Chapter 13 #2
Anelize let out a humorless laugh. “I highly doubt mine is worth using for extended periods of time, especially not on anyone. I certainly wouldn’t use it on you.
” Nothing but death and pain awaited the person she subjected to her gift.
It had only ever been used as a means to protect herself or put a stop to someone’s suffering. But only ever that.
The sound of a snort from somewhere in the room made her slowly turn to look toward the opened doorway. Then to the rest of the room until she spotted a long leg hung off the arm of the settee where someone was laying down, facing the fire.
“She thinks she’s going to stand a chance against half a dozen armed men in the tunnels but she’s too afraid to do so on one person. Saints, we’re all dead, and our bodies haven’t hit the ground yet,” Adan remarked from where he was laying.
She cursed herself for not having noticed him before.
Zara winced. “We all have our talents. I know how to call my power forth slowly—control is key when healing a wound. Though, what you need to exercise is endurance and control. Adan here is an excellent teacher when it comes to the former. He’s taught a good many of the children staying with us now.
They have their gifts practically mastered thanks to him. ”
There was no question in her words. Meaning, whether she liked it or not she was stuck with the man muttering under his breath who hadn’t deigned to look up from the back of the settee to spare her a glance.
Anelize said through gritted teeth, forcing a smile at Zara. “I’m sure I can practice on my own. No need to disturb him with such trivial matters.”
Another scoff. “Believe me. This is the last thing I want to do. I think cutting my arm off and having Zara sow it back together would be preferable than this.”
“Then why are you, if you find it so loathsome?” she snapped.
This time he sat up. His hair was still tied back, and he was wearing a cream tunic. Dark circles rimmed his eyes as he regarded her.
“Because, what the boss says goes, and I’m not about to lose my job because I would wish for nothing more than to find ourselves a nevit who actually knows what she’s doing. Seeing as there are none in the room with us, we’re stuck together.”
“How noble of you.”
“Aren’t I the sweetest?” he remarked.
“I think this will be just fine.” Zara preoccupied herself by digging into her porridge, sinking back into her chair as she stared out the window. “Use the stables, try not to frighten the horses while you’re there.”
“Right, let’s get this over with then.”
Anelize watched as Adan stalked for the door, hunched as he tucked his hands into the pockets of his pants. Making no indication that he cared if she bothered to follow after him. And she thought Aeric was insufferable. How sorely mistaken she’d been.
“Adan has his moments.” Zara patted her hand, encouraging her to stand. “But he really is a good boy…with a few minor flaws.”
She arched a brow and asked dryly, “A few?”
Zara coughed to mask her chuckle. “A few. But what he lacks in patience, he makes up for in endurance. Which is precisely why I asked him to teach you today. Do try not to take anything he says to heart.”
Anelize highly doubted she’d be able to take Zara’s advice, for the moment she stepped into the hall and found him leaning against the balcony, she regretted ever agreeing to any of this.
Adan glowered at her before he pushed off the wooden railing.
“Are you going to make me wait all day or are we going to get to wasting each other’s time? ”
“Cut yourself.”
Adan’s blunt words hardly surprised her as they stood in the stables.
Hay and buckets of water littered the floor, horses softly chuffed from within their stalls.
He stood a few paces away from her as he retrieved a small knife from the sheath fastened along his belt before tossing it to her.
She managed to catch it by the handle without hurting herself and gritted her teeth.
She angled the blade against her palm before his voice cut through the stables. “Stop.”
Confused, she furrowed her brows at him. “What?”
He huffed. “Do you intend on needing stitches every time you use your gift or is your intention to bleed out on the street so the Watchmen can track you down?”
“No—”
“Then why are you cutting into your palm? One single nick is enough, move the blade to one of your fingers. More bloodshed doesn’t equate power.
That is already within you, you are just rousing it awake.
” He spoke to her as though she were a fool.
In his mind, she probably was if she didn’t know how to make a simple incision to start conjuring.
She did as he ordered and cut a line down the pad of her finger. He didn’t reproach her this time so she must have done a decent enough job in this, at the very least.
“Call your power.” When she raised her brows in question, he rolled his eyes. “Fine. Listen to your power. What is it saying? What does it want? Concentrate on listening to it for a change.”
Shaking her head, she closed her eyes and searched for it.
That pulsing feeling that started from the cut all the way to her veins.
A searching, sometimes searing, feeling that was at once overwhelming and exhilarating.
Without her fear fueling her need to defend herself, it took some time to feel it the same way it had surged that day the Watchmen closed in on her.
But it was there. It was always there. A flickering light deep in her core, growing brighter.
“Listen to what it wants,” she heard Adan say again from somewhere in the stable, sounding as if he’d stepped farther away.
The shadows in her mind growing as she focused.
Then she heard it. The sound of a heart beating, strong and steady like a drum.
Saw the cool, bright lights falling around her like snowflakes before they formed into one single speck a few paces away from her.
“What do you feel now?”
“I hear your heart.”
Suddenly, the light faded. Flying away and disappearing behind her. Then a foot wrapped around her ankle, and she felt a hand land on the center of her back, sending her stumbling forward and losing her concentration. The light going out in a tendril of smoke.
“What are you doing?” she hissed. “I had it.”
“And you broke concentration. Quite easily, might I add,” Adan said, somehow managing to have come up behind her without making a sound.
If not for her intent on hearing his heart, she wouldn’t have been able to tell if he’d left the room.
And yet, she hadn’t sensed where in the room he’d been, even with his heart pounding in her ears.
“Watchmen are trained to not only hunt us down but also how to fight us in numbers. They’ll do anything, pull any trick up their sleeves, if it means getting under your skin.
Long enough for another one of them to get up close and slit your throat. Pay. Attention.”
“You know, I’m getting sick of the incessant patronizing. Teach me as Zara told you to, or let me leave so I can find someone better suited for the job.”
“There is no one better suited for the job.” He crossed his arms. All smug as he looked down his nose at her.
“I’m sure your brother would be just fine.”
He shrugged. “He could be, but he’s not here, is he? You’re stuck with me. Now, do it again, this time without breaking concentration.”
There was no telling how long they went at it that way.
Her trying to sense his heart, finding that pulsing light that belonged to him alone, anticipating his movements.
And him constantly tripping, pushing, and even tugging on her hair.
At times they were the smallest ways to distract her.
A mocking whisper or the annoying cracking of knuckles that grated on her ears.
By the time he finally told her to stop, she was out of breath, as though she’d been running up a steep hill.
If he noticed, he hardly seemed to care as he asked her another series of questions. Taking his role as her teacher quite seriously, despite how often he loved to mock her.
“What is it you think a nevit’s power consists of? What are their limitations?”
“They can control the use of one’s blood. Sense heartbeats. Stop them entirely.”
“What else?”
“There is nothing else. If there had been, my father would have told me. He knew all about the Vedrans and the extent of their powers,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Are you sure about that?”
“I’m sure.”
“You’re sure, yet when I told you to use your power on the Watchman, you looked at me like I was mad.
What else?” Adan insisted, his hands tucked behind his back as he slowly walked around in the makeshift circle he’d made in the last hour or so of his pacing about.
His boots brushing over the hay in a soft hiss.
His movements were slow yet not relaxed.
If she attacked him, she had no doubt he’d be on her in a single blink of an eye.
“A nevit’s power is derived from life. Life is driven by the energy we produce within ourselves, it is consumed and rejuvenated with rest or basic necessities such as eating.
You can take as much as you can give if you know how to use just enough energy.
Aeric, for instance, can wield as much fire as he wants but not if a flame or spark don’t already exist. Either you make use of what is at your disposal, or you create it yourself.
Slowing an opponent down isn’t the only way to protect yourself if you know how to use your power. Draw your blood again.”
She hesitated. Trusting others had never come easily to her, though she certainly wasn’t feeling too confident that Adan wouldn’t do something to hurt her if only to get her to draw out her power.
Regardless, against her better judgment—which appeared to be waning as of late—she once again cut the pad of her finger.
“Slow my heart.”
“What?” she gasped.
Adan repeated, “Slow my heart. Every nevit knows how to. They can bring down men twice their size without killing them. Long enough for them to get away or go unnoticed. It’s a skill that should come as second nature to you. Go on then, do it. Prove to me you can.”
“No. I will not go anywhere near your heart. Not like that,” she asserted.
He tilted his head to one side, considering.
“If it’s a Watchman you’d like to try it on, I can bring one easily enough. Might have to kill him once you’re done, though.”
“I said no.” Her voice sliced through the room like a hot blade.
“Why not?” Adan’s answer came with deathly calm, balancing her anger for once.
“Because. I don’t want to, not that. I’ll do anything you ask of me, I’ll take all the goading and condescension you have to send my way.
I’ll even take you sending me sprawling into the ground.
But I won’t do that.” Anelize had made a promise years ago that she would never again use her gift for the sake of taking someone’s life.
She had done it before, and it had cost her more than anyone would ever know.
“Then there we have it,” Adan murmured, a flash of disappointment—perhaps?
—in those dark eyes. “That is your limit. If you won’t consider taking a life, then what makes you think you’ll be able to defend yourself when it eventually comes down to it?
Because it will come, Anya. Death comes for us all, and it is as quick and unforgiving as you can imagine.
Or if the king has any say in it, it will be slow and excruciating, enough to drive you into madness.
It’s only a matter of which of the two the saints will grant us.
You don’t truly seem to understand the urgency of needing to master your gift any more than you understand the meaning of what it is we are trying to accomplish. ”
“I do! I’m trying. You haven’t exactly given me much grace in the last few hours either.”
“Count yourself lucky that ‘hours’ are what I gave you. Watchmen could burst through these doors at any moment if they catch a whiff of all the Vedrans hiding here, and you’d barely be able to stop two of them—if that—before they were upon all the children, Henry, and Zara, you.
Trying isn’t going to save your life. You blame your father for never teaching you how to control your power, but was the urge there to begin with?
Or did you let yourself grow weak intentionally? ”
Anelize glared at him, holding up a finger in warning. “Careful. I may not have the skills you wish of me, but I could hurt you if I wanted to.”
Adan scoffed before he turned on his heel and headed for the door that led back into the tavern. “If you could, I’d gladly thank you for it.”
Fuming at his dismissal, she stalked after him. “So, that’s it? You’re just going to give up on teaching me anything of use because I wouldn’t try to hurt you. You truly are something.”
He suddenly spun to face her making her stumble to a halt before she bumped straight into his chest. Adan sneered, fury reflecting off his eyes as he looked at her.
“I know you think what we do is pointless. A fruitless war that will end with all of us burned to ashes, forgotten to time and history as it’s rewritten by spoiled nobles and pious kings who want to be seen as gods by the rest of the world.
Maybe you’re right. Or maybe you’ve allowed yourself to be just as blinded by the world set out before you as the rest of them.
You want to join us? That ends now or save us all the trouble of wasting our time on you. ”
Anelize watched him as he stormed out of the stables, slamming the door behind him. His words a resounding echo left behind to haunt her.