Draekora

  “You said Roka isn’t training you properly because he’s afraid to hurt you, correct?”

  Alex made an affirmative sound, not quite following.

  “And as you’ve clearly seen, I hold no such reservations towards you.”

  She nodded, still feeling the throbbing of the bruises.

  “Then the logical conclusion is that I’ll train you so that you’ll be ready to fight this Meyarin when you return to the future,” he said. “Or at least be better prepared than you are now.”

  Alex couldn’t believe the magnitude of what he was offering. It was actually the perfect solution, since she knew Niyx wouldn’t hold back like Roka did. And he’d clearly proven himself an expert swordsman. But still—

  “I’m going to regret saying this,” Alex said, “but since you’re making that offer, I’m presuming you’d be equally willing to keep it secret along with everything else you’ve learned tonight. So why are you okay with me keeping my Claim on you until I leave?”

  A strange glint came into Niyx’s eyes, part dangerous, part mischievous, as he reached for her wrist and pulled her non-scarred hand towards him. In a flash of movement he drew a hidden dagger from his belt and slashed it lightly across the back of her knuckles.

  “Ow!” she cried, yanking her arm back and curling her other hand protectively over the wound. “What the hell, Niyx?”

  In response, he held up his right hand. In the exact same spot as where he’d sliced open her skin, he had a matching cut on his flesh; his bleeding silver while hers bled red.

  She looked from his hand to hers and back again. In a strangled voice, she asked, “What just happened?”

  “The safest way for me to train you, especially if I’m not pulling my punches, is to know how injured you are, how much strength you have and how much further I can push you before you break,” Niyx said, tearing off part of his ripped shirt and reaching for Alex’s hand, tying the wet material around her cut before repeating the process with his own. “The bond between us will allow me to know all that without the guesswork in between.”

  “That didn’t happen last time I was Claimed,” Alex responded shakily. But then again, neither Alex nor Aven had been injured while she was under the effect of his bond. She’d only been stabbed by A’enara after she’d freed herself from Aven’s Claim.

  “It wouldn’t have,” Niyx said, “because you didn’t perform the ritual, it was performed on you.”

  As if to help her understand, he pressed his dagger against his own flesh this time, on the skin further up his forearm. When blood started welling out, Alex turned to look along the line from her wrist to her elbow, but there was nothing there at all.

  “I don’t understand,” Alex said. “Why do you get hurt with me, but I don’t get hurt with you?”

  “That’s just the way the bond works,” he said. “It’s your life force that’s shared with me, not the other way around. That means what you feel, I feel. You healed me when you performed the Claiming ritual, but from what I understand, that’s a one-time deal, which is for the best since all that glowing was a bit too weird for me, if you know what I’m saying.”

  Alex did. She absolutely did. But she still didn’t quite understand the rest. Even so, she let it go and summarised, “So if I get hurt, you get hurt, which is how you’ll know if you’ve pushed me too far in the training?”

  Niyx nodded.

  “And you’re willing to give up your freedom just so you can know how much pressure I can take?”

  “It’s quite noble of me, if you think about it,” he said pensively. “Giving up my will in order to save the future of the world.”

  Alex felt a crushing weight settle on her chest. “Niyx,” she said, “about the future—about your future…”

  She didn’t know what she was going to say, but in the end, she didn’t have to say anything.

  “Don’t, Aeylia,” he said, reaching forward to press a finger to her lips. “I don’t want to know what my future is. I just want to make sure I do have one, along with everyone else in Meya. Okay?”

  Slowly, she nodded and he took his finger away. He then seemed to brace himself.

  “Give the command,” he said, the light of the city casting shadows over his face. “Tell me to keep it all secret.”

  “Ni—”

  His voice was resigned but firm when he said, “Just do it, Aeylia.”

  Knowing it was best for the both of them if she got it over with quickly, she mustered up the courage and ordered, “You won’t tell anyone what happened tonight. You won’t say a word or communicate in any other way about anything we said or did.”

  When the tug of the command eased, Niyx gave a stiff nod and stepped back. “That was broad, but I think you covered it all.”

  “I’m sorry, Niyx,” she said.

  “You did what you had to, Aeylia. Just don’t expect me to be doing cartwheels about it.”

  The image of him doing a cartwheel sprung to her mind and she had to bite back a smile, certain he wouldn’t appreciate the visual as much as she did.

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  “Now is the easy part,” Niyx said. “We both need dry clothes and sleep. It’s tomorrow that’s going to be hard—for you, anyway.”

  Brow furrowed, Alex said, “Why’s that?”

  “Because we begin your training at dawn,” Niyx told her. “And I may have accepted this mess you’ve gotten the both of us into and decided to do the right thing in the face of it all, but that doesn’t mean I’m forgiving about it. Prepare to have your ass handed to you tomorrow, Aeylia. And every other day for the foreseeable future.”

  With those words, he turned on his heel and stormed towards the door, clearly still stung over the command he’d all but forced her to give him.

  Knowing that she shouldn’t, but unable to resist, the moment he was out her door and presumably on the Valispath leaving the palace, Alex called out in her mind, ’Night, Niyx. Sweet dreams.

  His response was instant. I may not be able to kill you without killing myself in the process, but I can still make you wish you were dead. Trust me when I say my pain threshold is significantly higher than yours, mortal.

  Alex retreated from his mind, not sure if she was shaking because she was amused or because she was genuinely fearful. To get her mind off the spiteful Meyarin she was now bonded to, she called out to the other being she shared a connection with.

  Xira, you there?

  When he responded, she followed through on her promise to explain everything to him. After she was done and managed to convince him not to fly down and swallow Niyx whole, she asked the burning question, If he’s now connected to me, does that mean he’s connected to you, since you and I are linked?

  No, Alex, Xiraxus replied. The vaeliana isn’t a bond of blood and it can’t be enacted by anyone but a draekon, regardless of whomever else you might become connected to.

  If it’s not a blood bond, then what is it?

  It’s more a… soul bond, I suppose you would call it, Xiraxus said. Our connection goes beyond flesh, beyond the heart and the mind. It’s founded in the deepest core of who we are. No matter what time or distance separates us, we’ll always be linked to one another.

  Alex blinked into the darkness of her room. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have commitment issues, huh?

  Xiraxus gave a rumbling laugh. Go to sleep, Alex. Dawn isn’t far away and if what you say is true, you’re going to need all the rest you can get before meeting with your Meyarin in the morning.

  With her stomach churning at the mere possibility of what the early training hours might bring, Alex bid sweet dreams to Xiraxus and was left alone, until finally, overcome by the events of the day and heedless of her soaked clothes, she succumbed to sleep.

  Thirty

  Five days later, Alex bent over at the waist, trying to draw oxygen into her desperate lungs.

  “I… just… need… a… minute,” she gasped, holding up a han
d.

  “You have three seconds,” Niyx returned. “One. Two. Three.”

  And then he ruthlessly came at her again, attacking her with the same vigour he’d managed for the last three hours. Non-stop.

  This was what Alex’s life had been like for nearly a whole week now. Upon her dawn wake-up call the morning after saving Niyx, he’d dragged her, still yawning, deep into the Silverwood to begin a rigorous training program that would make even her psychopathic PE teacher tremble in his boots. In fact, being taught by Niyx was worse than taking a lesson with Finn, Karter and Hunter—together. Part of that was probably due to his own frustration over knowing that at any second, despite her promise, she could strip him of his free will. But another part, Alex knew, was because unlike Roka, who had offered to help because she said it was important, Niyx had seen what was in store if Alex failed. And he was determined to have her as prepared as possible to stop that future from happening.

  Thus began a regime the likes of which Alex figured a stint in hell itself would be a pleasant holiday in comparison.

  In other words, Niyx was true to his threat about Alex’s ass being handed to her every… single… day. Multiple times per hour, to be precise. And that was a large reason why they were out in the forest rather than in one of the training halls of the palace—because for what Niyx was making her do, they needed to be near a steady supply of laendra.

  Basically, he hacked the crap out of Alex. The wounds themselves often needed immediate attention, and even if they didn’t, they couldn’t risk anyone else seeing her bleed. From small scratches to nausea-inducing lacerations, even unchecked stab wounds and broken bones, Niyx didn’t hold back in his attacks, regardless of receiving the same injuries as she did thanks to their connection. Despite him feeling firsthand how Alex was handling those injuries—which was often the only reason she remained alive—he really did have a greater pain threshold than hers. What caused her to double over in pain was comparative to an ant bite to him, for all he reacted. When he’d practically severed her sword arm in one of his attacks, he’d merely ripped off a piece of material as a makeshift bandage for her, saying it was a good excuse for them to practise their ambidexterity. He’d then proceeded to attack her left-handed—his own right hand as gored up as hers—and continued until she’d almost expired from blood loss, whereby he’d shoved laendra across her wound and, once healed, forced her to keep training.

  What was amazing, though, was that every day Alex started to see improvement in her Meyarin fighting skills, her injuries becoming less and less. And that was largely because of something that happened on her first day of training. The moment they’d landed in the forest, Niyx hadn’t paused to offer any kind of safety lecture, he’d just launched straight at her. She hadn’t expected the attack and was knocked unconscious almost instantly. When she’d come to, it was with Niyx standing above her, holding a hand to his equally throbbing head and demanding to know why she hadn’t ducked. Furious, she’d yelled back just as loud that she needed a minute to tune in to her Meyarin senses before “—some idiot decides to throw a sucker punch at my face!”

  After that, she’d explained how she went about calming and focusing herself enough to flick the switch to activate the blood in her veins—to which Niyx had looked at her as if she were crazy. He’d then run a hand through his hair and blown her world apart by saying there shouldn’t be a switch—that she needed to be ‘playing Meyarin’ all the time if she truly wanted to become competent enough to face the future. He’d said, if anything, she should have to flick her inner switch in the opposite direction, with the option to ‘act human’ only when she deliberately chose to do so.

  So, along with kicking her butt physically, the unrelenting Meyarin set about helping her remain consistently locked in to her immortal senses. That meant she didn’t just spend her time avoiding the sharp edge of his blade, but she also did other tasks he set out for her: she had to run through the forest for hours using Meyarin speed, like when she’d been on the varrungard; she had to climb up the sheer rock face of the Golden Cliffs, then she had to do it again but by scaling up through a waterfall; she had to hold her breath underwater for impossible lengths of time, and then repeat it in ice water found in crevasses at the top of snow-covered mountains; she had to fall from great distances with nothing to catch her but her own ability to tuck and roll at just the right moment; she had to spend unnatural amounts of time hanging suspended from trees while liberating herself from something similar to a straightjacket—without summoning A’enara; and lastly, and possibly the most extreme, she had to handstand-walk around the rim of a crater at the summit of an active volcano.

  Niyx had, for that one, recruited Xiraxus’s help in ‘spotting’ Alex in case she lost her balance and began to fall into the magma chamber, since despite her Meyarin blood and vaeliana bond, none of them would have survived that. And just to add insult to injury, since the volcano Niyx had chosen was situated on one of Draekora’s floating islands—but how he knew its location, he refused to say—half the winged beasts had come along to watch the show, to Alex’s embarrassment. She’d been forced to look like a total fool walking on her hands around a crater spouting bursts of lava, and they’d practically been calling for popcorn. Even Zaronia hadn’t been able to hide her amusement when the sweaty-faced, skin-burned, clothes-on-fire Alex had stumbled back to the base of the mountain and glared at the entertained assemblage.

  Suffice it to say, Niyx had put Alex through the ringer over the last five days, pushing her to thrive beyond her limit. Every night she fell into an exhausted sleep, only to be awoken at dawn by the merciless Meyarin who seemed to take great delight in her painful misery. Despite their early sessions, he always returned her to the palace in time for her breakfast with the queen, which the king was joining more often than not these days, too—mostly to get away from the manic fervour of the palace’s last-minute festival preparations.

  The times the king joined them were surprisingly enjoyable. Astophe, Alex had quickly discovered, had a sharp wit and a keen intelligence. During one of their early breakfasts together, Astophe had asked if she’d like to play a game of Stix with him. Having never played before, Alex had been hesitant, but Astophe had been a kind and patient teacher, showing her exactly how best to understand the game of strategy that turned out to be a mixture of chess, checkers and tic-tac-toe—but the aim was to lose, because the first person to have all their pieces wiped from the board was pronounced the winner. Within a few matches, Alex had started giving the king a run for his money, something which delighted him to no end.

  When breakfast finished each day—and after at least one obligatory Stix match with the king, or more, if his time permitted—Alex and Niida would meet up with Kyia and spend their mornings overseeing the final production and distribution of the masquerade costumes to the denizens of Meya. Her time with the two of them was like a vacation for Alex because after lunch she was Niyx’s to torture again. Roka was still busy training the Zeltora recruits, so other than a few fly-by sightings of the prince—where he apologised profusely for neglecting her but promised he’d be back as soon as he could—Alex didn’t see much of him. Aven too was a rare sight, thanks to his involvement in organising the festival that was now only three days away. Every time Alex saw the leader of the Garseth he looked harried and stressed, determined to make the end-of-summer celebration the best in the history of Meya.

  Noticing just how frazzled Aven had been of late, a couple of days ago Alex had stopped him in the hallway and asked if there was anything else she could do to help make his load lighter. Part of that was because he’d looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, but the other part, the larger part, was the hope he might give her an excuse to have a few Niyx-free hours. What she hadn’t anticipated as a result of her offer was the emotion that had washed over his face. He’d stared at her in a way that had made her squirm with discomfort, before gently telling her everything was under control. Then, before she’d ha
d time to react, he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, leaving her frozen to the floor when he whirled away, calling over his shoulder that he’d see her later.

  His clear show of affection had brought great alarm to Alex, since even though she was able to accept him as her friend in the past, even acknowledge him as someone she’d come to care greatly about, she couldn’t forget who he would become in the future. And that was not someone who she would ever want kissing her—on the cheek or anywhere else.

  When she’d shared her concerns with Niyx that afternoon, at least vaguely in the form of ‘I’m leaving soon and don’t want to inadvertently lead anyone on,’ Niyx had just looked at her as if to see whether she was being serious before erupting in laughter.

  “You’re kidding, right?” he’d said to her in between sword thrusts. “You do know he’s been half in love with you since you forgave him for ditching your ass in the city that day?”

  Barely avoiding having her spleen punctured by his blade, Alex had gaped at Niyx. “But that was weeks ago!”

  “Which means he’s had plenty of time to get to know you and even up the other half,” Niyx returned, swiping at her head. “You better watch yourself, kitten. My best friend thinks you’re Meyarin and he’s falling for you—a mortal—and falling hard.”

  Alex ducked and spun, meeting his weapon mid-air as she said, “I think this might be a slight problem.”

  “A slight problem?” He sounded incredulous. “A slight problem?”

  “I can’t stop him from feeling whatever he’s feeling, Niyx, as mental as that is—and believe me, given everything I know, it’s really mental,” Alex said, her mind reeling. “But I sure as hell am not encouraging him!”

  Niyx’s rebuttal was as quick as his next thrust. “You aren’t discouraging him, either!”

  Since then, Alex had done everything she could to avoid Aven, not wanting to lead him on further than he’d apparently already been led—as unintentional as that had been. Her efforts had proven effective, as she hadn’t seen him since he kissed her on the cheek a few days ago. But that was likely also because she’d spent almost every other hour training to become Superwoman. It was a feat that Alex could admit was finally paying off.