Find Your Fire - The Angulus Chronicles #1

Chapter Twenty-One

I stared at the stretched hand Zamsar offered me, debating if I wanted to shake the hand of a person that lacked any motivation to help his kingdom, but my wounded leg lost it's strength so my knees buckled and I almost fell to the ground.

Zamsar quickly grabbed me in his arms, one arm around my waist and with the other he dragged my arm around his neck. "Whoah, easy there." He walked me over to another street close-by but much more crowded, and carefully set me down on the ground. "I need you to roll over to your stomach, or else I can't take a look at your wound." It wasn't a question, more of a friendly-put order, but I knew better than to ignore it.

When I laid on my stomach, I felt my coat being tugged upwards and the fabric of my pants ripping around the wound. Then, feather-light fingers tapped to the skin. "Thank god, he didn't hit any muscle. I can fix this." Without asking for permission, I felt the air thicken with magic and my skin started to burn like crazy. I bit my hand to swallow the cries of pain as the burning feeling slowly ebbed away to a dull buzzing. "All done." He made me turn around and followed my movements as I sat upright with my back against the wall of a house, making sure I wasn't hurt anywhere else. He smiled faintly. "Impressive. Usually, when I heal somebody, they scream it out in pain."

I lifted my eyebrow at the guy who crawled next to me to lean against the wall as well. "You didn't care to warn me it hurts like a bitch? I thought getting healed was supposed to walk through clouds and smell flowers, not feeling like you've been put into an oven and your skin is melting away."

He let out a low chuckle. "I didn't know you weren't aware of the side-effects." His eyes slid down the side of my face and rested on the twin-blade still strapped to my leg. "May I get to know the name of this lovely lady?"

I frowned at him in disbelief. "You would already know it if you'd showed up to Miuh's dinner yesterday."

His eyes widened in surprise. "You're Catalina? Wow, I didn't realize."

"What had you expected? You seem rather shocked."

"Well-..." He scratched the back of his head before leaning it against the wall again. "When I heard you were human, which I first had to get explained by Banji because I had never heard of humans, I expected to meet some fragile, scared little girl. Not this feisty warrior who was able to handle herself for quite some while."

I let out a laugh, the sound echoing through the street. "You didn't quite reach my expectations as well if we're being honest."

He lifted his eyebrows. "Oh? Am I not of your liking, Catalina?" He sheepishly looked down at his body.

"Oh, shut up. You know damn well you're good-looking, you don't need to hear it from me as well." I fumbled with the strap of my blade. "What I meant is-... Well, the stories go that you're a party lover without any motivation to do anything else, but they seemed to lack the detail of you being such a good fighter. And you can heal, though it felt more like battlefield healing than the kind most Water Wielders use." He tensed beside me. "You think I wouldn't notice the way you hold your blade?"

He looked at me bewildered. "It-... must have been the classes from when I was younger that stuck to me. It seems to reappear when a beautiful woman is in danger." He winked at me, trying to change the topic, but I wasn't having it.

"You're too good and skilled for it to be just classes from when you were ten. This is from daily use. What are you really doing when you're supposedly training soldiers?"

He now looked at me utterly confused. He seemed much more eager to bring me back to my room now than to sit here and flirt. I was onto something, so it seemed by his reaction.