51. Sie

FIFTY-ONE

SIE

Another week had passed before I finally let myself believe Greyland was going to be okay—okay was an exaggeration. He was never going to be the same again. When the swelling of his left eye went down, and I was finally able to look at the damage, I realized he fucking lost it.

But when I tried to talk to him about it, he shut me down. He wasn’t surprised, which meant the bastards fucking ripped it out of him while he was awake.

I wanted to kill them all. I wanted to rip out every last Luxian soldier’s eyes, only to shove them back in the socket so I could do it again.

But Grey was going to live. It was the only thing I could thank Pylemo for right now.

He was now able to maintain consciousness and could stand at the side of his cot for ten minutes at a time. It was an improvement. Two days ago, all he could manage was to sit propped up against the headboard.

I thought seeing Lilia would change things for him. He was so happy when I told him we got her out of the cabin. I wanted to bottle his expression the moment he found out—relief and something else I couldn’t figure out came over him. It was the only time I’d seen him slightly happy since we got him out. But as soon as she stepped into the healer’s tent he was in, it was washed off his face.

The first ten minutes, all he could do was stare at her, and after the initial shock of seeing her, he went right back to ignoring her like he used to whenever our mothers forced us all together.

It was strange.

Lilia and Greyland were both feigning that they were okay as Peter and I spent the next couple of days by their sides. We didn’t know what to say or do to comfort them. We were all orphans now. They only had us to take care of them, and we were two fuck ups who didn’t know how to speak to them about grief or even acknowledge our own.

By the third day we brought Lilia into the tent, she was fidgeting and decided she wanted to learn mortal healing and help out.

Greyland’s face went stone cold, and as soon as she left, he turned to me. “Don’t let her be assigned to me.”

I grinned down at him, rustled his black hair and left without giving him my answer. I overheard a healer saying they were going to discharge him by the afternoon, but I decided to not tell him that.

At least it’d be a distraction from what really haunted him for a little while.

It was dark, hours before dawn, when I was dragged out of my communal bed by Peter. Bed. We went from sharing a tent together to now having to sleep in the same bed. It wasn’t nearly large enough for the two of us, and he somehow always gravitated toward cuddling me by the morning .

We were crammed into a tent with Tennebrisians and Luxians since Peter gave up our used-to-be-private-two-bed-tent for Vallie. I didn’t blame him, but now I was regretting my friendship with him as he forced me to go to the training rings in the middle of the night.

It wasn’t like I was sleeping anyway. I hadn’t been able to since Greyland came back… I just couldn’t sleep. Even after my brother was discharged and was starting to act like his old self again, I could barely relax.

I glanced over at Greyland before I followed Peter out, careful not to wake the six other people in here with us. Lilia was also in our tent, but she slept on the complete opposite side from us and as far away from Greyland and I as she could get.

Everyone was terrified of me ever since the broadcast came out. They looked at me like I was deadly, like if they stared too long, I’d lose my temper and kill them on the spot.

At first I didn’t mind it because I wanted the space. I didn’t want to talk to anyone but Peter or my brother anyway. But now it was getting under my skin when people literally ran in the opposite direction once they saw me coming.

Long black hair was blowing in the wind up ahead. I squinted closer and saw Vallie was already waiting for us. “You changed your hair,” I commented instead of saying hi.

She nodded once. “Kallon helped me.” I didn’t ask her why she wanted to get rid of the red, and she didn’t give up any more information than that. The dark color didn’t suit her. It made her face look washed out, accentuating the dark circles under her eyes. But I wasn’t about to tell her that. I knew I looked like shit too.

“What are we doing here?” I asked, putting my hands in my pockets, more out of habit than for warmth.

Peter looked toward Vallie who was staring down at her feet. “She wants to train,” he answered.

I was surprised. The girl didn’t have an ounce of muscle to her. She was all curves with feminine features. She wasn’t built as a fighter.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Why are we out here in the middle of the night then? Training happens every day during normal hours.” Technically, the rings didn’t close, but no one ever stayed past midnight, and right now the five rings were completely deserted.

“I don’t want to be in groups,” she answered. I looked toward Peter, whose face said it all. She didn’t want to train when there were hundreds of males crowded and crammed throughout the rings. Peter told me how she couldn’t stand being touched, how she flinched anytime someone got too close. I could understand that, but what I didn’t get was why I was here. If she didn’t want to be around males, it didn’t make sense why Peter asked me to help.

“I’m sure Scottie would be happy to help train you—”

“No,” she cut me off.

“Okay…” I said slowly, trying to keep my expression neutral. “What do you want from me then?”

“Go through drills with me,” my friend answered for her. “You’re one of the best fighters, and I don’t want to ask anyone else. She isn’t going to be sparring for a while. We just want to go over the basics for now.”

Another two weeks of waking up hours before dawn to train Vallie passed. I was getting used to the lack of sleep and was surprised to find Vallie still coming every day. I’d asked her once why she never seemed groggy waking up so early and she responded with, “I don’t sleep anymore.” I didn’t bother making small talk with her after that, not wanting to risk saying the wrong thing. She was broken, beyond broken. I didn’t know how to help her, and I knew Peter was struggling with the same .

After the first week, Peter started to drag Lilia along. Having another girl around Vallie was the right move, and I knew Peter wanted his sister to train, but Lilia was the worst person he could have picked for Vallie. She was goddess-damned awful. I’d never met anyone with worse hand-eye-coordination than her.

The only positive was that we could demonstrate the maneuvers on Lilia, who would then show Vallie. But Lilia was so bad, it was honestly more time consuming.

Peter was getting stressed. While Vallie was improving, she still needed someone to spar, and Lilia just needed a shit ton of help.

After training today, I entered the communal dining tent actually needing one of those drinks the mortal consumed every day. The coffee was helping me get through the mornings, and I was discovering I loved the bitter taste of it.

The little bit we did sleep every night, Peter took up most of the bed, so I usually just found myself staring up at the fabric that made up the ceiling, trying not to think about how I lost both of my parents.

Lavender hair flashed in front of me as Savannah made her way toward the table with her brother.

I followed her.

She looked up and noticed me standing there. “Can I help you?”

“Yes.”

“With?” She arched a brow.

I gritted my teeth, looked around the room, and braced myself for what I had to ask her. “Can we talk in private?”

She looked down at her uneaten breakfast, then at her brother. “Don’t touch my bacon. I’ll be right back.”

Wells shrugged as he kept eating from his own plate. I watched her grab hold of her coffee before following me out of the large tent. I didn’t start talking until we were long out of earshot from anyone .

“How did you learn to fight?”

“What kind of question is that?” she asked, blowing on the steamy liquid in her hand. I tried not to focus on her lips as she took a slow sip.

“A serious one. Who taught you?”

“Years of doing gymnastics, then everyone taught me once they started visiting,” she answered, taking another sip. I assumed by everyone , she meant Tezya and his friends. I knew she was close with them.

“I don’t know what gymnastics means, but can you teach someone who has no experience?”

“I could,” she said. Her gray, opal eyes met mine. I honestly couldn’t decide what color they were as so many different shades swirled inside her irises and it seemed to change based off the lighting. It was unsettling for a human and so at odds with her brother’s solid brown coloring. I also hated that I was fascinated by them. That I kept staring at them whenever we talked. I didn’t gawk at Luxian eye coloring, but for some reason hers kept drawing my attention.

I shook my head. Who cares what color they were or the fact that when the sun was high in the sky I swore there were specks of lavender in them that seemed to reflect off her hair.

As much as I didn’t like her cockiness, she would be great for Vallie and Lilia. She was a human, a far cry from the Advenians that haunted Vallie, and if Lilia could learn her footwork, she could work on agility next, which was probably her only saving grace at this point. “Great—”

“I said I could , not I would .” My smile faltered at her words. “Who do you want me to train?” she asked, draining the last drop of her coffee. I regretted not grabbing a cup myself because I desperately needed the fuel to get through this conversation.

“Vallie and Lilia.”

“Vallie,” she repeated the name. “The redhead your friend rescued that day? ”

I nodded.

“Why are you helping her? You didn’t even want to rescue her.”

I ran my fingers through my hair in frustration. Why I thought she would help was beyond me. “I never said I didn’t want her rescued. I just didn’t want it to be at the expense of my friend’s life.”

“Uh-huh, and who else?”

“Lilia. Peter’s sister.”

“Hmm,” she huffed. “So you want me, a human , to help train two Advenians ?”

I ground my teeth together at her mocking smirk. I didn’t say anything, my jaw kept working as she stared up at me triumphantly.

“Why do you need me ?” she added into the silence.

“We need a girl to help,” I said because it was the obvious truth. Lilia technically was learning from Peter, just at a regressed rate, but Vallie was the real reason I was standing here right now. She was ready to start sparring, but would flinch anytime either of us got too close.

But her story wasn’t mine to tell so I wasn’t going to elaborate further, even though everyone in the camp knew what happened anyway. She was naked when Peter carried her through the portal. Bruises marred her throat, her arms, her wrists… And before Peter ripped off his own shirt to try to cover her body, everyone saw the bruises that marred her hips, inner thighs and everywhere in between. Everyone saw the way she flinched from every male in the camp. Everyone fucking knew.

“Okay, so why do you need me ?” she asked again. I didn’t miss the glint in her eyes. Why was I asking a human over an Advenian for help? A human who was supposed to be so weak they died as fast as the leaves changed colors.

I honestly had no idea. I didn’t have an answer for her. I couldn’t comprehend why she was the first person I thought of. I knew Scotlind was out of the question, but I could have gone to Kallon. She would have agreed to help in an instant, saving me the headache.

“Because we need someone weak, someone Vallie won’t perceive as a threat.” It was a lie.

“No.” The glare she held was murderous as she stepped into my line of view. She crept into my space, her nose just barely brushing against mine. She was a fucking human. I could break her so easily, but the way she wasn’t scared of me, the way she didn’t run in the opposite direction, ignited me. Advenians fifty times stronger than her shook in my presence. Ever since the broadcast everyone was terrified of me. Everyone but her. The girl was anything but weak, and I fucking hated her for it.

She started walking away. Her hair whipped me across the face and a scent of lavender and citrus invaded my senses. Why did she have to smell like the color of her hair? Why did it bother me? Why the fuck did I even notice?

“Wait,” I ground out, sucking in my pride for Peter. “Please help train her.”

“Okay.” She shrugged nonchalantly, taking a bite from an apple she must have kept hidden in her sweatshirt. “Since you asked so nicely.” She was always consuming some sort of food or drink and it irritated the hell out of me. I kept staring at her mouth as she twisted the apple in her hand, inspecting it, before biting down again. A splash of juice ran down her lips before her tongue darted out to catch it. “Say I help you, what’s in it for me?”

I groaned. “What do you want?”

She took her time swallowing the bite of apple as she slowly started walking toward me again. She was an inch from my face, pouting her lips and bringing a finger to the corner of her mouth before tapping it. It was like she knew I’d been staring at them this whole conversation… “Hmmm. What do I want?” she paused, taking her damn, sweet time. “I don’t know yet. ”

“You don’t know yet?” I growled. “You made a fuss about wanting something and you don’t even know what you want?”

“It can be an ‘I owe you’ kind of thing,” she suggested. “Since I don’t know what I want from you, I’ll be allowed to think of it at any point, and you’ll have to agree.”

“You want me to say yes to something without having any idea what it is yet?” I narrowed my eyes at her. Humans were more conniving than I thought. I was half tempted to tell her to forget it. I didn’t think Vallie’s training was worth the trouble. I highly doubted she’d want to fight when the time came, but I knew I had to. Peter wouldn’t have hesitated to make the bargain for anyone if it meant he was helping Scottie or someone I cared about.

“Fine,” I said through my teeth. “It can be an ‘I owe you’ thing, but you have to wake up before dawn.”

I smiled as her brows furrowed. She stared at her empty cup of coffee. “Ugh. I’m going to need a gallon of this stuff.”

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