Rambunctious ✔

Chapter 4

For the past half an hour, Fire has been trying to apply what Cassander taught her in their training sessions. She focused her mind on the rope in hopes to free herself. To her credit, the knot seemed to loosen a little but it was not enough. She was extremely tired and hopeless. Her grandmother always taught her to never lose hope. She used to say that the moment one loses hope, all the negative energies in the universe will sense it and will possess that person. But grandma, Fire did not lose hope, hope lost Fire. She started crying for the second time this week and pearls fell from her eyes. How can something so beautiful be created by so much sadness? Why does she always find comfort in agony and rage? Since she was a little girl, agony was like a familiar house that she goes to whenever times were hard. Agony is like a mother that will protect you and make you believe that only it knows what is best for you. It wants to forever shelter you and keep you under her roofs because that is how she can easily own you. And her pearls have been her only companions since then.

The door opened and the brute entered the cottage again. He had a dead baby antelope on his back and a black bag on his hand.

"Dinner is here." He said putting the corpse down.

"I am not going to eat that."

"Well, I guess you will starve then." He untied her hands and ankles. "In case you get hungry, you can join me. I will be in the kitchen."

"I will never taste the flesh of another animal!"

He untied her, "we shall see, my wench." He caressed her wet cheeks. "Were you crying?" He checked the pillows and found pearls under where she laid.

"None of your business."

"So beautiful..." he murmured picking up one of her tear pearls.

"You find pleasure in my pain?" She asked.

"Not really," he shrugged his shoulders, "it's just fascinating that you cry pearls."

"It is a tribal trait." She briefly explained.

"Tribal?"

"All Astéris are made out of stars hence the name. However, each tribe of Astéris is half another element. My tribe are believed to be half sea which is why we cry pearls."

"Oh,"

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Whenever you're nearby, I see blue butterflies and snow starts falling which does not happen with any other Alpha."

"It's the pit." He said coldly.

"The pit? You mean where king Myron sent you?"

He headed to the kitchen and she followed him. "Tell me," she insisted.

"Are you usually this curious?"

"Well, I answered your question about my tribe."

"I did not ask you, you decided to explain to me a story I did not care about." He started cutting parts of the antelope's leg.

"You are such an eccentric, despicable, knave bastard!" She hurled insults at him but it did not phase him. He just continued cutting the meat and putting it in a pan while disregarding her abusive comments.

                 "When was the last time you heard from her?" Cassander interrogated Fire's mother.

"Yesterday morning! We thought she was with you that's why we didn't report her missing!" Storm replied.

"Your king promised us that he will protect her," Ocean- Fire's father joined the conversation, "we should have never trusted your kind!"