Inner Fires Ch. 01

Seeming unsure of what else to say to the man, she takes one of his hands and presses the bag to his palm before moving both towards him and placing them in his lap, "J-just, open it. Please. It's w-why they chased me. They saw it, a-and wanted it."

"Really? Now, what could be so important as to deem worthy of attacking a child...?" Paul mumbles to himself as he loosens the drawstring and opens the leather bag. Inside is plenty of space for small items such as coins, which is exactly what the bag contains. Three shiny gold coins. Crowns, to be precise, each engraved with a '1' on one surface, and the crest of Minakami above the numeral. The other side is a stamped image, which depicts a Kirin mid-gallop within a field of grass on the back of the coin, "They did...all that for three gold Crowns? By the gods...I can not believe some people."

Cinder looks up at him with clear surprise, then gives a soft sniffle as she begins to cry, overtaken by emotion and by the fact that Paul has been so kind to her, seeming to only be upset about the men attacking her. She wraps her arms around Paul's stomach and buries her face in his chest, sobbing and letting her pent-up stress out as she realizes that he truly has accepted her.

"It w-was so scary! Waaah!" Cinder cries and squeezes him, though the older man barely feels it, using a hand to stroke her head, which has somehow lowered in temperature, "They k-kept following me, a-and then that guy grabbed me, he had a knife! He was g-gonna hurt me with it! I bit h-him, and I ran when he let go!"

Continuing to give her head gentle strokes, Paul wraps an arm around her back and returns the squeeze with a reassuring smile, placing the bag of coins to the side, "And then? What else do you remember, little one?"

"H-he...corned me in t-that alley and then grabbed me again. I-I screamed, a-and tried to bite him a-again, but he yanked me off the ground..." she trails off with another sob and more sniffles, wiping at her eyes with an arm, "Then t-took his dagger again, a-and...I don't remember what happened next. I r-remember seeing you after blacking out, a-and then I woke up in your room."

"So you only remember that much...I see," he responds idly, mentally remarking about the lack of an explanation regarding the broken bottle or the corpse, even if it was clear that Cinder caused both events to occur under her own power, "Well, you don't need to worry about them anymore. They won't hurt you, and we can go tell the guards what you told me in the morning, okay? That man won't hurt you again."

"Y-yeah...let's do that," Cinder says, sniffling and fighting to keep her eyes open, starting to doze off as the excitement wears off, "T-tomorrow...for sure..."

Paul looks down at the young girl and notes that she seems to have fallen asleep, her eyes closed and her breathing deep and even, making him chuckle softly. His arms wrap around her and he gently lifts her, carrying her upstairs and towards the bedroom.

'Do not worry, Cinder. One has already paid the cost of harming you, and the other will soon meet a fate befitting his crime,' Paul thinks to himself, laying her in the bed once he enters the sleeping quarters and drawing the sheets above her, 'You will be a mighty warrior one day. You just need the right teacher...'