Heartbeats Amid Fire

10 - Complications Begin

Kian pov:

When I woke, the first thing I noticed was pain - a terrible headache and nearly unbearable soreness throughout my body. Why I felt this way, I did not know until a few moments later when memories flooded through me fiercely. My eyes flew open at that and I bolted upright to sit. It was not the best idea, for the room spun and a searing pain jolted my body. With a gasp, I doubled over and coughed. It was several minutes until I felt well enough to sit up straight again and notice the room I was in.

It was an unfamiliar place, not the old shack I lived in behind Master Waldo's house. This house was clean and well-kept, the kind a human would live in. I was sitting on a soft mattress with a soft pillow covered with clean white sheets while a thick, warm rug rested over my legs upto my waist.

For a moment, I wondered if I was dreaming, but believed against that thought because the pain I felt was too obvious.

Pushing the rug off my legs, I turned to the side to let my feet touch the floor. It was cold and had a shiver running down my spine before I stood. I stepped to one of the doors and opened it to be greeted by a bathroom, also clean and well maintained. Closing the door, I then stepped to the other door to open it and reveal a long corridor with railings on the open side. There were several other doors that opened to the corridor - two on either side, to be precise.

I could hear a bit of chattering and it had me stepping out of the room fully and looking down from the corridor. I was startled when I saw several from the town gathered on the lower floor and I immediately retreated into the room, shutting the door behind me. Where in the world was I? What had happened? How was I still alive?

It was a moment before I realized that the lower floor was actually a space I recognized. It was the café Lady Alysa ran and where I had come many times with Master Waldo for meals.

Why was I here, in one of the rooms in the upper floor no less?

I had been healed, undoubtedly by Lady Alysa, though I was not sure if it was her who had found me after I had almost been killed. I had always known that there would come a day when Master Waldo would do something like this, for he hated me with a passion and always found mistakes in what I did, enough to subject me to brutal abuse each time. The intensity of his abuse had only been increasing as the days passed, leaving me with such soreness that I could barely move, and reminding me of what I had to put through before I was thrown away to Amzell. Even in such a state, I could not rest or take a chance of doing anything halfheartedly in fear of further retribution.

Although, what I was going through here had slowly become worse than what I had had to tolerate before...and my initial thoughts of being thankful for the change in place and custody had diminished over the days that passed.

Now that I had been healed, I wondered if I would have to return to serving Master Waldo, if I would have to live every day through his abuse again. I clenched my jaw at the thought of that - I felt like I would rather have died instead. But I had been healed and saved, and I was more angry than thankful for what Lady Alysa had done.

A sharp pain I felt through my head broke my train of thought. It was accompanied by a refreshing of my memories, particularly one that was from the time I had stirred for a few moments when I had been unconscious.

>>Flashback

Despite the excruciating pain in my body and the near breathlessness that had me gasping for air when I felt consciousness return, I did not feel the localized, searing pain I should have felt from the wound Master Waldo had inflicted on me. Instead of the sky, I saw a wooden ceiling, one that I did not recognize. I also spotted a tall figure standing next to a window, his silhouette shadowing against the wall from the moonlight that entered through the window.