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My second sprint was four and a half minutes long. Which meant I still had two to go. My third run was four minutes exactly. Rhyan let me rest and guzzle water before starting on round four. I only needed to finish in four minutes one more time, and it would be over.
But I came in at five minutes. And then six.
“Ready to go again?” Rhyan tossed me a towel from his pack.
Sweat was pouring down my face, and my stomach was twisting from my latest cramp. I wiped down my forehead and the back of my neck before throwing the towel at him. He caught it just before it hit his face. I was frustrated and tired. But I wanted to finish. I wanted to prove to him and to myself I could do this—I could get through our first day of his training.
“Let’s go,” I said through gritted teeth.
I came in at eight minutes and collapsed to my knees, trying to catch my breath. Another cramp was forming in my stomach, and hot tears burned behind my eyes.
“Eight minutes? That’s worse than your average,” Rhyan said. “I thought you were taking this seriously.”
“I am taking it seriously,” I spat. “I’m exhausted. I’ve run for practically an hour already. The same Godsdamned thing we do every day.”
He stood over me. “We’re not here to do what we do every day.”
“I’ve done what you asked for twice. Maybe that’s all my body can do.”
“I didn’t tell you to do it twice. I told you to do it three times. And I told you to do it three times because I actually know what your body can do, and it’s more than what you just did. Now are you going to run another four-minute lap, or am I wasting my time?”
I swallowed a curse and several nasty things I could have called Rhyan. He extended his hand, and I grabbed it, his fingers immediately tightening over mine as he pulled me to my feet.
“What’s the problem, Lyr?”
“I’m fucking tired.”
“Then you should have finished this exercise a long time ago. I told you, you could have done it three times, not even fifteen minutes of running, or we could be here all day. It was your choice.”
“How was it my choice? I can’t help the way my body is built.”
“This has nothing to do with how your body is built,” he snarled. “This has to do with your mind. You ran two four-minute laps. There’s not a single reason why you couldn’t do a third one.”
“You try running without magic—hungover.”
“I have,” he said. “And I did it whipped and lashed, with my wounds still healing.”
“And?” I asked through gritted teeth. “How did that go for you?”
His eyes narrowed, his gaze on me sparking with intensity. “I ran them in three.”
“Ugh.”
“Lyr, I’m serious. You think that it’s your body’s fault, that it’s your hangover’s fault, that it’s because you don’t have magic, that you stayed up late. None of that matters now. None of that makes a difference. You’re in a different arena, and you are not the girl who walked through those doors a month ago. You can do this.”
I sucked in a breath, wanting to believe him, but I was just so tired.
“Remember what I told you?” he said. “The soturi relying on their magic and not themselves for speed will run out of their energy stores faster than they realize. They will never know true strength because they never needed to build it, to cultivate it, or to feel it for themselves. Not like you. Not like me. If you’d wanted to run the lap three times in four minutes, you would have. I’ve been watching and training you for a month. Even hungover, you could have done it. But you didn’t.” His eyes darkened. “So tell me, why didn’t you want to?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“Try harder,” he said.
“I don’t fucking know! I don’t have a reason. What sane person wouldn’t have wanted to finish already?” I threw up my hands. The wind was gathering speed, cooling my face down from the heat that had built inside my body.
“Are you tired of running?” he asked.
“Yes.”
