The next two hours are filled with little talking and lots of instructions. It’s amazing how much you can learn from just watching someone, especially somebody who’s pissed off, or maybe I’m just a visual learner. By the end of the session, I’m confident I could give at least one good jab with my elbow before I was easily slaughtered.
It’s a start, and it’s the beginning of a pattern.
Each day, I spend my mornings with Kage and a myriad of revolving instructors. Thankfully, none of them test me against the entire class like Arnold did, but every day, there is a challenge or two. I use every chance I get to reverse the roles and use their own abilities against them, but I’ve never even gotten close. The magic feels just as intangible to me as it always has.
Lunches are nearly as discouraging. Kage is distant, even though the physical space between us has lessened infinitesimally. The only inkling of a promise I get is when I catch him looking at me before he makes an effort to hide the longing in his beautiful lavender eyes. Those are the moments that give me hope we can at least be friends one day.
My afternoons are grueling. Ziv has kept his promise to the headmistress to instruct me, and there have been no more stolen moments of intimacy in the arena, not even when he locks us in the smaller field and basically makes me kick my own ass with his simple defensive moves. It’s embarrassing, but there are times when I feel the tiniest bit stronger. Today is not one of those days.
“Get up!” he barks after I fall to my knees for what must be the tenth time in this sequence. I’ve gotten used to his cold demeanor in the sand, but it doesn’t mean I like it.
Gritting my teeth, I slide my leg forward, planting my bare foot in the sand and my palm on my knee to aid me in rising.Everything hurts, and I’m convinced if it wasn’t for Ziv feeding me his blood every night while he fucks me into oblivion, I’d be dead or at least paralyzed.
“Now, Briar!”
My knees wobble as my thighs struggle to keep me upright, but I’m on my feet, staring at him like I’m wishing I could slit his throat with the small blade tucked in my waistband.
“Use that anger,” he orders, knowing exactly how pissed off I am, but there’s no way I could ever really hurt him, even if I were capable.
Instead of attacking, I balance my weight as evenly as I can in the shifting grit and wait for him to come for me. It’s going to hurt, but I can take the pain. What I can’t take is another second of him looking at me like I’m useless, or like he knows I’m going to die the second he’s not there to protect me.
If I wasn’t so intimately attuned to every inch of his body, I would have missed the way his abdominal muscles contract right before he leaps toward me. I feign shock, widening my eyes, and I see the moment he decides to pull up short, not making me take his weight as he pounces, but that’s exactly what I was hoping for. If I can get even the tiniest of nicks on him, it will be a miracle.
The push dagger fits perfectly in my hand, since Ziv had it crafted for me. The blade is small and wide, but sharp on both sides. It’s my last resort in close combat and best utilized on soft places, such as eyes, ears, nose, throat, and groin. If I stab someone in their dick with this thing, I think it would just piss them off, unless I got really lucky and managed to castrate them.
I move my hands forward as if I’m going to try and block him, but he’s not worried about my feeble attempt. In fact, the reflexive effort seems to piss him off. That or maybe I’m not as good at reading him as I thought, because he slams into me with the force of a runaway carriage.
My lungs collapse from his weight, forcing me to exhale. I’m struggling for oxygen before my back even hits the ground. My teeth snap together, causing my ears to ring, or maybe that’s from my head bouncing off the sand. Either way, I can’t function for precious seconds, not even to breathe. My mouth opens and closes uselessly, trying to drag in air, but my throat feels closed off. I’m suffocating, and I can’t even panic because my brain is short-circuiting.
Ziv’s eyes are comically large, and I get my first taste of gritty air. It burns as I wheeze, but I’ve rarely been more relieved not to be dead. I don’t think Ziv could live with himself if he killed me, or I hope he couldn’t anyway.
My entire body hurts. I didn’t think he was going to hit me that hard, and I still don’t know if I was able to cut him because I can’t feel my hands.
My eyes slip closed, and I decide it’s much easier to just leave them that way. When I’m conscious again, I’ll tell him I was trying a new technique—playing dead.
“Briar!” The urgent way he shouts my name seems important, but everything is getting fuzzy, so it’s easy to ignore. I do manage to nod my head once in an effort to respond, but then I’m gone.
KAGE
My heart stutters out of nowhere, and I grab my chest. My eyes fly to the door I know Briar is behind. Something is very wrong. I shift into my shadow form as I run toward the small arena. I can’t chance that it’s locked.
Ziv is crouched in the sand, the smell of his blood filling the space, but that’s not my concern, Briar is. She’s lying on her back, crushed into the sand as if she were run over.
“What the fuck did you do?” I scream, and the fallen lifts his head to acknowledge me.
“Nothing,” he answers but thinks better of it. “Nothing more than normal.”
“You normally try to kill her!”
“Stop speaking, or I will succeed in killing you,” he retorts without a backward glance and tears into the flesh on his wrist. The scent of his blood grows even stronger before he places the mangled skin against Briar’s mouth.
Seconds pass with me vacillating between thoughts of killing him and praying that whatever he’s doing will work. Less than a minute later, her erratic heartbeat steadies, but her heart is still beating too fast.
I want to puke and praise the evil bastard, but I keep my mouth shut as he scoops her up and cradles her to his chest. My breath catches when I get a look at the thing in the sand, now exposed because Briar is no longer on top of it—a snake with a black head and yellow belly.
“Ziv.” I scan the floor, seeing the sand roiling in several places. There are more. “Ziv, get her up.” My voice is calm, but on the inside, I’m screaming. When he doesn’t appear to hear me, I yell, “Get her the fuck out of the sand!”
His head snaps up. One second, he’s there, holding her, and the next, they are gone. My hair gusts back from my face when a sweet smelling wind blows past me. I look up and see the fallen hovering in the air with black wings, Briar still cradled to his chest. Before I can really focus, pain splits my skull, and I have to avert my eyes from the sight.
