9. The Training Hall
THE TRAINING HALL
Seraphina
Slamming the door to the latrines behind me, I let out the breath my lungs are screaming at me to release.
Across the hall in the dorms, the other cadets, Diana included, woke up and almost immediately started stripping. Nightshirts tossed aside, underwear changed, bare skin everywhere.
No privacy, no hesitation, no deep jagged scars carved through shoulder blades.
I’m not a prude, not by Helvane standards anyway. Part of me respects their confidence, almost admires them for it.
Dare I admit, if envy were something I allowed myself to feel, I may have felt it just now.
What happened to Virtishans don’t feel envy or get jealous?
We don’t.
Sure about that?
Positive.
Besides, it wasn’t envy that drove me to grab my uniform and flee, it was self-preservation.
Dressing here in the latrines is safer, it already feels like keeping my inability to fly a secret is going to be harder than hiding that my surname is Helvane. Why help them by parading my scars in their faces?
I dip into the middle cubicle and slide the lock into place, to be sure no one can walk in on me.
The Ferrum-issued uniform dangles from two fingers, black leather threaded with silver. It’s too much, or more accurately, too little. Too different. Why so much leather? Isn’t it supposed to be stiff and suffocating?
With no real choice, and the Overlord’s pointed warning not to skip breakfast hovering over me, I pull on the pants and brace for discomfort, but the leather softens the moment it touches my skin like butter, warming instantly and molding itself to my legs.
The top dips lower than anything I’ve ever worn, but the silver stitching framing the edges where leather meets exposed skin is surprisingly beautiful.
The outfit may cling to my skin and show every curve, but my scars are covered.
When I slide the lock free and step out of the cubicle, all dark leather and boots with a thousand buckles, I freeze.
The polished sheet of silver framed above the sink shows a girl I don’t recognize.
I move closer. The black makes my amber eyes flare like molten lava, and my chestnut hair looks redder than ever, almost fiery in the orblit, windowless room.
I splash cold water on my face, trying to scrub away the shadows left by a sleepless night, but all it does is make the sting behind my eyes worse.
The door groans open and my heart skips a beat.
Please not Lilliana. Please not Lilliana. Please not Lilliana.
I’m not ready to deal with her.
Now is not the time to even think about what she did last night, let alone face her down and watch her gloat.
I left my journal hanging over one of the rods of the bedframe hidden by the mattress, airing out. The academy-issued white shirt below it, absorbing the water dripping from the soaked pages.
I only hope that the fire is close enough to dry it out quickly so I can test it. Learn how bad the damage is and let my father know where I am.
Until then, I don’t want to think about it. I can’t think about it, not without panicking. And panic leads people to make stupid decisions which I can’t afford to make. Not here.
I sigh in relief when thankfully, it’s not Lilliana who enters the latrines. It’s Khali.
The relief that hits me is short lived, overtaken by concern I’ve traded one demoness for another. Khali is not a friend; she’s one of them. Khali’s cruelty, if she possesses any, which she must, doesn’t run as deep as Lilliana’s. At the very least, it doesn’t simmer on the surface like hers does.
Khali walks up to me with the effortless confidence of someone who’s slept soundly, her boots clicking sharply against the stone. Her uniform fits her like she was born in it, no fidgeting, no awkward adjustments, no checking her back is fully concealed.
She stops beside me, giving my reflection a slow, assessing sweep.
“Well, damn, Seraphina. Didn’t expect you to pull off the training gear so well.”
“Um… thanks?”
“Yes, it's a compliment, and no, it’s not vain or prideful or whatever nonsense you tell yourself when you get given one. Accept it. You look pretty badass, for a nephilim. Turn around.”
I do, terrified she’ll spy a crooked edge of a scar. Her fingers find my hair, and I stiffen as she gathers it in her hands.
“Relax,” she mutters. “If I was going to slit your throat, I wouldn’t do it here. You need this off your face.”
“Why not here?” If I was going after a mark, this would be as good as anywhere else. Better even.
Wipeable polished stone floor, running water, buckets, drains…
“You’re right,” she says as though I disagreed rather than merely asked a question. “Here would be kind of perfect actually. But I’m not going to, okay?”
Before I can answer, long nails part my hair and section it.
I don’t breathe at all while her hands move.
Thankfully she’s fast, clearly well practiced, and strangely gentle.
When she lets go and steps back, I exhale.
What just happened?
Two long braids fall either side of my face where my loose hair had been moments before.
“Much better. But—” she turns me around, nudges my chin up with her forefinger, then holds me by the shoulders, looking me up and down.
She’s far too friendly and comfortable being in my personal space given we were strangers yesterday.
It’s unnerving.
Even more so when it’s someone who looks like she grew up sticking pins in other children’s dolls for fun.
Until she smiles, that is, which is even more unnerving.
“We should add some black around your eyes. Make them even fiercer.” She narrows her eyes at me and smiles wickedly. “Or I could take you to the nephilim at The Rec later who does tattoos? Beautiful work, sharpest lines I’ve ever seen. Ink as dark as an Overlord’s sense of humor.”
The thought twists something in my gut. I glance to the side, meeting my own gaze in the mirror, then give a shaky laugh. “No thanks. I already look dem—” I catch myself. “—different enough in all this leather.”
Khali snorts, releasing her hold on my arms and shrugs. “Suit yourself. But trust me, you could pull it off.”
I stare at the girl in the mirror again.
Can Khali sense it? That thing inside me? The spark that speaks to darkness louder than to light?
I swallow hard.
Is it growing? A tiny ember swelling into something living and breathing? Is it this place, this island, feeding it? Giving it room to grow, space that it has no business having.
By the angels, I hope not.
“First lesson,” Silver says before the doors have fully swung shut in his wake. “You move how I tell you to move, and you breathe how I tell you to breathe. Do that, and you might just make it out of the games alive.”
He gestures to our feet.
“Stance. Shoulder-width. Knees soft.”
I adjust a beat after the others, letting my weight settle the wrong way at first, then correcting it after a quick glance at the cadets along the line, as though my siblings back home didn’t spend years instructing me the way the Overlord is doing now.
Silver moves down the line with a wooden staff, tapping a shin here, a heel there. He stops in front of a male whose legs look far too straight, knees locked.
“What’s your name?”
“Elijah Adin, sir.”
“You’re not stone, Adin. Soft knees.”
The male nods, quickly doing as he’s told.
“Hands at the ribs,” Silver instructs. “Open. As if you hold a bowl of water.”
I lift my hands, making sure my imaginary bowl sloshes, just a little. Good. Average. Not clumsy, but not entirely competent either.
“We start with breath,” he says. “Inhale through the nose for four counts. Hold for two. Exhale for six.”
I breathe with the group, and by the fifth cycle, the line is quieter and my own breaths are calmer.
“Good. Now, as we work on your form, synchronize your breath with the movement.”
Silver leans the staff against a column and drops into his starting stance. He’s dressed as the other male recruit’s dress, except where their training gear has ‘Ferrum’ in silver stitching like mine, his is plain.
A wall of lean muscle wrapped in black, tight trews, heavy black boots and leather bracers which hug strong wrists and show the hint of veins.
The shirt clings to his broad shoulders and the dark fabric pulls tightly across a chest that shouldn’t look that sculpted beneath something so simple.
The lacing down the front leaves sweat slick skin exposed, like he did a full workout while we were eating breakfast.
I can see more of those pale, scar-like patterns now, crawling up from under his shirt, twisting around and climbing up his neck, cut off by his sharp jawline.
“We start with the kata known as the Quiet Ember,” he explains. “A simple form, but no one here is too good or important for basics. Once that is muscle memory, we will move onto the Iron Root. You’ll hate it, but this is how I start every morning, and now so do you. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Yes, Overlord.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Good. First, watch me, then join in when you have the sequence memorized.”
He inhales, lifting his guard, then moves in a confident, relaxed rhythm, as though he doesn’t have forty-two eyes watching his every step. Forty-two ears trained on his every breath.
The line hums with a mix of admiration at the sight of such a quietly disciplined warrior, and appreciation for the male form.
I know better.
I know what slithers under those silver swirls covering his skin. I know what happens when they glow.
Like I know he can knock all of us unconscious without needing to touch us, if he so wishes.
The demon is more dangerous than any disciplined warrior with a strict workout routine.
And I am pretty sure he hates me.
“One,” he calls out.
Shield. Exhale. Inhale, return.
“Two.”
Palm. Exhale. Inhale, return.
“Three.”
Elbow. Exhale. Inhale, guard.
“Four.”
Kick. Inhale. Settle, exhale.
“Repeat.”
It’s familiar, almost detrimentally so. The hardest part is acting like it isn’t, and though the forms he strikes are similar to how my siblings taught it, I can’t help but think that the name makes no sense.
Quiet Ember?
Hardly.