Field training: Day 38, hour 9
I screamed.
Eyes open, mouth wide, forearm on motherfucking fire.
“STOP!” I shrieked and wrenched my arm away from the never-ending agony.
Callused fingers clenched my jaw shut, and my loud cries transformed into muffled pleas.
“Shut the fuck up,” Scorpius sneered as his pale features filled my vision.
Bucking and squirming, I was desperate to escape, but straps held me down.
I was trapped.
My vision was so hazy from pain that I could barely put together what I was seeing.
Lyla stood over me with her legs straddling my prone body, and her dark skin shone with the white symbols that glowed brighter than the stars.
Her long green hair floated upward around her head and defied gravity. Eyes bright white, her pupils were rolled back inside her head.
Pink lips open, she chanted in a language that sounded suspiciously like the screams of the fire.
She shouted louder, and the agony intensified.
I screamed harder.
Scorpius’s fingers tightened on my mouth as he leaned atop me. Malum stood behind him with a dark expression on his face, steely silver eyes promising there would be hell to pay.
I yanked my head to the side, pulling against Scorpius’s tight grip, as I tried desperately to see just what the fuck was causing the excruciating pain.
I blinked, convinced I was imagining it.
Orion stood beside me with his arm sliced open as his blood poured down across my arm.
Two problems.
One, I’d lost my arm in the battle, but now it was whole and throbbing.
Two, it would regenerate on its own, so I didn’t need whatever the fuck the kings and Lyla were doing to me.
My muffled screams were overwhelming, so I couldn’t verbalize that they needed to get away from me.
I mouthed at him to stop.
Orion glared down at me and mouthed, “No. You will heal.”
Blood poured from his arm, and he looked like he wanted to hurt me. Cause me never-ending agony. Torture. Merciless suffering.
I shook my head because he didn’t understand.
Orion’s face darkened. Just like Malum, where he should have had pupils, there were black flames. But fae didn’t have flames for eyes.
I must have been hallucinating.
Lyla shouted louder in the foreign language, and the syllables resonated with so much force that the bones in my arm cracked and re-formed.
I passed out.
“Wake the fuck up, Aran!” Lothaire bellowed.
“Yes, sir!” I shouted back instinctually as I shot up on my bed, chest heaving. I was in my four-poster bed, and a fire crackled placidly in the fireplace.
I trembled from the force of my nightmares, my clothes were sticky with sweat, and I coughed from the strength of my inhales.
“You’ve had enough beauty sleep. Get your ass up, we’re watching film on the battle.”
Wait, was it just a nightmare?
“You have five seconds to get out of bed.” Lothaire cracked his baton against his hand, and the sound echoed like a gunshot.
I threw myself out with unsteady legs, trembling as I collapsed on all fours and heaved up bile.
I was shaky and weak, my head spinning a million miles per hour. The ground fell out from beneath me.
“GET OFF THE FLOOR, YOU PATHETIC FUCKER!” Lothaire’s voice boomed with such intensity the floor trembled.
I obeyed.
Scrambling up onto weak legs, I shook with exhaustion and collided with the wall as I struggled to find gravity.
The world tilted.
Lothaire slammed his baton against his hand in warning.
“I’m up. I’m ready,” I said breathlessly as I stumbled toward the door, using the wall for support.
The walls and floor changed places, like I’d finally lost my fucking mind.
Hot panic flooded my senses as I used the wall to stumble into the hall.
I leaned forward to grab another wall, but Lothaire hauled me back as white lightning streaked inches from my face.
Electricity sizzled the ends of my hair.
“Thanks, I reall—”
A baton cracked against my cheek, and my face throbbed.
“Never mind.” I massaged my aching jaw as Lothaire half dragged me down the hall.
“What was that?” he asked loudly, violence in his voice.
Since he still held his baton, I gritted my teeth and said, “Nothing, sir. Thank you for your help.”
He grunted and shoved me into the room that we always watched the battles in.
All seven of the other recruits turned around to stare at me.
The kings glared at me, and John sighed with relief. Horace gave me a thumbs-up. The demons just looked bored.
Maybe it had been a crazy nightmare? John looked normal.
“You’re a piece of work.” Lothaire released me and stalked to the front of my room.
In my head, I flipped him off.
In reality, I stumbled into a chair beside John and just managed to stop myself from kissing the floor.
Looking over at the kings, I tried to gauge if they had flames in their eyes. Or had I just been having intense hallucinations in my sleep? It was hard to tell these days.
Speaking of hallucinations, digging my hands into the elastic of my waistband, I almost cried with relief when I felt the smooth material of my pipe.
Maybe everything would be okay?
With trembling fingers, I brought the pipe to my lips and inhaled relaxation. I blew out Horse, and he settled onto my shoulder as he nudged me with the top of his feathered head.
Everything’s fine.
The pipe was pulled from my fingers by Malum.
I snatched it back before he could break it.
“You fucking dare?” Scorpius said softly.
“No, how dare you?”
Scorpius lunged forward across the desk, and Malum held him back and whispered something aggressively in his ear.
Orion stared at me coldly.
Blood pouring into my arm cavity.
Slowly Orion rolled up his sleeve and showcased hundreds of raw red slashes. His arm was mangled.
I gasped.
It hadn’t been a dream; it had been real.
He’d mangled himself healing me when my arm would have regenerated on its own. I swallowed down bile as guilt slammed into me.
Orion mouthed, “You smoked in battle. You lost your arm. For the last forty-six hours, Lyla reknitted your arm. For the last forty-six hours, I stabbed myself and gave her the blood to perform the spell.”
Malum raised a hand on Orion to comfort, then whirled on me and screamed, “For the last forty-six hours, Orion fucking stabbed himself for you!”
Yep, his pupils were flames.
I shifted in my chair, the metal squeaking uncomfortably loud in the silent room as everyone stared at us, but I couldn’t find my voice.
Even Lothaire just watched like he was waiting for my response.
I flexed my fingers.
“I didn’t ask you to do anything,” I whispered with embarrassment and tried to tell him with my eyes that his sacrifice had been unnecessary.
Malum growled like a wild animal, and Scorpius swore violently.
Orion just kept glaring at me.
Gratitude and shame were a toxic combination in my gut, and I choked on it.
I just wanted peace.
You never asked them to do anything for you, and now they’re mad at you for things you can’t explain.
My vision blurred black as my monster suddenly screamed with unholy rage. Before I could focus on my breathing, ice burned my palms.
I’d somehow accessed my abilities and conjured the oddly shaped blades.
Clutching the razor-sharp daggers in my palms, I glared at the kings and let them see the monster in my eyes.
Lightning cracked outside in the hall.
The eclipse burned the room in red.
Suddenly, the tension ratcheted up in a way I’d never felt before. We weren’t just eight students training to be assassins and playing war; we were eight of the most powerful people in all the realms.
Malum stood up with flames covering him like battle armor. Scorpius’s milky eyes started to glow, and the tattoo on his neck blinked. Orion opened his mouth like he was about to scream.
I pointed my blade at them and refused to step back.
Next to me, John stood up, and the darkness expanded around him like it was taking shape. His face hardened, and his dimples disappeared as he stood beside me against the kings.
I tilted my head up, unwilling to let Malum intimidate me with his height as I twirled my daggers between my fingers.
Scorpius leaned forward, and his eyes glowed brighter.
“No, Scorpius!” Orion sang out a single haunting lyric that brought tears to my eyes, and he threw himself in front of the blind fae and slapped his hand over his eyes.
The darkness around John kept expanding, and it looked like it was forming something.
I was unsure what the threats were, as my intuition had never sensed danger so acutely before. Fear almost brought me to my knees, and I gripped my blades tighter.
My monster whimpered, the rage draining out of me as self-preservation kicked in.
The two demons stood up, black veins spreading across their skin until they dripped down their fingers and began to form long blades.
Horace’s fangs descended with a click, and his orange eyes were wide and manic. He licked his lips, like he could already taste the blood.
In the front of the room, Lothaire had a similar glint in his eye. But he shook his head like he was waking up out of a dream.
Abruptly, he bellowed, “Stand down, recruits, or we’ll spend a week in the Black Ocean!”
It took a second for us to process his words, but when we did, it sucked all the energy out of the room.
Everyone paused, and the darkness around John stopped expanding. Malum’s flames dimmed, but Orion kept his hand covering Scorpius’s eyes.
“Sit fucking down!”
We sat.
I dropped my daggers, and they shattered across the marble floor, the pieces disappearing like they’d never existed.
Horace’s fangs clicked back inside his mouth as the black veins slowly retreated off the demons.
Orion kept his hand plastered over Scorpius’s face.
“I’m glad you’re okay. I was really worried,” Johns said with a small smile as we sat back down.
A lump developed in my throat, and I was aware I was being such a girl when I asked, “You’re still my friend?”
“You couldn’t get rid of me, even if you tried.” He punched me on my newly healed arm.
I almost passed out from the pain.
After a few deep breaths, I smiled weakly and punched him back. He punched me harder, and I puked in my mouth.
It was official: being a man was horrible.
“You aren’t forgiven.” Malum leaned across the aisle.
“I don’t give a fuck what you think.” I rolled my eyes as I turned my attention away from John and toward the maniac that called himself a king.
“Really, after Orion saved your ass, this is how you repay him?”
Shame was a lead weight in my stomach. His pain was unnecessary.
“Sorry, Orion, I really am grateful,” I said self-consciously as he uncovered Scorpius’s eyes and they both sat down.
He narrowed his eyes and gave me a curt nod.
It was better than nothing.
“Everyone shut up and focus!” Lothaire yelled, and we straightened in our seats. “The only reason you’re all not outside running right now for your pathetic display of zero fucking control is because you actually didn’t fucking suck in this battle.”
I blushed at the effusive praise.
Lothaire really knew how to butter a girl up.
He tapped the enchanted stone, and it projected the battle across the smooth wall.
Somehow the stone had recorded through the sandstorm, and we were able to see ourselves clearly.
Holy sun god.
The eight of us were surrounded by at least four hundred ungodly, and we had no idea.
Like usual, the battle was sped up, and I watched in amazement as I fought like a maniac. Pipe between my lips, I performed just as well as the other men.
Horse was a badass swooping in the air around me.
Each of us killed like we were born to fight ungodly.
It was amazing; it was horrible.
I dragged kill after kill and threw the mutilated corpses into a pile.
On the screen, it looked like hell.
At that moment, it had felt fun. Like I was alive.
But watching from afar, my throat burned as I swallowed down vomit because there was nothing exciting about what I’d done.
I was murdering dozens and dozens of creatures.
And I was smiling.
I was a monster.
I understood why I’d stuck the enchanted pipe between my lips. Even in the middle of the carnage, a part of me had recognized that what I was doing was fucked up. I’d needed to calm myself.
The rage had been too much.
When the images stopped, I barely heard when Lothaire praised me for my improvements.
I shuffled through the rest of the day in a blur.
Even when John slung his arm over my shoulder and talked my ear off, the weight on my soul crushed me down.
In battle class, I didn’t say anything when Malum sneered at me. After repeated attempts to get a rise, he tried poking me to get my attention.
I ignored him.
He vibrated with rage that I wasn’t paying attention to him. Which was weird because if he hated me so much, why did he care?
At dinner, I helped Tara and Sari with their classwork. I didn’t miss the way they looked at each other with worry at my lack of reaction. I didn’t even blush when Sari launched into an explicit diatribe about how a royal student choked her during sex.
I hoped it made her happy.
When it was finally time for bed, I trudged toward the room with dread.
I debated whether I should shower to wash the invisible filth off my skin or pretend to sleep.
However, when I opened the door, the world tilted on its axis.
“You fucking slut!” a scratchy voice squealed.
My legs gave out beneath me as I was tackled to the floor.
“Did you miss me?” Sadie asked.
I passed out.
