Something about being found worthy enough by their creator was healing balm to my soul that still struggled with knowing I was a curse.
Pandora’s words about hope being neither good or bad until we chose what we did with it filled my mind.
Right now, I was choosing to believe in the power of hope for the first time ever, and it felt damn good.
Chapter 17
ALEXANDRA
“You’re not focusing, Alexandra!”
Ariel’s constant hounding was driving me crazy, I snapped, swinging my narrowed gaze to her as I seethed, “Maybe if you stopped yapping in my ear, I could focus a little bit more!”
Her lips thinned before she crossed her arms across her chest. I let out a huff of relief to hear silence around me, with the exception of our heavy breathing from training with our weapons.
We’d been at it for five days now, and I found myself incapable of holding all four of our weapons in a solid state, as well as fully functioning in their abilities, for longer than five minutes. It felt impossible to keep a mental picture of all four of them fully intact as we also battled through a ridiculous training course she set up.
Keeping all of the weapons solid as we stood and practiced on our first targets? No problem. Running through a course and getting smacked to the ground while we all had to focus on different, moving targets? Not so much.
Ariel apparently had some friends assist her design this dangerous course. Not only did it have daggers that were thrown at us, there were machines with constantly rotating platforms and spinning pieces whirling around at our heads and ankles too. Meanwhile, the course was entirely suspended in the air, and while the arena floor had a slight cushion to it, my ribs were tender as hell from falling on it over and over again. Each night, I nursed quite a few cuts from the tips of daggers that kissed my skin along my legs and arms. Zurie went into a spiral of anger at the sight of us every night when we came home.
According to Ariel, the course needed to be lifelike and actually hold enough of a challenge to strike a bit of fear for our lives into us as we tried to complete it. According to Zurie, she was, and I quote, “going to bring the power of Hell upon Ariel to strike fear into her heart if she sends you all home this beat up one more time.”
It was adorable, honestly. I’d never had someone fawn all over me like a mother hen before, and with each passing day we spent with their family, the dynamic really began to feel so easy and natural.
Thankfully, Raph had healing powers and he mended us up every night. What no one besides him knew was that I asked him to leave a bit of the ache in my ribs. The dull pain served as a constant reminder of my failure in a way that motivated me to get better and stop needing constant healing.
In the real world, we weren’t going to have someone around to heal us, and I didn’t want to rely on it.
I would personally love to thank Ariel’s friends who helped her concoct this fresh hell with a handshake…to the face. The glee I saw on Ariel’s face every time I ate shit only served to convince me that maybe her and Potestas were actually soulmates. In my imagination, they would go home to each other at night and get each other off to the stories from their day of torturing people.
Each night, we left the arena drained both emotionally and physically, but I slept damn good at night knowing I was truly giving this my all this time. I continued to fight through the pain and exhaustion, keeping our end goal in mind. My mates were steady pillars of encouragement and support, never failing to renew my own faith in myself with their words when, every morning, returning to the arena after the previous day’s failure felt daunting and insurmountable.
Today, I was hitting a limit, though. And that limit was with the frustration I felt at myself that I was struggling to contain.
While I felt like I was giving it my all, my effort clearly wasn’t good enough, and that was bringing a new level of fury to the surface for me. I refused to be less than ever again. I wouldn’t let this moment box me back into the Alexandra who had already given up on the notion of winning the battle at the end of this.
I had allowed myself to hope and dream of our future after we won, and I was fiercely protective of those moments to come. Each night before I went to bed, I imagined the home I conjured and the peace it had given me. It was a reminder that thiswasgoing to be our future.
I held the image of our weapons in four different boxes in my mind and mentally willed a lock to close on a latch, holding them and not allowing anything to happen to them.
Elwin needed to hit ten swinging targets with his bow, within an extremely precise location Ariel had marked for him.
Lucien had to land ten blows to either the neck or chest of mock opponents that came out at random times, alternating constantly so he couldn’t fall into a pattern.
Kylo had to pierce the heart of ten dolls, some extremely far away from any platform we could even access, to force him to lengthen his sword and be able to use it precisely.
I had to slice into at least one artery with my kunai on each doll, which was proving to be extremely difficult with moving targets that rotated constantly around.
“Let’s go,” I growled to my monsters, who were waiting for me at the beginning of the course. “We’re finishing this shit right now.”
I swung one of my kunai from the thin white rope it was connected to in my hand, letting out a roar as I willed the weapon to release at my first target. I swung it around toward me, slicing deeply into the carotid artery. This kunai would continually reappear and attach itself to this side of my rope. Shifting my weight at the last minute as a second doll came out of nowhere, I slid on my knees to glide beneath it, using the other end of the rope with an indestructible kunai permanently attached to it to knick the femoral artery as I passed.
Having the two opposing options with these kunai and rope allowed me the ability to not only fight up close but from a distance as well. I had to say, I was a big fan of the versatility of the weapon, appreciating the way each weapon felt like an extension of my arm.
Launching to my feet, my eyes darted around for my next purple-marked target. I heard the thud of a broadhead arrow sinking into its mark to my left as material was shredded behind me by either an ax or the sword. We fell into a practiced movement, having learned to dance around each other as we found our targets and avoiding each other's weapons as we went.
My next target required me to land the hit as I leapt across a massive opening, suspended momentarily in air. For the first time, I didn’t doubt my ability to land the hit. I didn’t fear the idea of falling. I pumped my arms as the end of the platform approached quickly, running full speed as I launched myself off of it, launching my kunai at the target to the side of the wide gap before I rolled forward, tucking my head down as my body made contact with the other side.
