Talos Gavril left after another lesson on dismissing someone from my presence. Selene walked out with him speaking too softly this time for me to overhear what they were discussing. I waited by the desk and peeked around the room to make sure I was alone before taking off the robe and setting it on the desk. My long-sleeved black dress had red pleats that you couldn’t really see until I was walking—or spinning. I turned in a quick spin and the bell skirt flared out around me, flashing red and black. The material was surprisingly soft and lightweight. Thankfully, with the weight I’d lost over the last several months, my thighs weren’t in danger of starting a friction fire. I could almost get on board with wearing dresses like this—almost. But it was the black hooded robe that the Kyrion wore to official ceremonies that was giving me trouble. I stopped spinning and grimaced down at the robe. The long hem had trailed along the ground making me trip several times in the hallway when I was coming back to the throne room.
“Now you almost look the part,” Selene said as she joined me. I slipped the robe back on and she nodded in approval. “Lydia will have something more formal brought to your room this evening for our meeting with the ladies you will need to work with for the coronation plans. We’ll meet in the dining hall for dinner at 6 p.m. and then move to the sitting room across the hall. Don’t be late. Now let’s see if we can teach you what you’ll need to know.”
Selene raised her hand and the stack of books floated up from the desk. Each of the ten books opened to a certain page as they took up position floating in a circle around me. On the page of the book in front of me was an ancestry tree for the Kyrion line of the House of Chaos. My finger traced down the branches of Bennett’s family, stopping on his mother’s name. Next to her name was a picture of the woman in the painting over my bed. Of course! Now that I had made the connection, I wondered how I’d missed the resemblance before. Mother and son shared the same eye shape, straight-edged nose, and high cheekbones.
Doubt overwhelmed me. How the hell was I ever going to measure up to either one of them? From all I’d heard, they were basically saints. In my mind’s eye, I found myself back on the crumbling pavement of my lonely highway. Only now there was a fork in the road ahead that I didn’t remember being there before. In one direction, the highway ended abruptly in a wall of swirling mists. In the other direction, the road disappeared into a forest where the first rays of the sunrise were struggling to peek through the dense leaves. Neither option looked appealing, but when I turned back around, the pavement behind me had vanished.
Unsettled, I stepped back and stumbled again on the black robe nearly falling. Selene sighed and waved her hand to shoo the books out of the way. “Take the robe off and hold it out to your side.”
I did as she asked, expecting this was some fresh new hell I was going to be put through. The biggest sword I had ever seen appeared in Selene’s hands as she walked toward me with a look of determination. I gulped heavily as she raised the sword and swung it so close to me that I could feel the wind ruffle my skirt. A section of the robe fluttered to the floor. My knees knocked together in terror as the sword disappeared once more into thin air. “Now you should be able to walk without tripping,” she said.
Holy gods, she’s like She-Ra in black battle gear.
“Uhm, thanks,” I gulped.
Selene nodded, then waved the books back into place. I scratched at the metal cuff around my bicep wondering if I would ever manage to control my powers the way she did with such ease. Then I had no more time to think as she tried to cram as much knowledge into my brain as possible in the short time we had. Luckily, I was much better at visual learning and picked up on the House hierarchies and territories from the books fairly quickly. There was even a slight nod of approval from Selene on that part of my lessons.
Two hours later, I stumbled into my bedroom. Grayson must have arrived because Click was in the middle of the floor surrounded by scattered pieces of his favorite stationery with the silhouette of a dancing couple across the top. The young servant with the blue-tinted hair sat on the floor giggling as Click showed off his dance moves. She quickly scrambled to her feet when she noticed me and backed out the door, bowing the whole way. The pen flew over to me clicking happily as he showed me his drawing of the feather duster he was currently crushing on. I mumbled praises and told him to clean up his mess before falling face down on the bed. My brain felt numb from all of the laws, family names, roles, and proper etiquette floating around inside. My legs and back hurt from standing over those books for so long. And tomorrow we would be doing this all over again.
I groaned and pulled the pillow over my head.
8
“Lia, wake up.” Bennett shook my shoulder, and I burrowed deeper into my pillow. I think I grumbled something like “get fucked” but was too tired to care. My dreams had been plagued by the Moirai ticking away in the background as Titan urged me to find the twin Houses, and the mysterious voice I kept hearing telling me I needed to leave. Bennett chuckled and kissed the back of my neck. “Come on, asteràki, it is time to train those unruly powers.”
“No,” I huffed. “Go away. My head hurts, and it’s all your adviser’s fault. That makes it your fault too.”
Bennett massaged my aching back. “Does this make up for turning Selene loose on you?”
I made happy groaning noises. Bennett continued the massage a few more minutes, then rolled me onto my back. He leaned down to place a quick kiss on my lips, then pulled me to my feet.
I grumbled all the way down to the basement training room. At the far end of the room was a swimming pool and hot tub. On the other side of the room all of the exercise equipment had been pushed up against the wall of the gym area, leaving the floor in front of the mirrors bare except for a couple of mats.
“Isn’t Grayson training with us today?” I asked, rubbing my arm where the kóvo had been. Selene had taken it back after our lesson, but it left an icky feeling behind.
“No, Grayson is working on something else at the moment. This time it will only be you and me,” Bennett responded. Something sounded off about his voice, but I let it go. “We will start with sparring.”
“Fine,” I said around a yawn.
We stepped onto the mats, and Bennett swept my feet out from under me before I knew what was happening.
“Ouch! I think my kidneys just cried surrender.”
“Get up,” Bennett commanded. “Again.”
“Ok, geez. Are you having a bad day or something? I’m completely fine with rescheduling.”
I barely made it too my feet before a fist landed in my stomach. He had pulled the punch, but it still knocked the breath out of me.
“Get your hands up. Block me,” Bennett demanded, landing another blow to my thigh. “Will you surrender this easily to our enemies? No wonder Natalie found you such an easy target. You let her destroy your reputation and your business.”
“Bennett, what ...” A vision invaded my head, ripping me from my stunned stupor in Bennett’s gym to my old office at my art gallery in Port Lawson. I watched as the woman I had been nearly four months ago sobbed at her desk. The anguished sounds of her despair filled the room, and, suddenly, I was her again. All of those feelings poured into me—helplessness, anger, and grief. Then I was back in the gym. A fireball surrounded my hand and was aimed at Bennett’s chest.
“Get out of here!” I shouted, so afraid that I would hurt him. My fear fed the power and the ball got bigger. “Run before I lose control!”
“Focus on the power at your center. Hold it tight in your grasp and reverse the flow,” Bennett instructed, completely ignoring my pleas that he leave. “You cannot run from this. The power is a part of you. Embrace it and control it.”
I closed my eyes and searched out the power at my center. A giant ball of light as bright as the sun spun, throwing off flares of dark red. Other colors writhed and pushed against the surface as if looking for a way out. It was chaos. How could you control something that had no rhyme
or reason?
I pictured myself wrapping my hands around the ball, trying to shove the escaping flares back inside. As soon as I shoved one in, another appeared. What had Bennett said? Hold it tight and reverse the flow. I hugged the glowing ball to me, and the world exploded. My back hit the mat with a thud, and my eyes flew open to see scorched ceiling tiles above me.
“Bennett!” I rolled over frantically searching for him, afraid of what I might find. He stood on a perfectly preserved circle of the mat, not a hair out of place. The rest of the mat was a melted mess around us.
“The fire is mine to command, Lia. Never forget that.” His cold gaze swept over me sending a chill down my spine. I remembered that gaze very well. This wasn’t my Bennett standing in front of me now, but Kyrion Chaos. “You will get on your feet, Potential, and do it again until you can no longer stand.”
9
I had never been afraid of Bennett but there was a harsh desperation to our training today that made me think of his words earlier in the throne room. “Remember that I love you, Lia, no matter what I must do to keep you safe.”
I had wondered how far he would go to protect me and now I think I had my answer.
“Bennett—”
Five servants entered the room carrying in new mats. “Replace the mats and leave,” he ordered.
I moved well out of the way and crossed my arms as I leaned against the wall. The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife, and the servants kept looking at me suspiciously. “Bennett, don’t take your anger with me out on them,” I requested through our connection.
The servants wrapped up quickly as ordered and bowed deeply to Bennett. They bowed respectfully to me, but I could see they blamed me for the abrupt behavior of their beloved leader. “Can you please tell them we’re training? They’re looking at me like I attacked you and they want to cut off my head.”
“Wait,” he called out to the servants as they neared the door. They all stopped immediately, patiently awaiting their orders. “Thank you for bringing fresh mats. We will take a break from our training in one hour. Please bring water and a light snack.”
“It will be done, Kyrion Bennett,” they chorused with bows and left somewhat mollified.
The silence stretched out between us as we watched each other warily. I hated that there was a distance between us now that hadn’t been there before we came here. “Is this one of the things you think—”
“We need to get back to training,” Bennett commanded.
I sighed and pushed off the wall to join him on the mats once more. We were definitely going to talk later.
“Do you remember him?” Bennett held up his hand and a picture appeared. It was of a teenager with his arms wrapped around two little boys all with the same dark hair and crooked smiles.
The shift in our training and the picture of the boy who haunted my dreams caught me off guard. “James,” I replied in a raspy whisper, attempting to swallow down the tightness in my throat as sorrow threatened to choke me. Natalie had used the teenager who had been caring for my parents’ house to get to me. It was her anger at me that had made her blast the chair James was tied to through the portal in my father’s library, breaking his neck. A deep rumbling sound issued from under the pavement of my lonely highway. The asphalt split, spewing dirt and smoke into the air. Guilt and regret poured into me, tearing the words that I had been suppressing for weeks from my lips. I choked out, “That’s the boy that I k-killed.”
Bennett’s fingers tightened around the photo. His lips pressed into a hard line as if he wanted to say something but was holding himself back. He had told me many times that James’s death wasn’t my fault but that didn’t stop me from feeling responsible. If only I had been smarter. If only my stupid powers had come with an instruction manual that I could follow, I could have protected us all that day.
My powers flared, threatening to incinerate everything around me. I envisioned a shield as if there was an impenetrable bubble of glass surrounding that burning ball of light inside me. I painstakingly molded it as if it were one of my glass sculptures, shaping it around my powers and holding it there with sheer determination. Flares of red pushed against the transparent shield, but it held. I exhaled a shaky breath of relief. It was working!
The air shifted. That was the only warning I got before Bennett teleported directly in front of me. His fist shot toward me, and I ducked just in time. His knee drove up toward my face; I dodged to the left and dropped to the ground. My foot swept out toward the back of his knee, but he had already teleported across the gym. I quickly got back on my feet, the deadly look on Bennett’s face sending chills down my spine as he launched a ball of fire at me.
I teleported and nearly fell over a weight bench as I stumbled backward, still struggling with sticking my landings. Bennett was nowhere to be seen, but the heat along the symbol on my back let me know he was still near.
Where the hell is he?
Bennett’s voice whispered next to my ear, “Do you think Natalie would have taken it this easy on you?”
I spun around but no one was there. “What is this?”
“This is the shadows. They are an extension of Thanatos—the shadowlands of the dead. The in-between place where souls sometimes linger before they are sent to one of the other levels of the underworld.” Bennett’s voice sounded behind me, and I shifted in that direction. “When you learn how to use them, you can become invisible to your enemies. But you, Potential Davies, never learn, do you?”
Suddenly, I was flying backwards. My back hit the mat hard, knocking the breath from me. Bennett appeared again, leaning over my prone form. “You let your guard down again. Do you think our enemies will let you call time-out to get those unruly powers under control?” He pressed his hand against my throat and used his powers to pull me up into the air until I was dangling in his grip. He was being careful not to do any real damage, but I couldn’t move. His eyes blazed up at me as he sneered, “They will cut you down in an instant without a care that you are the almighty Chosen.” The arrogant mask of the Kyrion stared up at me mockingly. “Will you hang here all day, or do you plan to do something?”
Anger lit up a flare so quickly inside me that fire ignited around my hands. I reached for my shield and found a section had melted. Those angry red flares were escaping, wanting to burn everything around me. Dammit, Bennett had distracted me, and I had lost my concentration on the shield.
“Temper, temper,” Bennett taunted me.
I reached for the glass-like surface to fix the hole when the air stirred, and I was flying across the room. My stomach dropped as I was flipped around in the air in some kind of demented ballet. I sucked in a deep breath, trying my best to repair the shield around my powers while being tossed around the room.
“Trapping your power will not protect you, Potential.” Bennett’s angry voice echoed off the walls of the gym. “Do something with it!”
My feet finally touched the ground, and I fell to my knees, too dizzy to stand. Between one breath and the next, I was somewhere else. An anguished bellow rang through the air of the flower field where I had competed in the first competition of the Games. Groups of people huddled together watching a kneeling man holding a woman in his arms. The man kissed the woman gently and laid her down on the ground. I walked closer, and my knees almost gave out. Bennett stood and turned to the crowd, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the body on the ground. My own sightless eyes stared up from a blood and dirt-streaked face, and blood flowed from the hole where the arrow had struck me.
Bennett bellowed at the crowd behind me, and I dragged my attention away from my dead body to see what was happening. Bennett’s face was consumed with a manic rage I had never seen before. He glanced over at my dead body, his eyes full of mindless devastation. This must have been what happened after I died. But how did I get here?
The cracks in my lonely highway opened wider and another wave of grief hit me. My powers surged up and burst out of me.
>
In the next breath I found myself back in the gym, lying face down on the mats feeling wrung out from the emotional rollercoaster ride. The perfect imprint of my hands was burned into the mat beneath me. Fire lit up my hands and climbed up my arms. I pushed to my feet quickly trying to keep my powers from slipping any further beyond my control.
Bennett stood in a wide-legged stance several feet away watching me. Then he launched himself at me like a freight train, and I barely avoided the foot he aimed at my ribs. He pursued me across the mats never letting up. For every punch or kick I blocked, twice as many made contact. Even without the full force of his blows, my body was aching all over. My fire raged hotter, flaring out around me to singe the walls. He left me no time to gain my focus or rebuild my shield. All I could do was react as he continued to attack.
“Are you even trying, Potential?” Bennett asked in that condescending tone he had used when we first met.
My elbow connected with air as he teleported away. An arm banded around my middle, and he teleported us to the back of the gym, his muscular body pressed menacingly all along mine. My cheek smashed up against the mirrors; my hands trapped between my body and the glass. One calloused hand gripped my neck, the other my thigh. Another picture slammed itself against the mirror inches from my nose and hung there taunting me. The auburn-haired woman in the photo was laughing as a skinny kid with choppy hair and a stubborn look of determination tried to lift a huge sword.
“You remember Grace, right?” Bennett’s lips brushed along my ear. “The woman that died during the first competition? I know you remember the adopted daughter she left behind. Molly was such a stubborn little thing even then.”
Paldimori Gods Rising Box Set Page 54