Chapter 37

Draven stood up with a frown and when he stepped back, her tense body somewhat loosened, causing his annoyance to rise.

“I won’t disturb you since you chose this kind of death.”

He turned and walked away. Seeing that the red-eyed man was leaving, she tried to stand up on her own, but one of her legs was injured. She had sprained it badly when she slipped from the cliff. She fell back on the ground and let out a pained groan, not able to stand again.

Draven stopped and simply watched her struggle to move, but she looked exhausted and in pain. However, he remembered how this rude thing disrespected him again and decided he had extended enough goodwill to her. It was her fault for rejecting him.

He turned back, intending to leave, but for some odd reason, he could not take a step.

It was as if he was frozen and he could not move his foot forward. With a frown, he decided to use his powers to teleport, but his powers refused to listen to his mental order.

‘Why can’t I take a step ahead or use my powers?’ he thought, and then he realized something.

Draven turned around to face the human girl, and this time, when he tried to take a step forward, he succeeded.

An unknown power was stopping him from leaving her, and it would only release him if he took her with him. It had happened once before on that haunted mountain, and now that this was the second time, it was not difficult for him to understand it.

He knew he had no option so he returned to her side. After falling on a single knee, he stared at her face, keeping his eyes levelled with hers. “I don’t want the people in this forest to feel scared because of you so I have to take you with me.”

He didn’t know if she believed him, but it remained a fact that her emerald green eyes continued to stare at him with fear.

Knowing that speaking more was of no use, Draven touched her limp leg that was stretched in front as she could not move it. Ember flinched. Before she could move back, he glared into her scared-looking eyes.

“Stay still.”

Hearing the cold and commanding voice of the scary red-eyed man, she dared not move. He held her leg at the ankle, his fingers pressing against the soft leather boots she had on. Then, he removed her boot and checked her ankle. The moment his warm fingers pressed where it hurt, she groaned in pain.

“Ahh…” but it was cut short as she suppressed her voice, pressing her lips into a thin line trying to bear with the pain.

“For a mute, you can scream quite well,” he commented and intentionally pressed on her swollen ankle, only to hear an unfamiliar small voice for the first time.

“It hurts…”

He smirked. “A talking mute?”

She pursed her lips, no longer saying another word, and lowered her gaze to not look at him anymore.

He held her leg firm and twisted it a little to which she groaned again but heard him say, “It will be fine soon.”

She didn’t reply. He didn’t need any reply from her in the first place. He simply continued ahead and carried her small body in his strong arms.

This time, he didn’t use his powers to tie her up in the air and simply picked her up as one would someone with an injury.

Startled, Ember tried to get out of his hold but his stern voice made her freeze. “If you move, I will throw you far into the deepest part of the dark forest from where only your soul can escape.”

The human girl refrained from doing any moves, and the next moment, she was up in the air in the hold of his strong arms.

It wasn’t a flight. Draven had jumped up from the forest below the cliff and landed back at the top of the cliff by the ancient tree. It was nothing new for him, but to her, his inhuman action was scary enough to make her shut her eyes and clutch at his robe, almost causing her nails to scratch his skin on the chest, but he felt no pain.

Draven didn’t use teleport this time as he knew her human body would be negatively affected by the laws of space. When he had teleported back with her when he saved her for the first time from that haunted mountain, he didn’t bother to care about causing her internal injuries as he only wanted to return to his palace but now….he cared.

After returning to the borders of Ronan, he looked at that frail thing in his arm and said, “We are not there yet.”

Once more, he jumped high up in the sky, only to stop directly on the crown of the tree housing her small home. Upon feeling someone landed on its branches, the tree spirit moved as if it was woken up from a deep sleep, but then realizing who it was, it calmed down.

Draven jumped down the tree, landing in front of the door of her home which opened on its own to welcome him.

Draven carried Ember inside her house where only a single light source could be seen softly glowing in the wall near the door. It was called a sun orb, a magical gem-stone product traded by another clan of elves and the most preferred heatless source of light used by the Wood Elves, who dwell inside the wooden bodies of living trees.

Sun orbs let out the light after being touched, but despite no one touching them, the line of sun orbs dotting the walls in place of lamps brightened up the empty tree house.

Though he could see everything clearly in the dark, Draven did it for this human creature’s sake.

He looked around to find a place to put her down and after walking by a partition, found a cushioned wooden bed big enough for only one person to sleep. He placed her on it gently. If she were not hurt, he would have just dumped her on that bed, but he recalled that her body was that of a frail human.

Humans are inherently weak. He felt like if he did one wrong move, she would break like a piece of glass.

Even though she was keeping quiet, he could feel her body flinching in pain with every step he took since he was carrying her in his arms. There was blood and dirt all over her body, new wounds on top of the old, and her hands especially were badly damaged and bleeding.

The moment he placed her on the bed, she hastily jumped to the other side of that rectangular bed, shrinking herself to one corner as if to say she intended to stay as far away from him as much as possible.

‘What an ungrateful little thing!’

He frowned inwardly as his red eyes glared at her.