“You’ve been through so much already. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to an all-out war. I’d hate to lose more good people.” I roll my shoulders, wincing at the knot that’s squatted like a hobo in my upper back for the past three weeks. No matter how much I magic it away, tension invites it back in every damn day.
“We've been through so much. How are you holding up?”
I shrug. “I'm hanging in there. When I'm not training, I'm out on missions. When I'm not doing that, I'm...training.” Wow. That sounds depressing.
“Just make sure you get some downtime in for morale. You know what they say. All work and no play makes Syxx a dull girl.” He grins and raises an eyebrow. Cheeky.
“I'll keep that in mind.” I would have fixed that last night if not for my mother’s interference. “Can you maybe tell that to Ashria on your way out?”
“You’re on your own there. Speaking of which, I'm off to save the day once again. You take care.” He slips a piece of paper into my hand. “Call this number if you ever need me.”
“Ooo lah lah, did I just score your number?”
His expression grows shockingly serious. “That isn't for everyone, by the way. I'm not saying there's a traitor among us, but this is a way for you to get a hold of me should the occasion rise.”
“Serious business, huh?”
He nods.
“Do you know who it is?”
“Unfortunately, no. Just be careful who you speak freely around.”
His warning makes my heart heavy. These walls we built this house with were supposed to protect us. “I will.”
He’s gone before I can tuck the slip of paper into my jeans pocket.
As if I didn't have enough to worry about, now he's saying there might be a spy among us. Damn it. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.
I wrap my hands around my mug and sink wearily into a chair. Lately my old life is the one that feels surreal. Worrying about bills and bad dates. Were things ever that mundane and simple? I need to spend a month in bed—not all of it sleeping. My body gives a lonely throb for Draven’s warmth.
“Emilie-Syxx?” Ashria’s impatient tone carries from the basement.
Double damn it, I didn't even get to eat breakfast. I pat my rumbling stomach and make my way downstairs to the training room.
CHAPTER FOUR
The sound of glass shattering greets me like an angry lover as I reach the top of the steps, so I grab my sneakers and carry them down with me. Sitting on the last stair to pull the shoes on, I bend to tie them up as a dinner plate sails from out of sight and smashes against the wall beside me, narrowly missing my head.
I flinch and pick a shard of plate out of my arm, healing the tiny, bloody hole it leaves behind. “Goddamn it!”
“We haven't got all day,” Ashria chides in a singsong voice.
What the hell is up with her? All day? It's not even noon yet. Fragments of ceramic and glass crunch between my sneakers and the basement's cement floor as I head into the room she chose to use for this particular exercise, but I keep my sarcasm to myself.
Ashria stands in the stark, low-ceilinged room next to a table stacked high with dishes.
Not this again.
She tsks. “Yes, this again. Don't look so surprised, your face said it all. This is important, Syxx.”
She's been telling me that since the first time we did this exercise. The first week we only practised destruction. Shattering dishes with only my will-power sounded like a good way to blow off steam at first, but I took quite a lot of fragments to the face until I learned how to shatter the glass and contain it as well. It's as painful as it sounds. If I couldn’t heal myself, I'd be really scarred up.
Ashria was impressed at how thoroughly I was able to destroy things with my will after such a short time in training. Apparently I have an affinity for destruction.
Healing or repairing things is harder for me, because I tend to go overboard, not stopping when I should. Ashria had torn and crumpled flowers last week, and I had to fix them. It was a bit of a struggle because living things are infinitely more complex than something like a plate or a glass, but I'd managed it. And then some.
See, apparently my subconscious had thought the flower too fragile, so I'd reinforced it until it was whole...and indestructible. You couldn't tear it apart or cut it at all. Crumpling it only made it spring back, dewy and unharmed. I'd thought it was a job well done, until I realized that water and the sun couldn't penetrate it either. It was beautiful until it died.
That was the biggest learning curve with healing: When to stop. We aren't meant to be indestructible. Since then, I've progressed nicely. Healing takes way more concentration for me, whereas destruction is laughably easy.
It's almost like I should be a bad guy.
Ashria’s pushed the mats usually used for wrestling into the corner of the room and propped them up against the wall, their bright blue the only pop of color against the neutral drywall and cement floor.
It makes the rapidly growing pile of destruction stand out more.
Moondreamers are supposed to bring lightness of heart. We're supposed to make people feel better, grant wishes. Ashria's hucking dishes at the wall like it's a big fat Greek wedding. I suspect this is her favorite part of the exercise as I never get to break the dishes with her. Maybe she needs to get some stress out as well.
A delicate crystal glass zips by my head and crashes against the wall. The shards of glass make little tinkling sounds like rain as they shower down on the pile of other broken dishes. The first time we did this, she let me watch while she broke the dishes. It made it easier when I pieced them back together. I knew what they were supposed to look like and which pattern had originally been a plate, and which heap of glass was once a vase instead of a snifter.
She smiles at me. “Your turn.”
The last couple times I've done it blind, coming into the exercise to a pile of rubble. It's harder to repair something if you don't know its original state, but I've gotten pretty good at sensing the connections, feeling similarities and willing the pieces back together. Last time I did one piece, one dish at a time, until they were all fixed. This time I'm going for broke.
No pun intended.
Hands firmly clenched into fists at my side, I focus on the vase just as it leaves her hand and smashes against the wall. Shaking, I hold the pieces together so they don't fall. It almost looks like a movie was paused. That’s actually a good image for me.
Rewind.
The pieces meld back into one another until the vase is whole again. I let it float carefully to a nearby tabletop and set to work on the pile of glass around my feet.
I close my eyes.
Fit back together and be restored again.
The connections being made give little zings of warmth that ping across the surface of my mind as pieces fit back together. Dishes begin reforming from a hundred tiny fragments, held together only by my will. It’s strange being able to concentrate on so many things at once—I didn't realize how many dishes she'd smashed before I got downstairs. My energy is spreading thin. There are thirty-seven plates, sixteen cups, eleven vases, twelve wine glasses and some kind of ceramic jug. I know because I'm connected to each one.
Sending a tiny surge of energy out, my power seals any cracks in them.
I've never tried to fix this many things at once. My limbs start to shake and I dig deeper. The dishes land neatly stacked and sorted on the table. Knowing I totally rocked this exercise, I smile before I open my eyes. Not even a tiny sliver of glass remains on the floor.
I did it.
My gaze settles on Ashria, who smiles back at me. “Much better than last time.”
I blot the sweat from my forehead with my forearm. “I wasn't sure I could do it. Last time it took so long to fix every glass one by one. I figured I'd try, see if I could do all of them at once.”
“And you did.”
“Yes.” I grin, feeling impressed with myself because come on, th
at was badass.
A strange look crosses her face. “I didn't expect you to progress this quickly. We must train harder. You've passed these preliminary trials, now comes the hard training.”
What? The hard training? Pieces of glass were spraying me in the face for an entire week! I mean, yeah I can remove them and heal, but it still hurts like hell. “The hard training? So the things we’ve been doing have been a walk in the park?”
She starts pacing. “Don’t be sarcastic. Up until now we've stuck to safe, calm situations. Our magic, our power, works from our will, our focus. If we can't focus, we can't tap into our power. Our focus can be broken in a few ways. Mental fatigue. You should stay rested so you can remain alert.”
Says the woman who has run me ragged for weeks.
“Chemicals. If we partake in too much alcohol or are drugged, that will impair our focus.”
Checking NO on the party girl lifestyle box, then.
“Emotional distress. Fear, anxiety, sadness. Even rage can get in the way of our abilities. You saw that at The Sowing when you thought Draven had been killed.”
Her casual reference of the worst moments in my life steals the breath from my lungs. The emptiness I saw in Draven's eyes still gives me nightmares. His lifeless broken body. The bleakness inside me when I thought he was dead. The spell had hit him directly in the chest. His eyes had emptied and he'd fallen off the stage, blood dripping from his mouth, and I'd killed the Siren—a Fae Council member—responsible for it. I thought my fury would pull me apart, sending me on a rampage. Lots of good it did me—my lack of training almost saw me killed. I cross my arms. “Thanks for bringing that up again.”
Ashria stops pacing. “I don't bring it up for nothing. You could have been killed and it was because of lack of focus.”
As if that's all it was. As if I hadn’t just had my heart torn out of my chest. As if I hadn’t been fighting Fae beings more experienced and powerful than myself. But not more powerful than I am now. “Yeah I get it, lack of focus is my downfall. We've known that for some time now.” I want to add, 'get on with it,' but restrain myself. See? I've come a long way in the past few weeks. I've even mastered my sarcasm. Mostly.
“Yes, you have, though your abilities needed to advance before you were truly tested.”
“You have been testing me. It’s either missions or testing.”
“Not like this.” She turns and waves a hand at a small stereo on the floor. Loud screamo metal music fills the air, assaulting my ears, and I wince. The lead singer sounds like angry Cookie Monster.
Ashria takes a step toward me. “Distraction in the field is the second most powerful obstacle to our focus.” She’s put some magic in her voice as every word is clear.
She nods, and every object in the room starts shaking. Lights flicker, curtains flutter. It's like an earthquake, but somehow scarier because she's causing it—and I'm the recipient of whatever she's about to unleash. My heart starts racing.
How badly is this going to hurt? I swallow hard and force my body to relax.
The blankness of her features chills my blood when she turns to me again. “Distraction is actually the number two cause of inability to focus. Do you know what the first is?” Being my mother won’t stop her from hurting me as badly as it takes until I learn the lesson she’s trying to teach.
I whip my head around, looking at the dishes on the table, worried they'll crash to the floor they’re shaking so hard. I can fix them again if they do, so that can’t be what I’m supposed to focus on. The driving rhythm of the music is pounding uncomfortably in my ears, filling my head with cymbal crashes and bass riffs. The curtains snap, the green material flickering in an unseen wind.
“Um...the enemy?” I focus on her again.
“Physical pain. I'm sorry, Syxx.”
I'll give her this—she actually looks sad as she waves her hand and snaps all of the bones in my right arm.
CHAPTER FIVE
My screams join the music as I fall to my knees. I can't feel my fingers, there’s only pain where my arm should be.
Unfortunately, Ashria's not done.
She flicks a finger and white-hot pain threatens to swallow me in a wave of darkness, coating every inch of my skin like I’ve been dipped in acid. I long to pass out, or die, anything to end this. The horrifying scent of my skin burning fills my nostrils. “Stop, stop! Please!”
When she doesn’t, anger and outrage rise up.
I long to lash out at her, to make her suffer as I'm suffering now, but that won't solve the more immediate problem—my injuries. Healing first, then revenge.
Stop the pain!
As soon as it fades to a manageable level, I can think about something besides the agony.
I focus on the wrongness of my injuries and how I can best fix them. I want to heal my broken arm first, but that's not the biggest injury. People don't realize that skin is the largest organ you have. Right now mine is burning and horrifically injured, my arm is an angry red and stiffening. Closing my eyes, I picture cold lotion being smoothed all over it, restoring the skin beneath it.
The pain resists for a long moment, then bends to my will.
Skin healed, I'm able to focus on the bones—and nearly pass out from the feeling of every crushed bone. There are no clean breaks; she's made them jagged and messy, though she hasn't made any bones pierce the skin from the inside out.
It's easier to block pain and heal injuries on other people. Oh, the healing is the same, but pain management is way harder on yourself. I close my eyes and reach inside to focus.
I've got to—
My back slams against the wall and my lungs stutter, forgetting how to work.
Ashria looms over me. “Keep your eyes open, daughter. When the enemy is all around you, you don't have the luxury of closing your eyes and taking a moment to gather your wits.” The harshness of her voice is more discordant than the loud music still playing. “This is how the battle will be! This is what it will be like.” She unleashes more power, battering my body with a hundred unseen fists.
“Why are you doing this?” I scream at her as she starts slamming me into the wall with her will, my ruined arm flopping uselessly at my side.
“It's truer to how it will be in a battle when your mind is clouded from pain and fear. Pain breaks focus and concentration when you need it most. If I was your enemy, you'd already be dead,” she mocks. “Fight.” The last word is screamed at me.
Shield me from her powers.
With her assault stopped, my damaged arm isn't being thrown around, and I quickly heal it while I have the chance. Deep, frantic itching makes me want to flail around in agony, but itching is a part of healing and means nerves are coming back to life. Willing myself not to feel the sensation, I fling a hand at the stereo and it collapses into itself, melted and blissfully silent.
I get to my feet. Whole, powerful.
Focused.
Give me strength.
The dishes on the table rattle and the curtains flap. This time everything is shaking because of me. Because of my power.
Before I can think it through, I send out a wave of pure energy toward Ashria, toward my mother, who has just physically tortured me more than any enemy ever has.
“Syxx.” She dissipates it like it’s nothing, and it falls to the ground like dust, dissolving before it hits the floor.
“Why the hell did you do that?” I step closer, shaking with rage.
“It's been explained to you.”
“You could have warned me!”
“Could I?” Her voice is cold. “And in battle, do you suppose that the enemy will pause before sending a spell to tell you exactly what they are sending your way? Hmm? Do you believe they will just give you that?”
Anger blocks the sense of what she's done. I understand. I just can't bring myself to give a shit. That she could casually bring that much pain to me is a betrayal.
“Thanks, Mom, for that lesson. I'm sure better for having learned tha
t the people who are supposed to have my back might be the ones to stab the knife into it.”
Tears sting my eyes, betraying the hurt. I want her to see my anger instead of getting more pain from me. Feelings aren't for people fighting wars. Feelings are for little kids who have the luxury of playing with dolls or going to the mall with their friends. Feelings are for people who can dream of having a future.
I don't have that luxury. This not-so-little girl has an army to face.
“Syxx, I am sorry this is the world you are inheriting from me. I am sorry you must face this battle with me, yet I don't regret it. I can't regret teaching you things that will keep you safe and make you stronger. You can't either.” Her voice is almost tender.
I savagely wipe the tears away and sniff, not trusting myself to speak yet, so I nod. Like it or not, she’s teaching me, tearing me down and rebuilding me into something more resilient. In the movies, you see them smiling their way through the musical montage training scene. In the movies, you can't sense the fear or danger. You can't feel the pain of the not-yet-formed bruises.
“You've healed very nicely. Why did you choose to heal the skin before mending the bones?”
“The skin was the larger injury. I figured that the broken arm could wait.”
“You made the right choice.”
“Actually, the pain made the choice for me. I couldn't even feel the broken bone after you seared my skin.” I look at my arms, lift my shirt to check on my stomach, seeing if there are any marks on me from the...melting.
Ashria smiles. “You've healed yourself most efficiently.”
“Thank you.” I'm not ready for her compliments. I still resent the hell out of what she just did.
“I particularly liked the end, where you were about to come at me, full of your power.”
“I'm not sure how that would have ended. I think it would have been like my attack at The Sowing. Mostly show out of anger and revenge. I wanted to hurt you back too much to think clearly.”
The Reaping (The Moondreamer Chronicles Book 2) Page 3