“If I can’t make my magic work, I die,” I said flatly. “I doubt you’ll find better motivation than that.”
“That will motivate you in the Challenging itself—”
“We hope,” Taran muttered.
“—but it may not be enough to trigger your magic in these training sessions,” she continued.
“Just imagine the target is Aemonn’s face,” Taran said. “That’s what I do.”
“What is it with you two?” I asked, propping my hands on my hips. “He’s not that bad. You’re brothers, you should put this feud behind you.”
“Never going to happen. Not all of us fall for his tricks just because he bats his eyes and kisses our hand.”
“Taran,” Luther warned.
“I’m not an idiot,” I shot back. “I’m giving him a fair chance. That doesn’t mean I don’t see his flirting for what it is.”
“So you give ‘fair chances’ to the people who use you while you punish the ones who actually care?”
“I have an idea,” Alixe offered, stepping between the two of us. “I could use my illusions to take on the appearance of someone you want to fight. Perhaps that would put you in the right mindset to attack.”
“How are you at replicating Taran?” I grumbled, drawing a smirk from the man himself.
“Maybe we should invite Iléana to one of these sessions to spar with you,” he said.
I mirrored his smug look. “Finally, an idea I can agree with.”
He stepped around Alixe and came nose to nose with me, angling his head and grinning savagely in my face. “But then again, why would Iléana’s presence bother you, when you’re so happy with your mortal boy?”
“Taran,” Luther barked as he pushed off the wall. “Back off.”
“You back off,” I snapped back at Luther, halting him in place. “I can defend myself.”
“Not against anyone with magic, you can’t,” Taran mocked. To prove his point, he shot a cloud of dark spikes at my feet, forcing me to jump out of the way to avoid them.
I growled and launched myself forward, shoving my palms into Taran’s chest. My emotions made my form sloppy, and he spun easily out of my grasp and sent me sprawling to the floor.
He stared down at me, brows raised. “Is that the best you can do?”
I scowled and held out a hand to him. “Quit gloating and help me up.”
He flashed me a victorious grin as he reached for me, but before he could haul me to my feet, I hooked an ankle around his knee, throwing him onto his back with a loud thump.
I climbed to my feet and brushed the dust from my clothes. “Honestly Taran, that’s the oldest trick in the book. I’m disappoi—”
A boot slammed into my back and sent me staggering forward. Before I could turn around, Taran had an arm around my neck and another circling my waist, pinning my wrists to my sides.
“Lu said you were a good fighter.” Taran laughed as I squirmed against his grip. “All I see is a puny little girl.”
“Use your magic,” Alixe scolded. “Both of you.”
I wriggled one arm free and jammed my elbow into his ribs, forcing him to release me as he coughed for air. He managed to snatch my arm as I jumped away, but I twisted until his wrist bent awkwardly, and he let go with a curse.
“Having some trouble with the ‘puny little girl’？” I mocked.
He let out another raucous burst of laughter, then threw a fist out toward me. He was too far away to land the punch, but a shockwave of serrated darkness raced my way, barely missing me as I ducked out of its path. I had no time to recover before he launched another series of blasts that I had to dive, lunge, and roll to avoid.
“Use your magic, Diem,” Alixe shouted.
Taran crowed loudly like a clucking chicken. “Too scared to fight like a Descended? Never took you for a coward, Queenie.”
“Screw you,” I hissed. I waited to hear the voice call out to me and push me to fight, to kill, to destroy, but where the godhood had once pulsed like a volcano, I now felt only an empty cavern.
“Maybe we should train out on the roads, since all you seem to know how to do is run away,” Taran jeered.
Red filled my vision, my fury writhing like a serpent on a hot stone. I let out a hoarse, frustrated cry as I scraped inside myself, begging for some scrap of power to rise to the surface. Inside my head, I screamed in anger—at myself, mostly, and at the goddess Lumnos, demanding to know why she had given me power but not the ability to use it.
The cloud of my rage broke for a moment, giving me a good look at Taran’s devious grin. There was something false about it, something not quite sincere. Hiding in his bright blue eyes was a scared, desperate prayer.
Taran wasn’t picking on me. He was worried about me.
My anger instantly drained away.
Once again, I was a crumbling shell, held together by a glue of guilt and self-pity. Taran had been willing to make himself into a punching bag just to help me—all because I was too much of a failure to do it on my own.
“Session’s over,” I mumbled and turned away.
“Come on, Queenie,” Taran pleaded, following behind me. “I was just teasing. We can fight physical if you want. We’ll make it a bet: loser has to kiss Aemonn. Wait, no, that’s a lose-lose for me.”
I trudged up the stairs. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Come back, I have a much better idea. Winner gets a kiss from Luther!”
I slammed the door as I exited the dungeon. Even Taran’s jokes couldn’t bring a smile to my face.
Sometimes, I wasn’t sure anything ever would again.
“Should I be worried you’re planning to assassinate me?”
I hovered on the edges of the lantern’s amber glow, arms crossed as I leaned a shoulder against the wall.
Vance threw a snide glance in my direction. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“If I wanted you dead, I would have just let you go through with your plan the night of the ball.”
He grunted, but said nothing more.
I strolled along the winding stone pathway lining the underground canal. The passage smelled of seawater and moss, the damp silence broken by the soft lapping of water. I feigned boredom, pretending to be engrossed in my nails, but my eyes never strayed far from the two men scouring the Crown’s personal boat.
Sneaking them in had been disturbingly easy. With a dropoff in the forest from Sorae to avoid being followed, and the old make-a-noise-and-sneak-in-while-they’re-investigating trick to distract the guards at the canal’s entrance, I’d led Henri and Vance to the royal dock with barely any effort.
Against their fervent protests, I’d forced them to wear blindfolds to conceal the exact location of the canal, an awkward reminder for all three of us how little trust we shared.
Even now, a voice in my head was shouting at me, warning me that this was a bad idea, that every time I helped the Guardians, innocent people got hurt. I told myself things were different this time. I could be strategic, use my influence to temper their violence and prevent further bloodshed.
But I couldn’t stop wondering if I was making the same deadly mistake all over again.