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the tea she made for him.
    “Um… just under two days.” she responded hesitantly, not quite sure if her answer would be to his liking.
    “Were you followed?”
    She paused as she thought silently to herself, mentally back-tracking the events that conspired over the past few days as she moved a set of her stray brunette hair behind her ears.
    “No… no I don’t think so.”
    “You dragged me into town by yourself, right?”
    “Yes, you were hurt pretty bad ly. I knew you couldn’t stay there or the fire would get to you. You saved my life. I couldn’t leave you there to die… it wouldn’t have been right.”
    “No guards, no suspicious towns’ people? Nothing?”
    “That guard you killed, he tried to rape me. I avoided them at all cost on my way back in. The towns’ people that saw me assumed you had been hurt in the fire. They offered assistance but I kept to myself. Before you passed out, you said ‘no survivors.’ I figured you meant the guard… so I laid low.”
    Without saying a word Emil, swung the covers off himself and sprung up from his lax position. He cradled his wounded side, ignoring the voice nearby telling him to stay put.
    “Where’s my gear?” Emil asked calmly . He scoped out his newly found setting from behind the drapes of the young girl’s window.  
    “Over there in the chest at the foot of the bed . Do you not trust me? Look, I saw what you did back there to that man. If I wanted to, I could have easily killed you or left you for dead!”
    “No, no I do trust you–“
    “Marona. My name is Marona.”
    “I do trust you , Marona. I’m just trying to make sure that we’re safe.”
    As Emil spoke , his eyes were still peering out from behind the drapes, wary of any unknown threat.
    “The fire… where is it now?”
    “It died shortly after you went unconscious. Everything that was ablaze suddenly fizzled out without a trace. No one has been there since… they say it’s cursed ground.”
    “Take me there.”

Chapter 5: On Cursed Ground
    “So why do you need me to take you there , again?” Marona asked inquisitively as she walked through the ruffled leaves on the forest floor. It was a cold, dreary morning when they left her home. They left at first light, and had been traveling the forest grounds using only the sun to illuminate their path.
    “I need to see something .” Emil answered as he kept his gaze fixated on the foliage ahead.
    The metronomic patter of crinkled leaves filled the void between them as they walked. Marona’s ears perked as she hung onto the thought that the mysterious warrior would somehow elaborate, but he fell short of her expectations. Curious for more, her feet stopped behind his as she paused to speak.
    “Is...is it your family?”
    The words binded the once resilient warrior. A gasp escaped from his lungs as his feet froze to the cold, rigid earth.
    “You spoke of a girl named Ren the first night I took you in while you slept. Is she okay?” Marona spoke carefully, unsure if she had traversed into a tender spot of the young hero’s heart.
    Emil slightly turned his head to the side, as if consulting an unseen force before finally answering , “I… don’t know.”
    The shackles that once bound him dissipated as he forced himself to move onward, adamant to deny any prying into his person al affairs.
    “Hey… you can’t be all cold like that. We all have a burden to bear. Three days ago, before you saved me, I was going to Nerai to see my uncle. He ran the local bakery down there. When my parents died, he took me in and looked out for me until I was able to make it out on my own. The day of the fire, I was going to visit him for dinner and to catch up, but then I saw the flames. After that, I just wanted to make sure that he was okay. I ran as fast as I could. I knew it was stupid, but he was the only family I had left. Somehow along the way, one of the guards came chasing after me… that’s where you stepped in. Three days later, I