Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Draven walked through the merry streets of Príth, marveling that a place could be filled with so much unadulterated joy.
He hadn’t liked leaving his mother behind at the inn, but she insisted that he go out and explore today, allowing her time to rest and recover her weary body.
Draven still wasn’t sure what, exactly, the meaning of her episodes was—all he knew was whenever she had one, she became incredibly drained, and she would sometimes spend days upon days in bed after, trying to regain her strength.
He had always wondered if she meant physical strength or something else entirely.
Draven shoved his hands into his pockets, irritable from both his lack of sleep and his own uselessness. More than anything, he wanted to help his mother—to protect her from the pain she so quietly carried.
He couldn’t even manage to do that.
Draven huffed an aggravated sigh and turned down an alley where colorful rugs and tunics were strung up on a wire to dry, suspended in air like brightly colored clouds.
He stopped short when he saw a young girl circled by three boys about his age, her back pinned against the wall at the end of the alleyway.
He squinted for a better look and saw silver traces of hair framing cool-beige skin.
He knew then without a doubt he was looking at Rhea, the younger sister from the bookshop.
“Cough it up, Rhea,” the first boy squeaked. He had red, curly hair, and dirt smudges stained his cheeks.
“I don’t have it,” Rhea bit back.
“We know you do,” the second boy retorted. “Trel saw you take it.”
The third boy—Trel, Draven guessed—nodded next to him, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Trel is a big ogre who doesn’t know his left foot from his right.” Her words were intentionally pointed, and she lifted her chin as if for emphasis.
Draven wanted to slam his palm against his forehead at her blatantly provoking nature.
“Last chance, Rhea,” the first boy scowled.
Rhea spat at their feet.
They charged her.
Trel—whose shaggy, unkempt hair did, in fact, make him look a bit like a creature—reached for Rhea’s wrists and pinned them above her head after slamming her shoulders against the stone wall.
She coughed at the impact, wheezing for only a few breaths, but that small display was enough to send the red-haired boy grinning like a snake.
“Search her,” he instructed the second boy.
He did as he was told, enduring Rhea’s kicks to his shins as he searched her pockets. Once finished, he glanced back, a mixture of an apology and annoyance glinting in his eyes. “Nothing,” he said.
“She’s hidden it somewhere, then.” The first boy strode up to Rhea and gripped the ridge of her jaw between his dirt-coated fingers. “Tell us where you hid it, or else you face the consequences.”
Draven rolled his eyes at the boy’s attempted intimidation. Still, after Rhea growled that the boys should all go to the realms of hell, earning her a swift punch to the gut, he decided he had seen enough.
He strutted casually into the middle of the alley, stopping just a few paces away from the group. “Let the girl go, won’t you?” Draven shoved his hands into his pockets, letting every ounce of indifference roll from him in waves upon waves, just like he had been trained to do.
It was always jarring, really—how naturally it came. He guessed all his father’s efforts weren’t in vain.
The red-haired boy only spared him a glance. “Leave us alone, foreigner. This is none of your business.” He turned his attention back onto Rhea, seeming to prepare to hand her another blow to the gut.
A low growl rattled in Draven’s chest. How the hell could everyone tell he wasn’t from around here? With a new sense of annoyance warming his blood, he took another two steps forward, dropping a heavy hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’m not asking anymore.”
“And I never gave a shit if you were.” The boy turned and quickly swiped at Draven’s hand, attempting to shove it from his shoulder. “Now, scram. Before you get hurt, too.”
Draven’s answering laugh started slow and deep in his chest. Slowly, it rose up and up, until the sound was echoing in his throat, soaring into the sky. The red-haired boy, evidently not as dumb as he looked, went still.
He narrowed his eyes on Draven, now ignoring Rhea completely. “There are three of us and one of you. We could take you down in minutes. Seconds, even. So, I suggest you get that smug face of yours out of here before we paint it black and blue.”
Holding the boy’s gaze, Draven took another silent step toward him, his pointed smirk nothing short of a challenge.
“Fine,” the boy huffed, lips thinning. He looked to the boy holding Rhea in place and jerked his chin toward Draven. “Trel, make it hurt.”
Trel dropped Rhea’s wrists from his large palms and rolled his neck.
“Gladly,” he answered. When he strode for Draven, he lifted a hand and uncurled his fingers, revealing a small mark at the center of his palm.
It illuminated with a soft blueish light, and small tendrils of contained wind emerged, curling around his forearm.
“You have magic.”
Though Draven said it as plainly and as unenthusiastically as he could, Trel puffed out his chest with pride, clearly a bit more dense than his other friend. “Scared yet?”
The corner of Draven’s mouth twitched with a laugh, but he contained it. “Trembling.”
Trel scowled at him before launching a small burst of twisting wind at his face.
Yet what Trel didn’t know was that Draven was quite accustomed to dodging magical attacks.
Not to mention, Kiran and Finlay’s attacks were considerably quicker—better controlled and more efficiently devastating.
It was all too easy for Draven to simply sidestep the attack of howling wind, allowing it to chomp at open air until it met some building’s wall a ways down the alley.
Trel openly gaped at him; Draven smirked at him in return.
Without a word, Draven lifted two fingers pressed together, twirling them around in the air.
Darkness poured out from his fingertips and piled onto the stones at his feet, compiling until a tiny inky figure appeared.
His shadow panther snarled, prowling to stand next to him.
A feat he’d been working on day in and day out for over a year now.
Though the shadowy creature only rose to about Draven’s hipbone, its mass of dark teeth and glowing eyes tended to be enough to scare even grown men away.
Hell, even his brothers were a tad uneasy in his panther’s presence.
So when the three boys caught a glimpse of it creeping toward them—licking its ebony lips—they scurried away faster than a lightning strike could bolt across a stormy sky, screaming bloody murder all the way.
Draven chuckled under his breath as he watched them scramble, feeling an odd urge to pet his inky monster.
Yet he disbanded the magic, sending the creature back to its home inside his veins.
When he turned back around, expecting to find Rhea waiting with displays of gratitude, the thing he certainly did not anticipate was a swift kick to his sensitive member.
He buckled and wheezed, gripping the space between his legs as his eyes welled with uncontrollable tears and his knees slammed into the ground. “What the hell,” he rasped, nearly breathless.
“How dare you butt in with your large head and annoying magic.” Draven glanced up to find Rhea standing over him, hands braced on her hips.
“I was trying to help you,” Draven gritted out between clenched teeth. “And I do not have a large head.”
“I didn’t ask for your help. I had it under control.”
Draven nearly dropped his jaw to gape at her. “They had you pinned against a wall while throwing punches at you. I’d hardly call that ‘under control.’”
“You—”
But before she could finish her sentence, a girl’s voice came echoing down the alley. “Rhea? Rhea!”
Draven glanced as far over his shoulder as he could manage at the given moment, glimpsing Suzumi running down the alleyway toward them.
“What happened here?” she asked after stopping and doing a quick scan of the scene.
She forcefully gripped her sister’s chin in her hand and moved it side to side, inspecting her. “You weren’t fighting again, were you?”
Draven slowly—painstakingly—rose from the ground. “What do you mean again?”
Suzumi only spared him a glance before inspecting her sister once more. “I mean Rhea here has a hobby of picking fights with those who are bigger than her.”
Draven’s brows rose, and Rhea’s eyes drifted to the ground. “I would have won,” she grumbled. “But there were three of them this time.”
“Three?” Suzumi balked. She appeared to be stuck between warring emotions.
Currently, Draven found anger to be the frontrunner.
Though, to his surprise, she drew in a slow breath and reset her gaze on her younger sister.
“You could have been hurt, Rhea,” she scolded, soft yet stern.
“Badly. Healers are a rare sight around here, and apothecary medicine only goes so far—not to mention is far more expensive than we can afford right now.”
“I know,” Rhea mumbled, still not meeting her sister’s sharp expression. “But I had to get it back. They—they had it, acting like it was theirs because they stole it, and I—you know how much it means to me. I couldn’t just let them get away with taking it, Zumi. I couldn’t.”
Suzumi softened. “You got it back?” she asked quietly, all signs of anger slipping away.
Rhea nodded, and Draven could have sworn those were tears starting to brim in her startlingly blue eyes. “I got it back.”
“Show me,” Suzumi breathed.