Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
PHOENIX
Kazh is a truly extraordinary woman. It’s the second day of training with her, and I want to quit.
“I can’t believe you survived the Culling,” she murmurs to herself. “The spirits of the gods must be crazy.”
Vera says Kazh is old as the spirit world, which means that nobody knows her actual age. From her appearance, the long silver hair, beige skin, and ice-blue eyes, I can’t tell her age either. I never met someone who looked old yet young at the same time.
I can’t trust my own eyes when I look at her.
“Your form is terrible,” she tells me and pokes me with a cane in the ribs. “And you call yourself an Ezkai? What did they teach you at that cursed academy, huh? How to quickly die in a battle?”
I grind my teeth and bite my tongue. I’m sitting with my legs crossed and tucked under me on top of a large stone in the middle of Vera’s garden. My palms rest on my knees. My fingers are twitchy.
Kazh insists I wear only cloth underclothes, so most of my skin is exposed to the cool air. My scars—the ugly ones from the fire—are on display for the whole world to see. That alone makes me want to die.
If only Kazh was here, I would feel better. However, Jax is lounging in the shade under a large plum blossom tree at the edge of the garden. I feel his eyes on me even without looking at him, and whenever Kazh pokes me with her stick, his chuckle reaches my ears.
I want to punch that asshole.
Always around, sly and charming, with his sparkling eyes and cheeky smirk that always brings out a tiny dimple he has, flirting with everything that has a pulse.
Gods. Damn. Him.
“Straighten your spine. Clench your butt cheeks and hold them tight,” Kazh instructs me. “Tense your core. Feel every single muscle in your body. Let it burn.”
I adjust my position, straightening my back and rolling my shoulders. My core is so tense it hurts. I press my lips into a tight line and focus my gaze in front of me.
“Better,” Kazh says, circling me.
She carries a wooden cane with a metal snake-head-shaped handle. She taps it onto the sand with each step, and it makes a dull sound I feel in my bones. When she starts tapping her sharp nail on the metal head, and the two sounds melt into a symphony, I want to scream.
It’s so irritating. Is she trying to torture me or train me?
“Concentrate all of your attention on breathing. Feel the burning of your muscles from the core of your body flowing to the very tips of your toes and then up to the very top of your neck,” she says in a low voice.
I am still as a statue. In my mind, I imagine that I’m in the moment right before I shoot the arrow. I breathe in slow and steady, and embrace the searing pain in my muscles when I breathe out.
I become one with the pain.
Kazh starts shaking her hand full of gold, brass, and silver bracelets dangling together. The sounds the bracelets make merge with the sounds from her cane and seep deeper into me. The weight of it is uncomfortable. I don’t understand what’s happening.
“Clear your mind. Close your eyes.” I do as she says. “You’re going deep inside your mind. Deeper.”
The last words are not an instruction, but a demand. The whole back garden rumbles with their power. My heart flutters in my chest, but nothing happens.
Not immediately, anyway.
After a moment, though, the darkness behind my eyes starts separating. A red haze appears. Cold wind whips at my uncovered skin, and the temperature in the air drops a couple of degrees.
“Do you see the door to your subconsciousness?” Kazh’s voice is farther away.
I survey the haze, which intensifies and then turns into a solid form. I frown, because I don’t know what I’m looking at. Finally, I realize it’s a round portal made from a swirling red smoke. I nod my head.
“Open the door and go inside,” Kazh instructs. “Don’t let go of the pain from the burning muscles. Let the pain in your physical body be your anchor to reality. If you let go of it, you’ll get locked inside your own subconscious, and your soul won’t find the way back to the physical world.”
Panic surges through me. I snap my eyes open, my breathing shallow.
I can’t do it.
I don’t trust myself.
What sort of magic is that? Never once during my training in Wetra did we practice anything like it. Even during the Ezkai Academy, we didn’t have lessons like this.
Kazh stops, and the abrupt end of the rhythmic melody leaves me empty and cold.
“What’s the matter, Phoenix?” Vera asks. I turn to find her standing in the doorway. “You were doing so well.”
A whole bouquet of emotions rage inside my chest. Confusion, anger, grief. I’m so overwhelmed with it that it’s hard to speak.
“I can’t train when you both are standing there and watching me at all times,” I snap at them. “I don’t think this is going to work.”
“It’s not going to work if you don’t work, you brainless fuck,” Kazh says.
I clench my jaw so tight it hurts and hug myself, as if that can help keep my safe.
Kazh narrows her eyes at me. “What is it that makes you so terrified to access your subconscious mind? You did that during the Cleansing. As an Ezkai General, you need to know how to do it with ease. Otherwise, you can’t reach your full potential. How do you expect to win the trials, huh?”
I remain silent and stare at the ground.
Kazh sighs. “You two, get the fuck out of here. Leave us and close the damn door. If I see you watching through the windows, I’ll pick your eyes out of their sockets one by one, you hear me?”
“Don’t need to tell me twice, master,” Jax says.
I don’t lift my eyes, but I hear his steps, and then a moment later, the paneled glass door shuts. It’s only me and Kazh.
“Do you know why I stopped training new Decarios apprentices, even highly accomplished ones?”
I’m surprised by the question, enough to look up at her. I shake my head.
“The connection between a student and the teacher is one of the most precious you can experience during your lifetime. For the training to be successful, there must be trust, honesty, and respect. It’s one of the most intimate relationships in one’s life.”
For the first time, there is something else other than anger and irritation reflected in her gaze. Sadness, grief, and pain…It’s almost like looking in a mirror.
She blinks the vulnerability away quickly, though.
“This will only work if you lower your walls with me, Phoenix.” Her calling me by name, instead of using insults, startles me.
But I don’t show it. “You are not alone going through this. I’m with you, going through it until the very end, understood? ”
I nod. My eyes burn with tears, and I blink them away. Kazh’s words…they hit the spot, one I try to hide away from the world.
“So, what spooked you in the past that you avoid going deeper into your mind, you little shithead?”
I snort and shake my head. I suppose the moments of tender affection won’t be the new routine. However, I feel more inclined to open up to her.
I clear my throat. “During the Cleansing ritual, ah…those Ezkai…they looked worse than dead. You didn’t see their eyes, completely white. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” I shiver all over and shake my head. “I got lucky the last time. What if the next time I won’t be so lucky?”
“Two things,” Kazh says and taps her cane.
“First, those Ezkai were weak. That’s why they ended up the way they did.
You’re not weak, even if that young head of yours is full of reckless shit.
You’re strong. Second, it wasn’t their subconscious that killed them.
They were seduced by the wicked spirits of the gods, and they faced the consequences.
They didn’t train enough, didn’t care about the mind, body, and soul connection enough to learn how to withstand the temptations. ”
Her words make me feel better. I bite my bottom lip and nod.
Kazh doesn’t waste any more time. “Okay, dipshit. Let’s go again.”