CHAPTER 19 #3
By midday on the next day, exasperation started to kick in.
I spent most of the morning buried in the books I’d borrowed from Kantria, pouring over every faded page and annotation until the words started to blur together.
A few hours before sunset, I’d had enough.
My skin felt prickly, and restlessness threaded through my every muscle, so much so that I decided to brave the heat to go for a walk.
The sun pressed down on me like a lead blanket, sucking the moisture from my skin until even sweat gave up the fight.
Still, I pushed on. I needed the motion. The outlet.
We were expected at Rolla’s for dinner again, and I refused to show up simmering with pent-up energy and no polite way to release it.
It paid off when I came across exactly what I needed.
I rounded the edge of a cabin and stopped short, a smile tugging at my lips as I took in what lay before me. Steel bars. Weighted racks. A stuffed dummy propped up at the far end of a clear, beaten patch of earth.
A training field.
It was nowhere near the top-tier facilities we had back in The Paragon, but it was enough.
I started for the dummy, not even stopping to consider the fact that I did not have hand wraps with me. At that point, I’d welcome the pain of bruised knuckles.
I warmed up for a few minutes, starting with ankle and wrist rotations, and following up with shoulder rolls and neck stretches. Then I was off. The first impact sent a jolt through my arm and a burst of heat through my veins. Like opening a pressure valve.
The next punch came harder.
Hook, jab, dodge.
Again.
There was something mystical in the way my thoughts quieted, mind silenced after the day spent pouring through pages and questions.
After a week of little progress. Not even the too-slowly dwindling heat managed to take from the moment.
The movements were instinctual after so many years of training.
My shoulders unloaded punch after punch, feet as swift as quicksand on the dirt-packed ground.
I got lost in the dizzying, freeing sensation.
My right foot took off, spinning around my back, before impacting the dummy with a satisfying smack that reverberated all the way to my soul.
I regained my footing in a heartbeat, and my fist was already flying towards the leather—
“What did that poor thing do to you?”
I jumped, twisting mid-motion with fists raised, body poised to strike at whoever had snuck up on me.
But I knew who it was.
The captain stood a few feet away, hands in his pockets, amusement gleaming in his eyes.
I lowered my fists, breathing hard. There was .
. . something different about him tonight.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the closest I’d ever been to seeing him without his cuirass.
He had foregone his vest in favor of a plain black tank top with his signature matching cargos.
My eyes lingered a tad too long on the way the fabric hugged his muscles, heat rising to my cheeks as I looked away.
“It was your face I was picturing on it,” I quipped, chest heaving.
A lie. There hadn’t been a single thought in my brain throughout the whole thing. It was the beauty of it.
At some point between punches, the sun had dipped below the horizon, and the cool breeze of the desert’s night had goosebumps erupting over my damp skin.
Zephyr’s answering chuckle was dark and deep. “And what have I done to deserve such fury, Lachlan?”
I shrugged. “Being your brooding, annoying self is enough.”
His eyebrow kicked up, one corner of his mouth twitching.
“Is that so?” A rhythmic thrum echoed faintly through the camp.
Drums being beat, signaling the end of the working day.
The locals were retiring for dinner and we’d be expected at Rolla’s soon.
The captain cocked his head. “Then what about investing all that pent-up rage in trying to hit the real deal?”
My eyes squinted. “You want to spar?”
“No abilities,” he said, then just studied me, waiting.
In the end, it wasn’t much of a choice. I could not pass up on the opportunity to try to learn more about him. How he moved, how he fought. What irked him. It was only fair, since he was a damn expert in getting under my skin.
“No abilities,” I repeated. The field didn’t give him much to work with for his psychokinesis, but I wasn’t taking chances.
“No abilities,” he echoed.
We fought then, and despite the obvious disadvantage in size, I kicked the captain’s ass—
Now
A rough chuckle echoes around the almost empty room. My fingers tingle where they’re pressed against the couch at my back, and I swear I can almost feel the reverberation of the sound in them. I’m itching, aching, to use the vibration to free myself.
But the damned wooden cuffs, sisters to Malena’s, will not allow it.
Zephyr rights himself, his beard still tilted with that damned, all-knowing smirk. “My sweet, delusional Davina. That’s not how I remember it.” His eyes zero in on me, igniting something that should have been ashes for a while now.
Something that should have never existed.
“Why don’t you start again?”