Chapter 42
After a quick, silent dinner, Zion and I crossed into Dornéu.
The sky was starry as usual, and the full moon illuminated Kiara’s silhouette soaring overhead.
Beneath the silvery glow of the alchemical globes, we exchanged silent glances.
There were questions in his eyes, but I could see he was giving me space.
“I couldn’t talk to her,” I finally admitted.
After class, I’d searched for Adele everywhere in the academy, but she was nowhere to be found. It was like the girl had vanished into thin air.
“I know. The shadows showed me she ran out—there was a car waiting at the entrance.”
My eyebrows drew together in concern.
“Do you know who it was?”
“Ivanov picks her up every afternoon after training. He always waits outside.”
“Adele doesn’t stay in the student dorms?”
“No, Ivanov is a citizen of Interion, and their mother gave him custody of Adele and her younger sister for as long as they’re here.”
Adele was well cared for and protected by her uncle—those cuts and bites made no sense at all. I still didn’t know what to say about the situation. Zion seemed to be bracing himself to say something, and from his expression, I wasn’t going to like it.
“Kyller, I can’t let this go on. We may not know what’s happening, but something is definitely very wrong. Adele is my student too, so I need to intervene.”
“Give me just one more chance to talk to her. Let me at least try to understand or help her somehow. Just so she knows she can count on someone, that she won’t be exposed, and that she’s not alone. Maybe Adele doesn’t want people to know because she’s ashamed or afraid of being exposed.”
Zion looked at me with a tenderness that was hard to hide.
“Adele has never hidden the fact that she hates you, Kay. How can you be so kind to her?”
I smiled ruefully, heading to my position in the arena.
“Because people weren’t kind to me either.”
I heard Zion swallow hard from where he stood, and he kept looking at me for another moment. Sometimes he had that look, as if seeing me for the first time, as if piecing together a complicated puzzle in his mind. Finally, he moved to his training position.
“You have until tomorrow to talk to her. Let her know that one way or another, she’s going to get help.”
“Deal.”
I understood his side too. Any honorable faeric would think that way, especially Zion, who was her trainer.
“Today we’re going to start attack training to subdue an enemy, so we’ll reverse our roles,” he said, pulling my restless thoughts back to the present.
“Should I attack the way you did? The same movements as before?”
Defending myself was easier. I didn’t like attacking—my strikes were always a bit clumsy.
“Yes. These ten movements—five attack and five defense—are the foundation of all the others. They were designed to strike the five vital points and defend them. I could win any fight using only these ten movements.”
“Of course you could,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “You’ve been doing this your whole life, Zion. I don’t see how I could win a fight with just ten strikes. Besides, it doesn’t make sense—what was the point of all those years of classes with new movements if we could win with just ten?”
“Because Interion has its own fighting style, just as Ampér has Tama-ki. What I’m teaching you comes from somewhere else.”
There was only one other place we knew well.
“Is it Drutes’ fighting style?” I asked, frowning.
“It’s your mother’s fighting style, passed from her to Serguei, and from Serguei to me.”
“My mother’s? You mean, Drutes’ greatest warrior?” I asked, astonished. “She only fought with five movements?”
Zion laughed as he answered.
“When he told me this, I didn’t know it was Lagherta. She fought with far more than ten movements, Kay, but these were the most basic ones she was able to teach Serguei properly before he left Drutes.”
I was stunned. I would learn to fight like my mother, the greatest warrior of Drutes.
“When you can do them without thinking—that is, when your body performs them unconsciously—and you can use them to anticipate what kind of attack is coming, we’ll add more movements derived from these.”
“Anticipate? Zion, nobody can predict another person’s next move.”
“I know it sounds crazy now—I thought so too when Serguei first taught me—but trust me, you’ll understand soon. This fighting style is based on reading body language.”
He smiled encouragingly. We were in position, but I had so many questions. I remembered Zion fighting in the alley—just a blur of shadows, his movements precise and controlled.
“You can anticipate because the shadows tell you. For Serguei, it’s easy too—he reads the movement in his opponent’s mind before it’s even formed. Maybe you’re wrong about this,” I theorized with a pout. I couldn’t understand the movements even when he did them in slow motion.
“Then how do you explain Lagherta doing this with such a low healing level? She could take down Serguei even when he read her next attack in her mind. She intercepted him no matter what he did, as if the movements were part of her muscles rather than her brain.”
Once again, I found myself surprised by this information. My mother could defeat even Serguei in hand-to-hand combat. That was incredible—and terrifying.
“Serguei always said that fighting is a lot like reading.
You glance at the shape and beginning of a word, and your brain fills in the rest. When we fight, we read someone's initial body language: where the opponent looks, how their muscles tense for the next strike, even how their breathing changes as they attack. This gives us major clues about the next movement, and in milliseconds, our body reacts by blocking the blow.”
In theory, what he said made sense, but in practice, it seemed almost impossible. He settled into position with his knees bent.
“Talking won't help you at all, so let's train.” He flashed a dangerous smile, something like an invitation. “Attack me with everything you've got.”
I got into position, butterflies filling my stomach as he watched me.
“What's your safe word going to be?” I asked, readying myself.
“I don't need one.” His confident smile widened.
So I attacked him with all my strength, but he blocked me just as he'd taught.
I went for a second attack and he pushed me away with a low kick.
I tried to distract him and started attacking without any set pattern, but no matter what I did, I never came close to touching him.
After an hour of this, I gave up trying to take him down.
I just repeated the movements like a choreographed dance: I attacked, he blocked.
A punch and his guard was already up; a sweep and he dodged by jumping or stepping aside.
If I tried a chokehold, he was out of reach in seconds.
“I'm curious about something,” he said with a different gleam in his eyes, pulling me out of my trance. I attacked again, but he didn't even seem to be trying.
“Ask,” I said, moving into my next strike.
Zion watched me more closely, his eyes burning.
“Which nation is your sexual nature from?” He dodged and blocked a blow I'd thrown with full force. I immediately froze mid-movement. “Keep going, don't stop attacking—this is training too. Talk while you attack; your body will memorize better that way.”
I resumed my attack and we continued for a few more minutes. He seemed to be waiting for an answer, and his smile only grew as my cheeks flushed in equal measure.
“I don't think I understood the question.”
Zion blocked in a way that pressed our bodies together, but I quickly twisted my torso and almost landed a kick to his ribs.
“Why do you want to know that?”
My face was so flushed that color experts could have classified it as “embarrassment red.”
“To understand what I'm dealing with,” Zion replied with a mischievous smile that made my legs go weak.
“What do you mean?” I tried to sidestep the subject. “I'm not answering without a clear reason.”
“What I want to know…” He dodged another blow, still maintaining eye contact. “Is whether your sexual nature is also Drutes.”
I analyzed the question as if it were a medical case I needed to solve. What was a Drutes sexual nature?
“I don't understand—should I know what that is?”
Zion stared at me a moment longer, then started laughing.
“You never knew about this?” he asked incredulously.
“What should I know?” My hands were sweaty from nerves.
“You never wondered why the most famous brothels in the city were staffed by Drutes women?”
“I didn't even know there used to be Drutes brothels.”
Now I was curious. There had been no one to tell me about these obscene peculiarities, and I doubted either Breno or Ambrose would touch such a subject—especially since I was both a woman and Drutes.
“They were the most lucrative and were banned after the Great War. In ancient times, fathers would take their sons to these places—it was like a rite of passage, a test. There were reasons they were so special. Drutes is represented by the Goddess of War, who also governs desires and pleasures,” he explained as I continued attacking.
“And what exactly makes Drutes women different?” I narrowed my eyes at him.
“You never figured it out on your own?”
I didn't know what to say. Was he asking if I touched myself?
“I… I…” I tried to form a response, but I was too embarrassed—my blows barely had any force behind them. I couldn't think and fight at the same time. “Yes, I'm not that innocent.”
I attacked at an angle where he couldn't see my face—I must have been purple by now.
“And was it normal?” he asked curiously.
I looked at him, distressed.
“And how would I know what you consider normal? No one ever explained to me what's normal. If you want to know, then come find out,” I taunted, delighting in how his mouth fell open in surprise.
I seized the moment and prepared my best kick, aiming at the center of his chest. My foot connected, but he blocked with his forearms, absorbing most of the force.
The impact still pushed him back, his feet sliding across the arena's stone floor.
I planted my feet, amazed by his speed but happy to have pushed him back at all.
He still stared at me, but now with a smile on his lips and the mark of my shoe imprinted on his white shirt.
“You can be sure I’ll find out, Kyller.” In his eyes, the ocean began to churn. “When the time comes, your body will whisper all the secrets it hides, and when I’m done...” I swallowed hard as my toes curled inside my sneakers. “You’ll wish you had more secrets to tell, just so I won’t stop.”
We both felt it when my scent filled the air.
Zion closed his eyes and took a deep breath, the same way he had that night in the locker room.
I couldn’t blush any harder—I was already at my limit.
After a few seconds of staring at my red face, he blinked several times and his expression returned to normal.
“Now we’ll alternate. We’ll attack and defend at the same time.”
I tried to clear my mind of what he’d said, but the words had dug in so deep that I lost my bearings.
“There’s no set order?”
“No. Think of it as a real fight. I’ll keep the same pace as before so you can get used to it.”
“And what’s the safe word?” I asked anxiously as he got into position. I could already tell this was going to be a disaster.
“The safe word?” He thought for a moment, then a sly smile spread across his lips. “The safe word will be good-ar.”
Δ
We trained until midnight, if you could even call that mess training.
I couldn’t figure out when to attack and when to defend, so I kept ending up on the ground—on my back, on my stomach, on my knees.
Zion was patient, but I was getting frustrated with myself.
Learning the moves was one thing, but knowing where and when to use them was something else entirely.
He promised it would get better with time, but in my head, the patterns were a jumbled mess, and I panicked every time I had to decide what to do next.
All I could do was trust his reassuring words and push myself harder each day to make sense of it all.
As soon as we got home, Ambrose texted me saying he needed to talk the next day before work. I asked if we could just talk then, but he said it would be better in person. That only made me more anxious.
Like the night before, I slept in Zion’s room, trying to keep as much distance as possible from his body.
The next day was going to be difficult, and I was steeling myself to talk to Adele.
My throat tightened every time I thought about her marks.
The memories haunted me—along with the apparition in the hallway.
Somehow, the next day, I would find a way to get to the bottom of everything.