Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sensing the struggle in her, Kayce steered Lia toward a glen in the western forests once they returned to Norenth. He coached her the entire way to pour those emotions into something more productive: learning her pen.
Sword. Shield. Ax. Hammer. Bow.
All weapons familiar to Norenth, the pen could become.
It had been a jolt, at first. One passing thought, and the thing would flare and shift.
It was a headache focusing on a single form so it wouldn’t transform mid-strike—especially when questions about the Initiis flitted like sparrows in her mind.
But luckily, Lia’s body hadn’t merely adopted Aurelia’s eyesight.
She dove and struck and jumped as the ranger had trained to do since childhood.
Her body knew what to do; if only her mind would accept it.
“Stop letting your thoughts wander,” Terranth instructed calmly from the side. “Let your body react.”
Blowing a damp curl from her face, Lia glared across the field. She already had Kayce telling her to get out of her head—she didn’t need another Weatherstone boy doing it.
“Agreed,” Kayce grunted. He pushed hard, his sword swinging their crossed blades to the dirt before lunging toward her.
Lia yelped, flinching as she swung the pen and light peeled away to form a shield. Sparks rained on her sneakers until he jumped back.
“The enemy will use any distraction.” Kayce adjusted his shirt, the cream cotton dark with sweat below his throat.
Grabbing the hem, he pulled it up to wipe the sweat from his brow, exposing the abdominal muscles carved below tanned skin.
Lia’s mouth dried. Black breeches hung low on his hips, replacing his jeans—which weren’t conducive to swordplay, apparently.
Lia mentally shook herself. He was the distraction.
“I don’t want to tear your chest open!” And that was truly her hesitation.
Besides, what was with him? It seemed with each training session he pushed her harder.
So much for that moment before their Earth trip, the tenderness gone.
Not to mention letting it slip to Adrian about Papa’s death.
Irritation powered her next strike, using the shield as a battering-ram. He swerved to miss it.
“The healer gave me the all clear for light work,” he said coolly.
Lia glowered. “This is light?”
The prince shot her a grin, but it was missing its trademark wink. Something was off. And it was getting to her.
Lia leapt, swinging her shield up to hammer it against his side.
Brandishing his sword, Kayce outstepped the maneuvering.
She came at him again with a frustrated cry, only for him to block with the flat face of his sword, pushing against her.
Her toes dug into the earth, slipping back across the grass.
Sweat trickled down her temple, a damp curl falling into her eyes.
Her arms strained, muscles burning until she finally dropped her shield, Kayce coming into her space instead of away.
His chest pressed against her, heaving from the exertion.
His eyes were molten, lips parted as he took breath from the air between them. Any irritation she felt burned away under that stare. What was she even mad about? What were they even doing here? That shift between them hummed—
“Aurelia, you have to use your core more,” Terranth chastised. “I know you have abs in there somewhere.”
—and the irritation was back.
Lia took several steps from Kayce, her shield dissolving. “We’ve been at this for—”
“Three hours and forty-seven minutes!” Fee called from her seat on a rock beside Terranth, her powder-blue skirts arranged like cresting waves. She slipped her pocket watch away. “Which means you have at most an hour before we need to skedaddle for your beauty sleep.”
“What are you, my inspirational coach?” Lia huffed.
“More like your conscience.”
Kayce barked a laugh. “She has too much of her own to require two.”
“You’ll eat that remark.” Lia glared over her shoulder. “And what’s with running your mouth at the bookstore?”
Kayce sheathed his sword, avoiding her stare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s wyrm crap, and you know it.”
He ignored her, thoroughly intent on massaging his hand. “Ever think perhaps someone like Adrian could be useful? Sure, he’s a nervous wreck, but even Leo said he worked closely with Sir Julian.”
“But you didn’t ask me,” she countered. “Something that important involves a conversation, don’t you think?”
His thumb continued to sweep back and forth over his palm. “Haven’t had many of those, have we?”
Her temples pulsed; her mouth went dry. Frustration trembled in her hands. She’d thought training like this, like Aurelia, would make him move beyond their fight—she’d thought since the meeting, since the Forge, they’d been all right.
Maybe they needed to have that talk soon.
But honestly, Lia preferred hard labor for another three hours.
“As much as I would love to see you chew Kayce out,” Fee said, making her way over. “Let’s take a walk.”
Lia scowled, earning an arched brow from Terranth before Fee guided her through the pine trees. They strolled silently, Lia’s heart calming the more distance grew between her and Kayce. He hadn’t even looked her way as they left. Terranth, however, let his gaze linger on the guardian.
Insufferable Weatherstones.
She kicked a branch, sending it skittering into the underbrush.
Fee arched a silver brow. “Wishing that was Kayce’s shin?”
“More or less.”
Fee hummed in thought, and Lia’s annoyance began to dissipate. The guardian had proven to be an amusing addition. She was outspoken, to say the least. Never afraid to say the truth. Lia appreciated that.
When they came to a small creek bending through the woods, Lia turned to her. “Let me have it.”
“Let’s put your rightful irritation with Kayce aside for a moment.” Fee assessed her with swirling, purple eyes. “You doubt yourself too much. But you already knew that.”
“Of course I did,” Lia muttered, watching her friend stoop to examine a school of silverfish dart by. “It’s a chronic character flaw.”
“Ha-ha,” Fee mocked. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Belittle yourself. It does nothing but make people pity you.”
Lia flinched. Perhaps she should treasure Fee’s bluntness a little less.
Because the guardian wasn’t done. “When you do that, it makes it easier for others to keep you down in a fight. You don’t want to give them any opportunity, especially if you’re distracted by giving yourself a pity party.
” She stood, her manicured hands gripping Lia’s arms. “You are capable, Lia. Why do you insist you’re not to the point that you’re psyching yourself out? ”
She chewed on her lip. Lia hated being called out, but she couldn’t say Fee was wrong. “I guess because all my life, I’ve never been this—a fighter. Just a reader. I don’t even do cardio.”
Not that Mom never tried. Nope. Lia had been perfectly content, sitting in bed with a book until a permanent indentation formed. Her mom could run around the neighborhood as many times as she wanted. Running, but never really going anywhere. How pointless.
“At least it’s not drugs,” her mom would lament when she was denied in favor of literature.
Great priorities.
“Why do you read?” Fee asked.
“Because I want to escape,” Lia answered. No deep thinking required there. Reading was her getaway from the anxiety, from the pressures to ease everyone else’s burden. “It makes me feel…anchored.”
“Anchored,” Fee echoed, nodding. “And why would getting lost in your head do that?”
Why would it? Perhaps because she wasn’t lost. Not when she was racing through skies, sailing on ships, swooning over romances.
When the stakes were high, a fantasy world at stake, her heart raced, but it settled.
She settled into her skin when she read, when she explored.
Fought alongside found families. Championed those suffering. Solved mysteries and ancient curses.
She wasn’t getting lost in her head.
She was being found.
“I don’t have to be anything but what I choose to be,” Lia realized.
Fee smiled. “Exactly. You choose. Choose to believe in what your body knows. Choose to be more than who you think you’re limited to being. Just like you chose that memory to give into forging your pen.”
Lia wanted to grip those words in her heart and step into Aurelia’s shoes completely. But they still felt too big. And the issues Lia had to grapple with couldn’t be left behind, not when doubts circled her mind like vicious, starving vultures.
Doubts about her place in an Order that had continued to monitor her progress.
The Seekers. The nightmares on Earth. About Mom and that silent, wary gaze etched on her face when she thought Lia wasn’t looking.
About Marcus, who pestered Lia for stories about her training, about what the other starlit plane was like.
Kayce’s words, implying that she could just be Aurelia like it was a flip of a switch.
As real as he was. His silence on the matter since hadn’t helped.
Then there was her papa. His death.
As though sensing Lia’s mounting anxieties, Fee caught her attention. “Remember when you were falling through the spheres?”
“How could I forget?”
The guardian gave her a deadpan glare. Lia dropped the sarcasm, nodding for her to continue.
“Chaos was all around you, and you were able to find peace,” Fee said. “What did you think of?”
Lia scuffed the ground with her toe. It had been terrifying—falling with no control.
She had been utterly helpless. Except, she really hadn’t been.
She’d thought of home. Of Norenth. The one place that was always with her.
But even beyond the kingdom, the crisp pine to her nose and mist on her cheeks that she could recall, it was the feeling it drew.
The comfort of home, of belonging. It was like when she brought Kayce through to Earth.
“Here,” Lia answered. “And how I feel when I am here.”