Fire's Mage (Book One) Kyoko of Fire Country

Chapter Sixteen

The meadow in front of them had too many flowers, it was far too colourful for this time of the day. They had been asked to come early so Winston could talk to them, even Sheikh wasn't training even as he looked at the bow in his hand, eyeing the wooden posts on the other side of the meadow.

A blunt sword strapped to his back, arms crossed as they waited as the sun stared to raise. Dominic and Dania had been sent out on a three-day mission, which meant she would be training with Rosemary and than Charis afterwards.

Winston had gone to pick Adrianne up from the hospital and they were to welcome her back into the team. Even if, if she was being honest, Kyoko found the idea of poking her eye with red-hot iron less painful.

Adrianne had tried to attack her untrained sister, why? She didn't know, but she wasn't going to ask Adrianne the reasons for her actions or for her account of things. By this point she knew Adrianne well enough to know that she'd make herself into a victim and Elodie into the villain.

When Winston walked into the meadow with Adrianne behind him, Sheikh was tested the string on his bow while Kyoko was staring at the leaf in her hand, controlling the fire that burnt on the top.

When Kyoko looked away from her leaf, it burnt in her hand like a candle wick. Adrianne looked like shit, her skin was a patchwork of black, green and yellow. Bruising from her fight with Fala Hollymore.

The same fight that she was cocky enough to start, why anyone would want to fight with someone nicknamed Bone Breaker, she would never understand.

"Sheikh, Charis wants me to give you something," Winston told Sheikh, who nodded and handed her the bow in his hand, allowing her seal it away until it was needed.

Kyoko had decided to stay where she was, since it would stop Adrianne's collection of bruises from getting any larger then it already was. Through, she doubted anyone would notice if she gained another two or four.

"Why don't you train?" Kyoko calmly asked her. She knew that if something like that happened to her, she would throw herself into her training. So she would never be placed into such a powerless position again.

Which she had done, since Lullaby Freak had broken her shield and made her wary of going back into the forest just outside Red Light's walls.

"Why don't you?" Adrianne growled as she rubbed her arm, wincing whenever she touched one of her bruises, which was every five seconds. "Or are you just going to leave all the work for me and dear Sheikh?"

"For starters, it's 'Sheikh and I', not 'me and Sheikh'," she told her, eyeing the leaf in her hand as it burnt down to her fingers. Placing it near her knee, the flame flickering out of life before she looked back at the biggest annoyance of her life. "Then again it would be 'my dear Sheikh', and you're the one who leaves all your work to him. Idiot."

"That doesn't matter," Adrianne growled, fingers digging into her upper arm.

"I would argue that it does. Makes you sound less of an idiot, hard I know," Kyoko told her, hands underneath her chin and her elbows on her leg. "I would also argue that Sheikh doesn't really like being called dear or my prince. He is not a thing, you do not own him."

"He's going to be my husband one day. Karina will never get her filthy claws into him." y

"You really are blind," Kyoko told her. Can't see a trap, can't see that Karina hadn't looked at Sheikh once since they were placed into her teams. In fact, Karina had been spent training with Ross and Duncan. Training with her family, training with Ross' family to make up for the years that she slacked.