Kira shrugged, giving into the inevitable. “I don’t have any plans until the banquet.”
Which was still hours from now.
“Good.” Wren set off at a brisk pace, heading for a room adjacent to the training room she’d visited two days before.
So much had happened since then that it was hard to believe so little time had passed.
The room Wren entered was empty except for Maksym who waited in the middle of the space with his arms crossed over his chest.
Before him was a table, various size spheres arranged before him.
“What’s this?” Kira asked, looking them over.
Wren stopped next to Maksym. “Your little adventure has cut into my duties as yourseon’yer. I thought we’d take this time to fix that.”
Kira ran her eye over the spheres, not hiding her skepticism. “With balls?” She looked up at Wren again. “Are we going to play a game?”
Maksym’s cough didn’t entirely conceal his choked laugh.
Wren looked like he was struggling for patience. “I’ve learned some things about you since your time away. Your problem withkidoesn’t lie in its use or manipulation. If anything, the amount you are capable of accessing is too much. You lack control. Without it, you will only land in the same situation as before.”
He nodded at the inhibitor she still wore.
Kira touched it lightly, wondering how he had come to that conclusion. Not that she could argue with his assessment. It fit her thoughts as well.
“You usekilike a hammer when a scalpel will do just as well,” Wren continued.
Those words and the disproving look he sent her seemed studded with a double meaning.
Kira’s eyes narrowed, wondering if he’d somehow managed to uncover some of those files Himoto had gone to a lot of trouble to bury. Specifically, those records pertaining to the burst.
“What do you want me to do?” Kira asked.
Maksym picked up a sphere the size of a tennis ball and held it in his hand. A faint glow lit it up from inside. Moments later it lifted an inch off his palm where it hovered.
Gradually, the glow diminished, and it plopped back into his palm.
Maksym nodded at a sphere the size of a watermelon on her left. “Start with that one.”
Tentatively, Kira picked it up, surprised to find it was much lighter than it looked.
Maksym touched the ball. “Now, push yourkiinto it.”
Kira frowned but didn’t argue, focusing on the sphere again.
Ki, Kira had learned, was something that existed both within and without.
The Tuann were like a glass and the world around them an ocean. They could only use what was in the glass but the ocean would refill the glass over time.
Since building a friendship with Joule and spending time on Roake, she’d learned there were set stances and patterns of movement that could help draw out thekiwithin and give it form.
What Maksym asked of her was a bit different than what Finn and Joule had showed her on Ta Sa’Riel. Closer in line to how she’d always used her soul’s breath. More reliant on instinct and feeling around in the dark as much as anything else.
She pooled herkiwithin before feeding it into the sphere.
A loud pop startled her as the sphere burst, its shards embedding into her palm and arm.
Kira sucked in a harsh breath but the cuts and the blood that should have been there were already gone.
