23. SOPHIE
Without a word, Sophie walked to the table where fruits and refreshments were laid out.
It’s okay to trust, Sophie. She continued to repeat this in her mind until the words jumbled and no longer made sense. Eros’s teasing had struck a chord within her. If anything, she liked the teasing and that did not bode well with her at all. In fact, it fucking scared her.
Ash was too close. She let him get too close. And the last time she let anyone close to her, it ended with death. Destruction. How could she have so easily forgotten that? The thing with Ash was that with him, she felt like herself. She didn’t think about anything else except the present when he was in her presence. She didn’t focus on her time in Faery or the people she left behind. All she knew and all she felt, when she was with Ash, was herself. Not Sophie the demigoddess, or Sophie the fated of Faery’s strongest warrior. She was just Sophie.
Sophie’s lower brain was at war with her logical brain. Logically, reasonably, she knew Ash was a good person at his core. He gave her no reason to doubt his intentions. But her lower brain, her fucking subconscious, rejected the comforting arms of trust. To trust was to endanger. To trust was to suffer.
With her back toward the group of warriors, she heard Ash call out to all the troops – and that, unfortunately, included her.
“Alright, weapons down. It’s mana time.” He clapped his hands loudly, hastening the group of trained soldiers.
A thread of dread shot through Sophie’s back.
“Want to partner up?” Nemysis’s chirpy voice pierced through Sophie’s train of self-deprecation.
Sophie downed the last dredges of water in her cup and nodded. “Yeah, sure.” She painted a fake smile across her face. Using her mana was the last thing she wanted to do, but if she couldn’t overcome it now, in a safe learning environment, then how could she face Kaine, Queen Calliea . . . least of all Terr?
Bile rose in her throat at the name.
Sophie and Nemysis squared up on the grassed area beside the weapons ring. Nemy’s chestnut hair was tied up into a fierce ponytail and sweat clung against her porcelain skin. Her muscled arms bulged gracefully as she pulled herself into a fighting stance.
“Work on your combos!” Ash called out from the front of the group.
Everyone obeyed.
Nemy shot out two balls of fire and swept her leg out with ease. Sophie dodged – left, right, jump. The goddess beckoned Sophie to repeat the movement.
“Your turn, Sophie. One, two, sweep.” Nemy shielded her face with both hands and bounced on her feet, ready to deflect Sophie’s mana blows – but they did not come.
Sophie swallowed hard. She pulled at the mana pit that sat low in her stomach and chipped off a morsel. It was all she could stomach. Meagrely, she shot out two poor excuses for fireballs that Nemy dodged easily.
“Come on, you can do better than that,” Nemy goaded.
“Unfortunately, mana doesn’t come so easily for me.”
“There’s one thing that fuels me . . .”
“Let me guess. Retribution?” Sophie scoffed.
“Exactly.” Nemy grunted as she let out two blades of bone-cutting air. Sophie dodged. “My offer still stands . . .” Nemy swept her leg out as Sophie jumped to clear it. “. . . I’ll kill whoever wronged you.”
Sophie knew who she was talking about. She should really take the goddess’s offer and get it over and done with, but it didn’t seem right. She wanted to be the one who righted her wrongs, not let someone else do the hard yards for her.
“It’s fine,” Sophie grunted as she mustered blades of air. They were barely strong enough to whisp Nemy’s hair. Sophie kicked out with more fervour though.
“I can taste it. Your anger and your thirst to right whoever wronged you. I can do it for you.” Nemy pulled from the earth and shot out two fist-sized rocks and kicked out again.
“I’m more than capable of doing it myself.” Sophie managed to pull pebbles from the ground, flinging them toward the chestnut-haired goddess, a scowl now formed on her face.
Nemysis straightened herself from her fighting stance and crossed her arms. A smirk splayed itself across her face. “You can barely scratch the surface of your mana. What makes you think you could command the reins of such a glorious act as retribution?”
Something in Sophie snapped. She was capable. She knew she was, but she just couldn’t pull the stopper from atop the glass bottle that encased her mana. As much as she tried, she couldn’t. She pulled at her mana, wanting to prove the goddess before her wrong. Nothing manifested. If anything, her mana pulled back and dissipated. Hot anger brewed inside Sophie’s chest – at herself, at Kaine, at the whole situation she found herself in. Sophie reeled back her fist ready to strike but Ash caught her wrist before she could.
“Nemysis. Leave Sofreya alone,” the master of weapons commanded.
“She’s got to get over it someday, Ash.” The goddess crossed her arms, her brows furrowed.
“Well, she doesn’t need you riling her up with your brand of retribution.” Ash flicked his chin. A dismissal. Nemy rolled her eyes and gave Sophie an apologetic smile.
Sophie watched as Nemy left the grass they’d been sparring on. Ash wasn’t a god of anything yet here he was, commanding centuries-old preternatural beings. And they listened.
Gingerly, Ash let go of her wrist and turned to her. “She’s older than the earth we stand on and yet doesn’t have an ounce of emotional intelligence,” he scoffed under his breath.
“Hey, I heard that!” Nemysis shouted from across the field.
“You’ll have to excuse her. She can be pushy when it comes to her core power.”
“Understandable, I guess.” The inch of rage Sophie felt dissipated like a raindrop in the sea the moment Ash touched her.
“Come on. I’ll practise with you. If you don’t want to use your mana, that’s fine, just go through the movements.” Ash braced himself and propped his hands up in defence. He towered over her so much it felt pointless. Sophie could barely reach him before he swatted her hands away.
They practised. Back and forth. Sophie would punch out – one, two – then sweep her foot out. They remained in silence, going through the movements.
But is was Ash who broke the silence first. “We’re sending a few angels down to help patch up the wall between Sotera and Faery.” He punched out and ducked quickly.
The words that came out of his mouth seized Sophie’s throat. It was the last thing she had on her mind. How could she forget? How could she lose focus? Her worlds were colliding, and she needed to put an end to it. She didn’t have time to be caught up in her own mind. “Are you going?”
“I’m not, but I can, if you want me to?”
“Why would I want that?”
“I know you have friends down there. I could check in on them . . .” Ash paused. “. . . on him.”
Sophie turned white and muttered, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ash eyes washed with indecision. It looked like he was battling with himself to say something. Perhaps he thought that she loved Kaine still. Oh, how he was mistaken.
Ash lowered his voice, so she was the only one that could hear. “I don’t know how to explain this to you without sounding like the biggest creep, but I can feel you and your emotions. It’s like I have a direct link to your heart . . .” He slowed his strikes as if carefully calculating what to say next. “. . . and I can feel the shards and shadows that surround it as if it were my own.”
Gone was the confident guardian angel that teased and annoyed her. In his place was someone who was cautious. Waiting.
Sophie swallowed. Tears began to prick her eyes. He read her so well. Was her pain shadowing her like a dark cloud? Was her pain that obvious? She fought the tears away, pushing more effort into the strikes she laid on Ash.
“Like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m fine.” She denied it, but she knew exactly what he was talking about – her hollowed-out chest that never seemed to stitch back together since she was saved from Faery.
She struck harder. Punch. Punch. Kick.
Ash’s swift movements returned. He grunted. “You’re not.”
“You can’t tell me what I am and what I am not.” Sophie gritted her teeth. She struck harder than she should have but Ash took it all in stride. He didn’t even flinch.
He accelerated his movements, pushing her off balance which stoked the rage that was rising in her chest. He was challenging her. She returned his advance with her own fire.
“Then tell me why is it that you purposefully dampen your mana?”
“I’m not purposefully doing anything.”
“You are.” Ash started using his mana. Two balls of fire flew their way to Sophie.
Without so much as a thought, she returned fire. “Am not.”
They were like two kids, arguing.
Ash struck out with two swift blades of air. “Is he the reason why?”
Raging fire burned through Sophie’s veins now. The strength of it was something she hadn’t felt in a while . . . not since she was in Faery. “He’s not the reason for anything,” Sophie said flatly, slinging two giant air-blades at Ash’s head.
She would deny it all. Deep down she knew Kaine was the reason. He was the one that taught her how to use her mana. Every time she dived deep to master it, it reminded her of him. And all the hard work she’d done in forgetting him, forgetting her idiocy and foolishness would come rising to the surface to suffocate her.
“It’s your mana, Sofreya. You’re in control of it.” Ash flung two decent-sized rocks her way. She dodged them with finesse. “It’s not someone else’s to take.”
Sophie’s throat seized and tears rolled from her eyes. She furrowed her brows and said no more. She carved two dagger-like rocks from the ground with her mana and shot them straight at Ash’s face that was so similar to Kaine’s. She felt as if Kaine had a chokehold on her mana. And the last thing she wanted was to be reminded of him – the murderer, the betrayer . . . her abuser. He was the last thing she wanted to think about yet, each time she pulled at what was rightfully hers, his face was there. And it was fucking sickening.
“If you can’t get a hold of your own mana, how can you expect to face him? Them?” Ash gritted through his teeth as he dodged and returned fire.
He didn’t need to say their names for the words to hit home. He was right. About everything.
It drowned her vision in red. Sophie flung giant blades of fire at Ash. Then air. Then earth. Her onslaught on Ash was unwarranted, she knew that much, but so much rage and sorrow lived inside her that it all came pouring out. She couldn’t hold it back any longer.
Suddenly, she felt the eyes of all the Tienthan watching her. She breathed heavily; her hands fisted against her sides. She saw it then. She’d pushed Ash back so hard that the dirt underneath him had kicked up from the force of it.
He stood there, panting heavily. His vambraces had even cracked from blocking her onslaught. Her power. She unlocked a level of mana she never knew she could reach again. She unfurled her fists. Her palms bled from the nails that had dug into them. That power. It came from her, but still . . . still it felt like she was in the dungeons of Castle Terrin. In that cell with Kaine as he taught her how to harness her true powers.
All of a sudden, she felt small.
All of a sudden, she felt detached from her true self.
She didn’t want anything to do with her mana. It didn’t feel like hers at all. It felt like it was Kaine’s.
Sophie turned and ran. To where, she didn’t know. All she knew was that she was running . . . from herself.