You’re disgusting.
“Focus,” Tristan insisted, and I clenched my jaw in response.
“Iamfocusing.”
“You’ve barely produced a single flame,” he argued. “Three days ago you wouldn’t have even broken a sweat, and now your eyes are flickering like a dying candle, Morrigan.”
“Stop saying my name like that!” I yelled at him.
“Like what?! It’syourname!”
“And stop standing so close to me.” I took a couple of steps back to get some air, and Tristan just stood there, gaping at me in confusion.
It had been two days since I had that dream, and I still couldn’t bring myself to look Tristan in the eye. But the tension I felt never went away. I was on edge constantly.
“Princess!” Azrael called out from the other side of the garden. “Practice with us!”
I turned to see him smiling as he turned back around, lifting his tiny blade and throwing it. It landed in the tree, right at the center of the “X” that Malakai had drawn.
“Come on!” Malakai waved me over. “I’ll teach you!”
“Go,” Tristan agreed, taking his own step back from me. “Maybe you could use a break.”
Without sparing him a single glance, I turned and jogged over to them. Azrael was walking to the tree to retrieve his dagger, and Malakai pulled one of his own from his chest belt. “Have you ever used one before?”
“I very much doubt it!” Mara yelled nearby.
I looked over my shoulder and saw her sitting on a small patio. She was watching us, but the look on her face conveyed that there were likely hundreds of things she would rather be doing.
I turned back to Malakai. “A knife?” I teased, trying to ignore the girl behind us. Then, a quick image of Maeryn lying beneath me caused a lump to form in my throat. “Yeah… I’ve used a knife.”
He ignored the change in my tone and placed the blade into my hand before turning my body to face a different tree. This one had marks all over it, punctures from Malakai throwing his blade beside Azrael. The blade in my hand looked different than the ones that the lords typically carried. The hilt was flat instead of rounded, making it uncomfortable to hold the normal way.
Wrapping my fingers around the handle, I peeled it back over my shoulder, but Malakai stopped my arm with his hand. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he laughed. “That’s not how you hold it, spitfire.”
“Spitfire? What happened toprincessorYour Grace?” I meant it only teasingly. I actuallyhatedbeing called those titles. It made me feel less of a person, and more of a construct that had been written onto a piece of paper.
He shrugged off my comment, and moved the handle to the tips of my fingers, making me pinch the end of it. “Would you like to know how ImetTristan?” he asked, moving behind me.
“Yes.”
His hand covered mine, and he lifted it like it was his own, raising it over my shoulder. “When you release, flick your wrist and follow through. Keep your eyes on the center of the target.”
He let go of me, and I did as he instructed, but the blade landed almost a foot below and to the left.
“When the gods sent us here, we weren’t dead like most others in this world. No, we were just the pawns of their war that they needed to dispose of. But, if they needed to use us again, they wanted to make sure we were still accessible to them.” He placed another blade into my hand, and I turned my head to look at him, but he turned my head to face forward again with his fingers. “Sight on the target, spitfire.”
Rolling my eyes, I lifted my hand over my shoulder, as he had shown me before, and tried to throw again. This time it landed to the right.
“They didn’t just drop us here, though. They had tried to undo the magic that gave us the ability to change into mortals, but something went wrong. Instead, most of us were stuck in this nightmarish state of shifting over and over again.
We continued a pattern of me throwing, and him handing the blade back to me. I didn’t move or speak, not wanting to interrupt him.
“Tristan happened upon me one day while he and Mara were searching for a way out of here. He saw me shifting, crying out in pain. I had always been a little unhinged—more animal than man…”
“You don’t say,” Ichuckled.
His chest pressed against my back as he laughed with me. “Yeah… Well, I don’t know how long I had been in that state, but it broke something. Something I can’t seem to fix.”
