me, her eyes suddenly soulful. "He may seem lovely, but a Zentin can either be your closest friend or your worst enemy."

"I will keep that in mind."

Who were these people? Fyr fussed around me, motioning for me to undress and then helping me slide the clothes along my bruised skin. My body was a mess of storm-cloud bruises, stitches running up my sides and my burnt arm. "Zentins read people's minds?"

"They do more than that." Fyr split the bandages and brought over tubs of pastes that smelled revolting. "They sense things. Feelings, memories and thoughts too. From what he has learned of his own kind and has told us, some Zentins were able to crack open a mind and suck everything from it – twist a man's thoughts to their own agenda."

I flinched as she pressed a cold paste to my ribs. I remembered that they had been broken – enough to cause blood to leak inside my armour. I glanced down, catching sight of vicious scars along my skin.

"Your ribs pierced your skin." The Magister looked up at me through blonde lashes as she knelt beside me. "We were able to set them with a cast, but these scars won't fade for a while. Unfortunately, this scarring will stay for life." She pulled back the bandage on my arm.

I spared it a short glance. The skin was charred and cracking, the layers of skin and flesh burnt off by the explosion in the Sanctum. My throat swelled as the memories rose up with a bite. I had run to the Sanctum to save Vanya – if I gone to where I was supposed to be beside Kendon, would I have been able to save him somehow?

The Magister mistook my grief for disgust. Gently, she applied the burn salve. "It is a scar. Be glad that you have your life."

That was my problem. I have my life.

"I have trained in the art of fire casting." She shrugged her thin shoulders. "But the fire damage I saw in that Keep was..." She let out a whistling breath. "I would have loved to have the Elves teach me that."

"The Elves didn't cast that." I kept my eye on the door. "The man who broke into our Keep and slaughtered everyone and burnt one of my closest friends to a crisp cast that."

"Oh..." Her cheeks flamed red. "I apologise."

She dipped a cloth into a bowl of melted snow, and once she squeezed it out she began to wipe down my wounds. There wasn't only water in that solution – I could smell something sharp and smarting in it. I let her take my hands in hers – a fighter's hands in a scholar's. She was humming as she began to scrub the residue of dirt from my skin. Her touch was gentle over my healing knuckles and then she flipped my hand over and began to clean the dirt from my palms. They were dirty with dried blood, and mud and smaller scratches.