Page 20

Chapter 19

I’LL TAKE ALL THE DEALS

T he morning training session was with Pashim. Now back in his black armor outfit, he was far removed from the drohi who’d sat with me in the kitchen late last night while I scarfed food.

It was a sunny day with clear skies, but the air was cold and biting, whistling through my hair and seeping under my clothes. We warmed up quickly when we set to work with laps and lunges before moving on to sparring. Pashim put me with Dharma and Priti, and we took turns attacking each other. I got to test out my strength, and even though the number of spectators today was much smaller, I made sure to hold back, always pulling the punch at the last minute.

True to his word, Pashim spent a half hour extra with me after class, teaching me proper form when throwing a punch. We practiced without making actual contact for a while, and I was getting the hang of it when he said, “Hit me.”

“What?”

He canted his head, a half-smile playing on his lips. “There is no one here, Leela. No one watching. You can hit me.”

I wanted to because it was the only way to know the true extent of my strength. “Are you…Are you sure?”

He arched an amused brow. “Leela, I’m a drohi. I can take a hit from a mortal.”

“Okay.” A little moth fluttered in my belly as I prepared my stance and then swung.

Contact with his hard abs radiated up my arm, and Pashim’s boots left the ground as he shot away from me, arching through the air toward the platform.

I let out a shocked cry because he was going to smash into it, but he vanished before he could hit it, reappearing in a crouch a few feet away, fingers grazing the sand.

We stared at each other for a stunned beat before he stood slowly, almost warily. “You will continue to hold back in training sessions.”

I winced. “Ravi said the same thing. He said that I should have been a broken mess from being repelled by Guru Chandra’s shield.”

“Because he knows what the shield can do. Guru Chandra’s shield is what we call an astra, a powerful weapon gifted to him by the chakra. As a born god, he achieved his astra through centuries of mediation, and karmic deeds. But since the rise of the devouring force, he along with all other born gods are barred from the battlefield.

“Training the future gods is the only way he can contribute to the war now. The shield should have crippled you, and the rakshasa is right, the other demigods who saw the incident will also know this. So going forward, use your true strength only if you have no other choice, otherwise save it for the labyrinth. Hopefully people will conclude that maybe Guru Chandra’s shield wasn’t fully activated during contact.”

“Do you think that might be the case?”

“I don’t know.”

“You really think the other demigods will try to hurt me if they believe I’ll grow to be stronger than them?”

“I’m certain.”

I’d hoped that Ravi was being overly cautious and that in time…I didn’t even know what I’d been thinking. “I’m not sure I can do this…Not without Araz.”

“Ascending really matters to you, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. But probably not for the reasons you think.” I told him about my grandmother, about the thing that killed her. “She’s still inside it. Her soul is trapped. I have to find it and kill it, so I need this. I need to be a god.”

“Pishacha are vicious,” Pashim said. His gaze turned inward as if searching a memory, and a prickle ran over my scalp because I got the impression that maybe his knowledge was more than academic.

“Have you seen one?”

“Once.” He shook himself out of his reverie. “They belong to the devouring force, and if one found its way into your world, it means it’s attempting to stop us reaping. No demigods mean no new Asura.” He took a breath and leveled me with a determined look. “I’ll help you until Araz finds it in his heart to take my place.”

A rush of relief left me weak. “Thank you. But I don’t think Araz ever will. I’m the reason he’s stuck here, after all. Although none of the other drohi seem to mind. You don’t seem to mind.”

“It’s difficult to miss what you’ve never had,” Pashim said.

“I don’t understand.”

“I was raised here. I know nothing else. But Araz is one of the few that wasn’t. He was brought to Aakaash when he was twelve summers old. This lanky, dirty, angry thing that had daggers in his eyes. He didn’t speak for months as the tantrik worked with him, to help him settle. When he finally did speak, it was to me. He is my friend, but even I cannot claim to know the heart of him. He says he doesn’t remember much about his life before, but the desire to leave, to be free of this place has never waned, even though I doubt he knows what it is he truly craves. ”

“I don’t understand…He was brought here by force?”

“He’s a drohi. We belong to the gods. Our mothers agree to unions with the Danava. They agree to produce offspring to give into Asura care. They understand what’s at stake and how important their offerings are. Araz’s mother had no right to try and keep him.”

That sentence was all kinds of wrong, but he obviously believed in what he was saying, and why wouldn’t he? This was all he knew. This place. This role. But Araz…He didn’t want to be here. Probably never had, and he’d been so close to getting out when I’d happened.

I hated that I was the shackle keeping him here. If only there was a way for us both to get what we wanted.

“Come,” Pashim said. “I’ll walk you back to barracks so you can eat before afternoon session.”

“Will you stay?”

He smiled down at me. “Would you like me to?”

“Is the sky blue?”

He frowned and looked up. “I believe so.”

I bit back a laugh. “No. It’s a phrase like, you ask me something, and I throw a question back, the answer to which is obviously yes and then…”

He was looking at me blankly again.

“Never mind. Yes. Yes, I’d like you to stay.”

We stood in a group on the platform above the dummy run while Guru Mihir listed the safety rules: Do not crowd any one element of the course, give your fellow potentials room, and don’t be an idiot.

There were three tracks to the dummy run, copies of each other, so three participants could run it side by side. I wasn’t sure if this would be a timed test or not. No idea how we’d be scored. But first things first—I needed to get through it without falling off or getting knocked off.

Dharma bolted forward as soon as Guru Mihir gave us the green light, and Chaya ran along the ground parallel to her, calling out encouragement and instructions.

I caught a ripple in the air to her left.

Then another farther along the track. There was something there, hidden from the eye.

The ankh? It had to be one of the invisible watchers that worked with Eben the record keeper. But hadn’t Eben said we wouldn’t be able to see them? Maybe I’d misunderstood.

Dharma made it across the rotating log and onto the platform with spikes. She watched them jut up and drop, waiting to learn the pattern. We waited with her, holding our breath as she rocked on the balls of her feet .

Finally, she broke away and ran.

The spikes shot up behind her and in front, then dipped, slicing the air where she’d been a moment ago. More appeared farther along the platform, but she kept running at them. My heart shot into my throat. What was she doing? She was going to slam right into them. Oh fuck. But they dropped a split second before she reached them, allowing her to run across unscathed.

“Yes!” Priti pumped the air.

Next was the chasm and the frame that ran above it, thick with vines.

Dharma flew across half of it, then fell, hitting the sawdust below with a yell. “It fucking bit me.”

It was only then that I noticed some of the vines moving. Not vines. Snakes. “I thought this was a dummy course.”

“It is,” Guru Mihir said. “Mostly. The snakes here are not venomous.”

Meaning that the ones on the proper course were? Great.

Chaya tended to Dharma, checking the bite and helping her to her feet.

“Well,” Guru Mihir said. “What are you all waiting for? Sunset?”

Joe and Priti climbed onto the other two platforms and began the course.

I dithered behind Eve and Sylvie, the twins Poppy and Regina whispering strategy behind me. The drohi ran along the ground, parallel to their demigod, shouting encouragement and offering advice.

Joe got trapped in the blunt wooden spikes, and his drohi helped to extract him. Priti made it across the log but got knocked off at the spikes. Joe fell into the fake chasm.

My stomach tightened the closer I got to it being my turn. I wasn’t good with this stuff. I’d avoided physical education at school where possible. All I had going for me was my stamina, built up by lonely hours on the treadmill at the gym.

But I was a demigod now. I mean…I was strong so…I could do this, right?

You’d think my inner voice would be able to come up with a better pep talk. Urgh. I was almost up when my scalp tightened in that way that warned me that I was being watched. I searched the area and spotted the rakshasa group sitting on the wall that bisected the two arenas.

Ravi lifted his chin slightly in greeting, but the sensation of being watched didn’t ebb. Maybe the ankh were?—

I spotted Araz on the platform behind me. He stood with his arms crossed, an impassive look on his face, but he was here.

He'd come.

Tension warred with relief in my belly as I stepped up to take my turn on the course. Araz didn’t join me, choosing to remain on the platform, but baby steps.

I bounced on my feet, shook out my limbs, and ran across the rotating log.

I was doing it. Ha, I was?—

My foot slipped, and I fell, flailing all the way to the ground, where I landed with a crunch that sent fire up my arm and into my shoulder.

“Leela!” Dharma came running over.

But I couldn’t focus because the pain in my arm was like blades slicing into me then turning into lava.

“Oh fuck. Oh fuck, your arm.” Dharma’s hands fluttered around me, not touching me.

The arm in question hung oddly at my side, and it fucking hurt like a bitch.

A shadow fell over us.

I looked up at Araz through a sheen of tears.

“Move,” he said to Dharma.

She shuffled out of the way to allow him to crouch close to me.

He reached for my arm.

“Don’t touch it. It hurts!”

“I know,” he said. “But I can make it better. Will you let me?”

I choked back a sob and nodded, breathing fast and shallow. “Do it.”

He grasped my shoulder and my arm, looked me straight in the eye and said, “Feel free to scream.”

He did some twist-push motion. My vision whited out, a scream vibrating in my throat, then the pain was gone. I sagged, sobbing in sweet relief and hating the whole wimpy vibe I was giving off.

“You’ll be fine,” he said. “Dislocated shoulder. Fixed now.”

He glanced over my head before reaching for me again.

I tensed and reared back. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to pick you up,” he bit out.

“Why?”

“Because you’re hurt, and I’m your drohi.”

He scooped me into his arms before I could protest and carried me away. We passed my friends, and I noted the nods that the drohi gave Araz and how he held me tighter in response. It felt…nice. It felt right.

We passed Guru Mihir, who watched us with a hooded expression but didn’t stop us. Across the platform, the main arena, then into the compound we went before I found my voice past the lump of inexplicable emotion in my throat.

“I’m fine you know.”

“Oh, I know that,” he said. “A dislocated shoulder is nothing. The way you screamed, however…best to let them believe you’re more hurt than you are. And that I give a damn.”

My belly filled with ice. “What?”

He dropped me, and I staggered forward, catching myself on the wall.

“What the fuck? ”

He looked down his nose at me, the corner of his mouth lifting in a cruel smile. “Oh dear, did you think I cared? Maybe you thought last night meant more than it did.” He took a step forward, and I locked my knees to hold my ground, but it meant tipping my head back to look at him. It meant giving him the high ground and allowing him to make me feel small, not just emotionally but physically, because for a moment I’d actually allowed myself to hope…Fuck…

When I spoke, I was grateful that my voice didn’t tremble. “Last night was a fluke. It shouldn’t have happened.”

“You’re correct. It shouldn’t have. Because you shouldn’t have been in my bed. I told you that I’d punish you if you touched my things.”

“Yeah, that kiss was particularly bad.”

“We both know that’s not true. You enjoyed it, and you will remember it as something you will never, ever, get to experience again.”

“Ditto, big guy.”

He looked at me blankly.

“It means, same to you . Like, you’ll remember it too and…and never get to…Fuck off.” I turned to walk away, but he grabbed my arm and shoved me against the wall, caging me with his body. He cupped my cheek, his gaze one of deep concern.

“Does it still hurt?” he asked.

I stared at him dumbfounded .

“Leela.” His tone softened. “Does your arm still hurt?”

It was the first time I’d heard him say my name, and although the dichotomy of the situation wasn’t lost on me, I couldn’t help but marvel at the way it sounded coming out of his mouth.

“I’m…I’m good.”

His gaze flicked to the side and then he released me with a snort. “It’s gone.”

“Gone? What…” Comprehension crept over me like an icy shroud. His concern had been an act for an invisible audience. Again.

He rolled his eyes. “You really are pathetic. Let me make my position crystal clear. I will attend your training. I will be present and attentive, but I will do only the minimum required to keep the ankh satisfied. However, if you should experience a mortal wound or find yourself in mortal danger, do not count on me. Your life is a hindrance to mine. I would see it snuffed out if I could. Do you understand?”

This was it, the middle ground. This was all he was willing to offer me, but…it was a start.

I fixed a smile on my face and beamed it up at him. “Fine, you have a deal.”

“What? No. I’m not making a deal . I’m telling you how it’s going to be.”

“Yes, yes, I know. And I’m telling you that I agree. So, it’s a deal.” I dipped under his arm and started walking down the corridor toward the barracks .

“Wait! No, that isn’t what I meant.”

“Oh, I know.”

If he wanted to play mind games, then so be it. Pretending was simply practice for the real thing, right?