And her name is…

We take several breaks from fighting for water or to practise form and I stretch them out to make this last until lunch. I didn’t get much of my breakfast before Wulfric carried me off and I’m starving now.Hungry too.The impulse to feed startles me and I flail, catching Tiago off guard and he tips his elbow to land in my eye socket. The pain is immediate and I know it’ll give me a black eye.

“I’m so sorry fighter,” Tiago says for probably the sixth time as we walk to the dining room for lunch.

“Stop apologizing,” I say again, limping a little with my sore knee. “I’m much healthier now, it’ll be gone by tomorrow.”

He grumbles something about someone going to kill him, but Helion isn’t even here if he cared and Nyx is probablygoing to remind me of rule one; protect the face.

We enter the room first and I take my usual seat where I left my book from this morning. I’m nearly done with it and after lunch I’ll shower and then go to the library with Nyx, and maybe Vera. I flip through the book from the back to find my leaf and start reading, ignoring Tiago and how he keeps glancing at my eye. I know it’s getting darker, and I can practically feel the blood rushing to the area to heal it.

My book has gotten intense and I don’t hear the others enter as I finish the last little bit. I’m no longer digesting the words, just skimming them to get through this bit as quickly as possible, when my fingers seize and the book tumbles from my crippled hands to the table.

“Shit,” I whine, as I pick it up and wipe my lunch off the back cover where it hit my plate.

I go to try and find my place, despite my fingers fighting me like I didn’t realize they were when I got here… but I feel eyes on me. Slowly I look up and I’m met with Wulfric glaring back. He looks angry but my mood is finally improvingso I’m not about to let him ruin it.

“Sorry to have disturbed your meal general. Please ignore such a lowly soul as mine,” I plead, sarcasm dripping from every word.

“Did /he do that to your face?” He returns through grit teeth.

“What?” My hand moves to touch the eye and I wince just slightly before barking, “it’s just a black eye, it’ll be gone by tomorrow. It’s my own bloody fault.” I chuckle and Tiago winces.

Wulfric maintains his glare. “You’re own /fault?”

I quirk my eyebrows at him. “I should have /blocked?” I return in the same way.

His eyes flash to Tiago and back to me. “So it wasn’t Helion who hit you?”

I laugh so fast and so suddenly I have to cover my mouth to stifle it. “Helion? /Hit me? He wouldn’t even spank me if I /begged him to.” Now my face is flushing crimson as I realize what I’ve said in front of everyone and I quickly grab my book to hide my face as I finish the chapter.

Under his breath I hear Wulfric mutter. “Tiago, let’s spar after lunch. Clearly you need a more worth while opponent.”

My shoulders fall with the acid in those words. I know I’m no good. No, I’m terrible. Tiago has to pull every punch he throws and slow himself to the crawl of an infant for me to act with any sort of defence.

Nyx walks in and then takes her seat beside me and gasps. “Honey! Your fingers.”

I fumble the book at the reminder of how much they hurt and she takes it from me to set on the table. She turns my hands over and over in hers, feeling the problems through my skin like she can see them. Every so often she tsks her tongue and then she puts one down.

“I can’t believe it’s taken so many treatments for these. Even your ribs only needed half a dozen,” she says disdainfully.

“He bound them to sticks found somewhere outside after he snapped them.” I flinch at the memories that seem more fresh since the nightmares started. “I don’t know why there was so much blood.”

This comment shocks Nyx and she nearly drops my hand. “Sick fuck,” she mutters instead and starts to massage my fingers back into place. “How are your feet?”

I ignore everyone else listening because I know Nyx doesn’t care and will get the answers out of me some way. “No better,” I admit.

She moves toward them but stops. “You were just in the gym right? I’ll do those later.”

I laugh. “Scared of my dirty feet,” I tease, wiggling them in her direction.

“Absolutely. My one true fear,” she returns.

Her eyes drift from me to my right and turn in time to see Wulfric smirking again. I give him a full eye roll and let Nyx take my other hand. She chastises me for going to pick up the heavy book right after she’d healed me so I huff, leaving it on the table to finish reading.

After we finish eating I head off to my room and then the library to put my books away. Nyx and Vera are often busy with different jobs around the house, and there are only so many I can help with, so on day like today I end up going alone. I don’t mind so much, and when I go alone I take a few hours to organize I few of their shelves at a time. I’m not changing anything, as much as I want to, but I reinstate the alphabetical order in some of the sections and put ones back in their categories if they were put away wrong.

More than anything, I do this to waste time and after I’ve killed about two hours I grab the new stacks I’ve picked and head back to my room. I put most of them where they make sense, on the side table by the bed, but I bring my first choice to the wardrobe where I’ll be sleeping. When I open the door the extra blankets that I keep in the corner come tumbling out. I ball it up and toss it back in when the stuffed animal tumbles out.

“I hate that I love this stupid thing,” I grumble aloud.

It really is the perfect size to hold and despite my fear of others hearing me waking up screaming… I am lonely. The room is so quiet that my mind sometimes fills the silence with the sounds of others breathing. None of this helps my lingering anxiety but having something to hold and scream into did.

I chuck it on the bed to deal with later and go check the windows again, finding one of the latches askew and closing it firmly. The light outside is still pretty high and checking the clock confirms that I still have an hour before dinner. With that in mind, I go to the wardrobe and retrieve the book I wanted to read right away. The blankets fall out again but I toss them back in as I hear a knock on the door and go to open it.

“Yes?” I open the door expecting Nyx, or maybe Vera or Tiago, but it’s Wulfric and I grimace. “Can I help you?”

He glances passed me into the room and I follow his gaze to the open wardrobe and curse internally. Of course the blanket didn’t stay all balled up and enough tumbled over the edge to keep the door from closing. There, very visible is a pillow and the throw blanket like I’m the pitiful step child hidden away.

“Can I help you?” I asked again, standing in front of him, but he’s taller so it does very little to protect my space.

He clears his throat and looks at me. “Just letting you know that I will be training you from now on. Tiago says you’re at your strongest after your walk before lunch, so that’s when I’ll meet with you.”

I startle a step back. “Wait, what? I don’t want to train with you. I didn’t want to train with Tiago but he made good points. That’s besides the point, I don’t want to be alone with you.”

He smirks and leans against my door frame. “Scared you won’t be able to keep your hands off me?”

I scoff loudly. “You’re not drugging me here. There are people who actually care if I eat enough to survive and not just for their entertainment.” The statement shocks me a little and I step back.

I have people who care about me.

Even after the tidbits they’ve learned and the suspicions I know they have, they have shown they care. They aren’t scared of me and worry about my well-being. After my mom died, no one has worried about me. Everyone in Darlenton saw me as other-worldly and above their concern, but here we’re on a similar level and they have a better understanding of me and my limits.

Wulfric might be talking but I’m not listening. “I was just going to shower, so if that’s all.”

I don’t wait for him to answer my closed question, shutting the door in his face and heading for the bathroom. I’m not forced to train, I have been for Tiago, so if he’s not going to help me anymore I won’t go, simple as that. That’s not what’s bothering me as I start soaking my hair and cleansing my body. Peoplecareabout me here, and I’m not sure how to deal with that.Protect.

My goal before finding out I may have friends alive was to get stronger and then go back to kill Kheliq. This very morning it was to get stronger, rescue my friends, get them out of this stupid place to the next human town over, and then go back to kill Kheliq. Even if I managed to save them I knew I wouldn’t be able to look at them and not picture what my existence put them through. Without them… there was no one to even consider living for… but they’re already gone.