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Ever since Halley had shown up at Willow Grove, I had acknowledged she was a beautiful woman, but Eli had made his interest clear, and I had no intention of messing with that. Plus, with my job to befriend Halley and slip into her past, it didn’t feel right to look at the girl as anything more than an obligation. But now, everything was flipped upside down.
The job I had been given was utter bullshit. In fact, I’m sure the whole purpose was to see if Halley knew the truth of her past, not to see if there were any other Enchanters left. The Council knew for a fact that there wasn’t. And now I regretted that I hadn’t made an actual effort to befriend her, because from what I’d seen recently, she was the type of woman others gravitated towards. And I couldn’t deny that I was slowly being drawn into that unexplainable pull.
Shaking my head out of those thoughts, I refocused on our lesson for the day. Now that we knew where Sanctum Library was, Halley and I had decided that looking into her mother’s past would leave us more frustrated than anything. Giving up on that, we were now focusing on increasing her power threshold. We knew from the first attack that anger fueled her power like nothing else, but I also knew we didn’t want another appearance of the freaky smoke that had her murdering dozens of people with a flick of her wrist. Not that the power wouldn’t come in handy, but she didn’t know how to control it and the entire plan to find the prophecy would be useless if she slaughtered Divines along with the Hunters.
Which meant that Halley needed to learn control. Unfortunately, I’veseenplenty to know that the other three imbeciles weren’t doing much to work on her control. Her sessions with Wilder often ended with one of them storming out and her and Madden or Eli never made it to the halfway mark before clothes started coming off. Once I realized what was happening in those sessions, I made sure to never focus on those visions again. I may have realized belatedly that Halley was one of the most enticing women I’d ever met but that didn’t mean I would invade her privacy and watch her like some creep.
So, given the issues with her other training, I was here to make sure that Halley was still actually improving with enchantments. Especially now that she would be going against the Hunters once again. Eli and I would be pushed back and wouldn’t have the opportunity to make sure she wasn’t injured. I knew Madden would do everything to protect her, but it didn’t hurt for her to have more experience as well.
“This is useless. I can still only feel the same amount of power.”
Halley’s words pulled my focus towards her face, my eyes zoned in on her pursed lips, her frustration bubbling over. Moving my gaze to her eyes, I responded calmly.
“It’s not useless. It will just take some time. When I first manifested my powers, I was only able to see a few days into the future and only hours into the past. It took a full year and lots of practice to get where I’m at now.”
And that was the truth. No one knew exactly what they were doing when they first got their powers. Although we were all born with them, they were like muscles. You needed to work them out to make them stronger. And the same would go for Halley and her powers, the only problem was –
“I don’t have time though Knox.” Halley sounded, echoing the thought inside my head. “The Council is trying to actively kill me and yeah, I could just hide, but what about the Hunters? They may have made some sort of shady deal, but they still want the rest of the Divines dead. Ineedto learn and quickly.”
Halley’s frustration began to mingle with my own because she wasn’t wrong. The Divines chosen to fight were walking into a massacre but fuck. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Did no one realize how fucking hard it was to teach an Enchantress about her powerswhen we had no fucking clue how they even worked.And why was everything falling onto my shoulders? I was supposed to be dealing with these issues with the help of others and yet the Council were the cause of half our problems, Zachariah wasn’t the man I thought he was, and Eli and Madden were more concerned about exploring Halley’s body than her powers.
The frustration over everything began bubbling to the surface of my skin, ready to burst. Usually, I loved being in charge. I enjoyed the feeling of having the plan and others leaning on me. But a man could only take so much, and I was ready to snap. Halley must have noticed, because her voice lowered, and she laid a palm on my thigh in comfort.
“Hey, I don’t mean to stress you out. I’m not expecting you to turn me into a super soldier within a couple of days. We’re all just freaking out a little bit.” I could hear her words, but all I could focus on was problem after problem. And how I was failing at them all.
Suddenly, soft hands were on my cheeks, drawing my attention to hypnotizing gold eyes.
“Knox, fixing everything is not all up to you. We’ll figure this out together, yeah? Me and you.”
Her words seemed to snap me out of my minor freak out and I felt my muscles start to relax. Halley must have felt it too because she drew back, taking her warmth and comfort with her, making me want to beg her to come back. But now wasn’t the time for that. We had much more pressing issues at hand than the attraction I was desperately trying to fight off for the sake of my best friend.
“You said that control starts with the big emotions, but then I need to focus it. Explain that more.” Halley took the lead, and I was thankful to not be the leader for once. I was also thankful that she was putting me in my element, explaining facts.
Nodding my head at her, I began explaining the topic. Obviously, feelings were the key to our powers, but Divines weren’t going around constantly in a state of heightened emotion. In fact, one of the most common lessons in Sector specific classes was on how to control the emotions to heighten your power. And although different for each Sector, that was my plan for Halley today. Clearly, she had plenty of emotion to fuel her power, but she needed to learn how to control it instead of letting it control her.
“Without even realizing it, you’ve done it a couple times. First, when you healed me at your dorm. You focused the emotion from your memory and fueled it and then again with healing the rest of the students. The difference between those two situations and with you taking out the Hunters was they were preplanned. You knew what you wanted to do and so the focus was already there. What you need to work on is feeling a sudden emotion and channeling your power to do whatyouwant.”
Halley focused intently on my words, and I could see her head spinning, trying to take in all the information. Although Halley could have shown up here and said fuck it all, I admired her drive to learn and master her powers. Most people wouldn’t be so focused if they were in her position.
“I get what you’re saying, I really do, but how am I supposed to practice that? If what you’re saying is true, then every time I know what’s going to happen, it isn’t the same as when the emotions come out of nowhere and spark my powers.”
Thankfully, I had already thought of this. I wasn’t going to attempt to get random emotions out of her at random times, I figured that was just asking for a disaster. But we could attempt something else.
“We can’t randomize your emotions, but we can catch you off guard with what you need to do. Different enchantments take different amounts of power. I figure I can just throw different things at you that will need different enchantments to practice changing the amount of power you’re using.”
I didn’t go into detail about why this was important, but the truth was, Halleyneededto learn control. Right now, we were basing it off the fact that she needed to be capable of enchantments to protect and attack the Hunters. But I knew the other reason for her needing control. With access to the Council books, I had seen the documentation of what Enchanters were capable of, especially back on Agrum Di Vinum. And after seeing Halley’s destruction of the Hunters, it was clear she would one day be capable of the same if not more. If Halley didn’t learn to control her power before she became too strong, she wouldn’t just take out a large group of Hunters, she would destroy us all.
“Okay. Let’s do this. I’ve been reading up on more enchantments, so I have plenty to practice.” Halley responded, clapping her hands together and standing up from the floor. Pushing thoughts of what she could possibly do out of my head, I focused on the task at hand. I spent enough time sifting through the future, I didn’t need to think about the possibility of hers right now.
Standing up across from her, I began going through the list of enchantments I knew she had been practicing. We had all decided to discuss Halley’s progress so we were all on the same page and so I figured I knew most of what she could possibly do.
I began walking around the study room, trying to deter Halley from reading my movements. As quick as I could, I picked up a large textbook on the desk and threw it straight at her. The heavy book slammed into her arm, and she cursed loudly.
“That required a shield. A simple one we both know you can do.” I remarked, sarcasm tinting my tone.
Halley nodded sternly, shaking out her arm and refocusing on me as I continued to detour around the room. Sauntering over to the lights, I flicked them off and within seconds, they were back on. I smiled encouragingly but then shut them off again, quickly interrupting her.
“If we’re outside, it’s dark, you can’t turn lights on.” I reminded her, thinking of a random scenario.
