I sure didn’t see red eyes – and I would remember something like that. But I had my lids closed. I felt with my feet until they settled securely onto Rose’s hips then I propelled off of her. Somewhere in mid-air I kind of freaked out and realized that having my eyes open was necessary for figuring out where the ground was, but by then Killian had caught me, and Rose was already on the ground.
That’s all that happened, but as I think that I run my tongue over my lips.
Honestly, Rose tasted good.
Roarke nods, like my silence has finalized something. I can’t even remember what we were arguing about – exactly. Aside from Rose’s eyes, which may or may not have turned red.
“And just now?” Roarke asks, his tone softer.
“Now?” I press. Maybe I need to explain that this whole conversation has lost me.
“When I approached.”
My cheeks warm, and I straighten away from him. “You know you’re hot – right?”
He chuckles a little weakly. “Not on my own, I’m not. You can’t go hunting out my power like that. I have to keep a tight grip on myself – and so do you.”
I ignore everything but the first six words. “What the chuck are you talking about?”
“You have to stop yourself from pulling at my power.” As he talks, he reaches out and brushes a stray strand of fringe from my forehead. “We’re in this delicate dance, you and I. You can use a little power for a little while, but any more or any longer than that, and you start to hurt yourself.”
I swat his hand away.
“No, that other bit. Say that other bit again.” He’s just frowning at me so I add, “The bit about you not being hot.”
“Sabers are our Seeds. If I’d been born a FaunaSeed, you would never react to me that way.”
Yep, exactly what I thought he’d said. So I do what comes naturally. Mostly thanks to Killian.
I knee him in the balls.
And he drops like a rock.
“I know you’re hot, and I know what your power feels like, and I’d still think you were hot even if you were mortal. So don’t try to tell me your power is controlling the way I feel, or your damn power better get to controlling my knees too.”
I turn to march away. Five whole steps.
Then my foot connects with an invisible wall, and chuck it hurts.
By the time I stop jumping around and holding my throbbing toes like an idiot, he’s on his feet and catching up to me. Sabers, even their balls are stronger than I am.
“Count them,” he orders, moving in close behind me.
So I obey. “One, two, three, four, five.”
Everything, his sharp movements, his lips pressed thin, the way his jaw is clenched so tight teeth could break at any minute, it all looks like anger. But it feels like fear. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why?”
“I don’t know!”
He opens his mouth to ask another question, but pauses just before the sounds come out – thinking. “Did you count them after you slept?”
I shake my head.
“Have you counted them at all today?”
Another shake.
“Have you had any pain today?”
I roll my eyes at him.
“Any pain that feels similar to using one of our powers?”
“I don’t think so,” I say, but only because there is no good non-verbal way of responding to that.
“It has to be sleep,” he murmurs.
“But why all of a sudden? I mean, I’ve slept every night since the bubble but it’s only been shrinking recently.”
“I don’t know,” he admits, grabbing his hair and yanking it back into a band.
But, rather naturally, I dive at him and snatch it.
“Thank you,” I say, moving back so I can tie my own hair up and hopefully keep out of his reach. “And don’t argue with me. This is probably my band anyway, and if I can’t put my hair up, I’m going to cut it off.”
“You can’t,” he almost gasps.
“If it would mean not having to deal with this mess,” I taunt, waving a hand through the end of my ponytail to highlight my issue.
He pulls another band out of his pocket and restrains his hair – okay, so that might be my band, not sure.
Then he walks past me saying, “Come on.”
I turn to follow him because if I don’t the other side of the bubble will hit me. I hadn’t even noticed the constant clang and thump of Killian and Seth starting to beat the shit out of each other.
I’d seen these guys in a tournament once, and their training is just as brutal. I thought Killian had gone over the top with me that first day by the ochre caves. Turns out he was taking it easy.
Seth makes sweeping movements, fast, precise, and graceful, dodging here and ducking there. He uses his spear until Killian flicks it from his hands, and he has to draw his sword. He’s good, too. For all of Killian’s brute muscle, foresight, and skill, Seth balances the duel with speed, agility, and tricks like rolls and flips.
I think things would be different if they were using their magical abilities, but they’re not. Not that I can see, anyway.
Roarke guides me to the nearest tree, and I watch where I’m going between shooting curious glances back at Pax – he looks like he’s giving the same speech to the new Sabers.
“I don’t suppose Darkness taught you how to warm up first?” Roarke asks.
“I’ve never done anything strenuous enough to require warming-up.” Not before meeting these four.
Rourke chuckles, motioning for me to sit.
“Legs out wide,” he says, sitting opposite me and doing the same.
Damn, the guy is flexible. His legs are almost in a straight line. I try to do the same and only manage to get a wedge shape and a tinge of pain.
“Ninety percent of a battle is about the skill you have over your own body. The other ten percent is your awareness of your opponent.”
“Only ten percent?” I ask, because that sounds awfully low.
Roarke brings his feet in to rest against my ankles.
“Even if you only know one percent, only know exactly what your opponent is doing right now, if you have ninety percent of your body ready to react, you still own ninety percent of the battle. And ninety percent in any equation will win every time. Give me your hands.”
He grips my wrists and begins to pull me slowly forward.
“My math is about as good as my reading,” I admit.
He smiles at me. “We can work on that too, but right now I’m going to make you hurt.”
His words wash over me, settling low in my stomach. Somewhere between ‘please do’ and ‘wait, what? Bralls no.’
Then it hurts. Right up the inside of my legs, all the way into my hips, then shooting up my back.
He leans in, releasing the pressure, and I straighten before anything more than a low hiss has escaped my lips.
Killian and Seth both glance over at me. Killian, however, decides I’m just being a big baby and uses the moment to kick his little brother in the stomach. Seth doubles over, rolling out of the way as he curses.
“I didn’t mean this bit’s going to hurt,” Roarke says, his lips pulled to one side as he thinks. “That was just the beginning.”
He shuffles his feet, pushing my legs a little further apart, then pulls me forwards again. The motion is slow, but the pain is not.
“And what is this going to achieve?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“You’re not going to kick him in the head if you can’t get your leg past your hips.”
“One,” I say relaxing back. “I wasn’t planning on kicking him in the head, and two,” I grit my teeth again as he pulls me forwards, “I could probably already get my foot that high.”
Roarke chuckles, shaking his head, and pulls me forward as far as I can bend.
When I’m about to struggle, he lets me relax back.
Bralls, the pain!
“You know I’d be happy for you to take this pain away, right?” I say.
He shakes his head. “Stretching has to hurt just right. You’re looking for that perfect spot where your muscles are challenged but not broken – that’s something you have to feel for.”
I hiss again.
“Well, you’ve gone too far.”
“Not yet, I haven’t.”
I gasp, hiss, then growl.
Seth sails through the air and lands with a thump on his back, not far from us.
“Will you stop making that noise?” he grumbles. “It’s making me get my ass kicked.”
“Then fight harder,” I snap at him.
He cocks his head to the side, that ‘challenge-accepted’ smile on his face.
“You know you’re supposed to stretch him too?” he asks, popping to his feet. “And every time I take a hit, you both have to go deeper.”
Seth ducks Killian’s swing, his gaze not leaving mine.
I open my mouth to say, ‘no chuckin' way’ when Roarke cuts me off.
“Deal.”
“What? No deal!”
Killian brings his boot in low and sweeps Seth off his feet, but mid-fall Seth kicks out and manages to send Killian staggering before Seth hits the ground.
Roarke adjusts his feet again, making my legs and his wider.
“You can pull me down as low as you want,” he says, motioning that I should lean back and drag him forwards into the same stretch that I’ve been doing.
I start to lean back, but he doesn’t tense, doesn’t wince, doesn’t even resist me. I lie all the way onto my back, almost putting his nose to the ground, and he comes up smiling.
“What’s the point?” I mutter.
He ignores that. “I’m going to pull you towards one leg now.”
He’s already making me move by the time he’s finished his sentence, pulling, and at the same time reaching to guide my body with a firm hand on my side.
“Lower your head towards your knee,” he instructs.
“I’m trying,” I growl.
While my head’s down, I hear a thump on the ground. “Who was that?”
“Killian.”
“Thank chuck,” I groan.
We move across to my other leg, then I repeat the same stretch on Roarke. Then Seth hits the ground again. And again.
And again.
Roarke adjusts our stretch to my very limits.
Tears have started to well in my eyes, and my breathing is nothing more than little gasps when he says, “You know you don’t have to play our games, right? Just call it off.”
I consider that as he pulls me forward.
“I like your games,” I say, then he puts pressure on the back of my neck, and I hiss.
By the time Killian and Seth call it quits, my legs, back, and arms feel like jelly.
“Any objections if I spar with her?” Roarke asks, getting to his feet and dusting the moisture and wet grass from his breeches.
Killian rumbles in agreement and hands his sword over to Roarke.
“What if I object?” I ask, because asking me first would have been nice.
Seth offers me a hand up, and I shake my wobbly legs out. This pleasant kind of pain is a weird and wonderful new discovery.
Then Seth offers me his sword. I take a really big step away from it.
Killian shakes his head. “Use your blade.”
I pull it from my pocket, then blanch.
“You want me to fight a sword wielding Elite Saber who has magic with this?”
Killian smiles, that full-mouth, bright and alive smile. He’s enjoying this.
“Is it bad that I like it when you do that?” I ask softly.
“Do what?” he asks.
“Smile, get excited, even when it means I’m going to end up in pain.”
“Why?” he asks, some of his expression smoothing into curiosity.
“Because I can see you like it.”
He just grunts.
She moves in the wrong way. I correct the motion, then three seconds later we repeat the process, all the time trying to explain that the movement is like wielding my power. It’s a dance, not a blacksmith beating steel into shape.
And she is improving. If improving were the slow process of a seedling growing into an oak, and the world wasn’t preparing for war.
In the periphery, Rose returns to the cottage carrying a deer over her shoulders. Her stride is confident, her head held high even under the weight, and the blade at her side is already cleaned.
Powerful – that woman is powerful and deadly.
She deposits the deer by the fire then ambles towards us, blood staining her shoulders.
With one finger she runs a line of the red liquid down her forehead. She enjoys it, like a hungry stomach enjoys food. Killian watches her, and he’s watching Kitten too. For a flicker of a second I smell the desire coming off of him, but I’m not sure which woman it’s for.
Kitten moves to the left, leaving her right unguarded, and I tap her hip with the flat of my blade. Killian’s going to tell me I’m too soft on her – but I don’t want to see her bruised.
The purple marks still on her throat are almost too much to bear.
“Use your shoulders, reach,” Killian calls, growling at her across the distance.
She adjusts. Always listening – always pushing herself. Never achieving.
She would have made a good Saber. With a Seed of her own and time to develop like everyone else who gets the Calling, she could have been strong.
Perhaps if her mother wasn’t mortal. She’s technically still very young, only breathed air for eighteen years. Pax’s skills at eighteen pretty much revolved around ripping things apart in anger. He hadn’t held a sword when I met him. Hadn’t won a fight as a man. Was still struggling to survive.
But he has had the luxury of a few hundred years to grow up.
“You’re training her like she’s male – she’s not. She’s female,” I hear Rose telling Killian.
She tucks her hands under her armpits, which is unusual for the Saber. Perhaps a means to stop herself from pointing in the lass’s direction.
Killian grunts at her. He knows she’s a woman. No man could miss that.
Kitten lunges at me, and I sidestep, tapping her blade out of the way.
“Don’t reach outside your balance. Learn where your center of gravity is,” I tell her.
“Her arms are never going to be as strong as a man’s – but she has an amazing core. Teach her to use that. That’s where her strength is going to be,” Rose says.
Killian makes his agreement audible, and Rose huffs in response, her smile making the air between them heat. I switch my attention back to Kitten, all the while making her dance and duck and weave. One of the gifts of Allure is a slight command over time and space. Being able to do two things at once.
I watch how the girl moves. Trying to understand what Rose is talking about.
Aria ambles over to Killian’s other side. Rose holds her hand out, and Aria leans around Killian to slap Rose’s hand in camaraderie. I skirt to the left, making Kitten move right, and watch her face when she spots Killian bookended by two strong females.
Brow creased, eyes narrowed, and nose scrunching. I hadn’t expected the nose scrunching.
“Lilies and roses,” she pants, her gaze fixing on me. “What does that mean?”
“Lust and desire.”
“Who?”
I lower my sword, turning to look properly at how the women are interacting with Killian.
“Ro –” I begin to say, but a sharp kick to the back of my knee cuts me off.
I stumble forward, twisting to face her.
“Sorry, don’t know what made me do that,” she says, stepping back.
But I’m smiling, and after one look at my expression, she smiles too – through her puffing. She bends over,
trying to support herself and balance leaning on her knees. She looks like she might be about to collapse.
She hasn’t asked to stop.
“Do you ever ask for help?” I ask.
She shakes her head just a little, sucks in a breath, and tries to straighten.
Aeons, why hadn’t I clued into that sooner? In the stables when we were at the White Castle, on the road here, when Killian trained with her at the cave, now. She pushes herself no matter what she’s doing – to the point of almost killing herself. Something inside me twists, a need to protect her. To be more careful, more watchful.
She’s a thousand times more Saber-spirited than she realizes.
I nod toward Killian, hesitating until she can breathe again. Until she takes the lead.
We approach the spectators together. Rose and Aria’s seals have already dissolved, so they’re on borrowed time. I listen to their gentle conversation – which is probably out of Kitten’s auditory range. My little Kitten.
“Mortal?” Aria asks, waving in our direction.
Rose gives her a warning glare. “Pax’s mortal.”
“Why does Pax have a mortal?” Aria asks.
Killian cuts through the conversation with a low growl.
“And she can’t fight,” Aria mutters, adjusting the cord holding her bow to her back. “But we want her to learn?”
Killian nods and makes a sound of agreement, a bit like a throat clearing. Aria looks to Rose, and Rose nods. Obviously, Killian’s grunt wasn’t a sound in Aria’s vocabulary. Killian crosses his arms over his chest, the movement broadening his frame and making both women step back. I was wondering how long he could put up with Aria. The FaunaSeed is naturally an emotional Saber, tuned in to growth and death and the pain of the animals around her. The woman would never hunt with Rose and even has trouble eating plants. Plants are not fauna – but being emotionally connected in the way she is, it changes a person's view of the world. Add that to the things Killian already feels, and it must be driving the guy crazy.
“Well, maybe us women can help,” Aria says, leaning forward to check Rose’s reaction.
Rose nods.
“Only if Pax isn’t going to kill us,” Rose says. “Or the rest of you guys, for that matter.”
Shadows and Shade Box Set Page 98