It was time to stop feeling sorry for myself and give this a real shot.
I felt Lucien’s eyes on me, but as I turned to meet his gaze, he shifted his eyes to look at the space in front of us. It wasn’t the first time I caught someone staring at me since I explained everything I heard from Pandora. While my mates took everything in stride and put on a positive front about it being a good thing to finally have more information, I could tell they were feeling uneasy about the little tidbit of information I dropped at the end about our souls being bound together.
Once Elwin voiced his fear about her soul being overdue to the afterlife and how we had no idea how that might impact my own soul, they’d been keeping a constant watch on me. It was as if they expected me to be ferried away by Chiron himself any moment now. It didn’t matter that I kept reminding them of what Pandora said about her soul purposefully being obscured by my own.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I gritted out to Lucien through strained breaths. Furrowing my brows, I drew a deep breath and puffed out a short exhale before continuing, “You guys don’t need to be so concerned about it. Being connected to Pandora is a good thing–it’s where I get my creation magic from.”
He didn’t answer, so I shook my head and returned my focus to our run. My soles felt the impact of each step, reverberating through my legs and into my chest. The hard surface of the pavement was unforgiving, yet I was determined to keep going. Ariel and my mates might have to peel me off the ground at the end of this, but it would be well worth it.
Finally, after a few minutes of silence, Lucien spoke up, and I mentally cursed him out when I realized how even and steady his breathing was. How was it that he didn’t seem winded at all by this? We had to be a few miles into our run at this point. It was unfair the way they seemed so freaking unaffected in comparison to me.
“You don’t know her, Alexandra. Maybe you did in the past, but all we have to go on now is her word of what she told you being what happened in the past. What if she isn’t the good person she makes herself out to be?”
I mulled over that for a moment. I supposed he wasn’t wrong. There was no true way for me to confirm or deny her explanation of my past, but in my heart and soul, her words rang true. That was enough for me.
“I’ve spent my whole life following my gut instincts, and I won’t stop doing that now,” I answered, standing firm in my own belief of the situation. “I’ll visit her again soon to get more information and to fill in the important holes we’re missing in the plan.”
He let out a heavy sigh, seemingly not swayed at all to my side.
“That’s enough for the morning!” Ariel shouted, and I had to really rein in my desire to collapse right where we were.
Instead, we continued to jog at a slow, steady pace until coming to a stop in front of her on the mats, where Elwin and Kylo were already doing a cool down stretch per her instruction. After a few blissful minutes of catching my breath and stretching, she instructed us to line up on the arena floor.
“While I have a simple understanding of your magic from your explanation, we cannot risk drawing someone into training who has a tainted soul for you three to feed on simply for me to see how it works exactly,” she surmised as she paced in front of my three monsters. “So what we are going to focus on for now is Alexandra’s creation magic and how we can use that to enhance all of your positions in a fight. If you three are unable to use your inherent powers, you’ll need to work on your battle skills with weapons. One must not be fully dependent on their magic in the scenario that it falters.”
There was a flutter of nerves in my chest with the realization that this was all on me for now.
As she came to stand in front of me, I held my head high, ready for whatever she threw at me.
“Today, we’re going to work on forming multiple weapons at a time for all four of you to use–withoutthem vanishing,” she explained before dropping her head slightly to the side and studying me.
I was nervous, knowing I had only managed once to keep a small dagger solidified after leaving my hand. The act was fueled by my absolute fury at Helen as she tried to mentally tear me down in our training facility at DIA.
Lowering her voice, Ariel murmured, “You conjured an entire house yesterday, in incredible detail, without struggling for even a moment. The key there was that you didn’t force the creation, not aware you were even doing it. You merely let it flow from your core. That’s what we are going to focus on you tapping into today.”
She was entirely right. Weapons were child's play compared to a whole freaking house.
With a nod, I squared my shoulders, ready for her instruction. “I’ll give it my all,” I promised.
A fierce look of admiration shone on her face as she saw my unwavering commitment and will to succeed today shining through.
“Since you are limited to what you have seen before,” she began to say as she walked over to a table covered with a heavy cloth, “we’re going to introduce you all to an entire range of weapons today.”
Flinging the cover off, my mouth dropped at the sheer number of weapons gleaming at us under the sunlight.
Lucien let out a low whistle. “Damn, that’s what I’m talking about.”
Ignoring our collective shock and awe of the assortment, she continued while pointing at the four targets that were here when we arrived this morning. “We will not be leaving here today until Alexandra can conjure a different weapon for each of you and you’re all able to hit the center of a target without the weapon disappearing.”
All three pairs of my mates eyes turned to me, probably recalling how difficult it was for me to achieve that feat for myself at DIA. Now I had to do it for four people. I gave them what I hoped was a reassuring smile and nod. “We’ve got this.”
Apparently, my confidence was contagious, because all of their faces shifted from concern and apprehension to ones of equal determination with fire in their eyes. The energy was exactly what I needed to feel around me.
After we each tested a weapon to find what we worked best with, I settled into my spot at the table and grabbed each of their chosen items. I felt the shape and weight of them each as I ran my eyes over every single inch of detail to memorize it.
Ariel reminded me how easy the house came to me, and with the amount of details I had imagined, and insisted that I try to apply that same tactic here. It made sense—the idea that the more in-tune I was with an item, the easier it would be to imagine and require less strain and effort for me to create and hold in place.
Satisfied with my memory of the weapons as I pictured them in my mind, I covered the table per Ariel’s instruction and got to work.
