Page 115 of Wolf Caged
“Why else would I ask you to meet me here, where we could be alone?” Her frown deepened and then relaxed and hereyebrows rose, a hint of a smile curling her lips as she said, “Or did you think I brought you here to gossip about my brother?”
“Ew, no. I don’t want to talk about him.” Lies. Terrible lies. I desperately wanted to talk about him, starting with asking where he had been going with Oberon, both of them looking as if they were up to no good.
Oh gods, were they going to that tavern near the docks?
My face must have given me away, because Vyr sighed and said, “I presume you saw him on his way to the blacksmith? Oberon has been bothering him about a new blade for years and he finally relented.”
“No, not at all. Well… yes… I saw them… but I don’t care what they’re doing.” I had to get better at lying.
Mostly because Vyr’s smile had turned wicked and knowing, as if she could see right through me.
“It is no business what feelings you have for my brother?—”
“None. Zero. You said something about training?” Even I flinched at the desperate subject change that screamed I was trying to cover up something.
But Vyr was graceful enough to play along with it.
“Very well. No one will see us here, so we are free to train as much as we like.” She gestured to the centre of the glade and I walked there, nerves rising as I realised this was meant to be a secret. It was Chase and Morden all over again, and I feared if her brother discovered what she was doing that he would stop her before I could learn to fight and protect myself, just as they had when my parents had found out about it. “Let us start with taking the measure of your current skill. How much training have you had?”
“Not much.” I flexed my fingers as she gave me a look that said she was well aware of that and I hated how weak I felt as I remembered the way she had found me, curled into a ball, onlyable to defend myself. “You missed the bit where I got in a few hits.”
“I saw enough to know you would have been killed had I not been there to intervene, and this court would probably be a far different place.” The wistful look in her eyes as she scanned the glade and the mountains that loomed over it had me looking there too and remembering something from last night, something that had happened after Kaeleron had dried me off, tucked me into bed and ordered me to rest like an overbearing mother.
Or a very sweet male.
I remembered the castle shaking, as if an earthquake had hit it, but I had been too tired to open my eyes let alone move. The air had felt thick and heavy, the tang of magic stronger than ever, and there had been pain.
Not within me.
Within the very fabric of this world.
“King’s possess much power. They draw deeply from the lands of Lucia, their connection to it giving them the power to shape it, and that magic can both create and destroy. Everyone felt it last night, Saphira. How close he was to losing control. No part of these lands remained unaffected.” She looked off towards the castle, her gaze bleak but soft, laced with worry. “My brother has fought hard to be strong enough to protect this court, and while his methods of keeping those within it safe are not of my choosing, it has been a peaceful place for centuries now. The land has been calm. But when you were hurt, when he failed to protect you… I have not felt him that angry in a long time.”
How close had Kaeleron been to losing control? What would have happened if he had lost it? I shuddered, not wanting to know the answer to that question, because the grim look on Vyr’s face said it would have been catastrophic.
The power he possessed.
Power far beyond my reach.
If I were in his position, I wasn’t sure I would be strong enough to contain it as he did. What had he gone through to make himself strong enough physically and mentally to endure the weight of all that magic running in his veins? Enough that it had cost him that beautiful, bright smile he wore in that portrait of him and his siblings.
“His need to protect,” I started and faltered, my courage failing me as Jenavyr looked at me, pain surfacing in her eyes. So much pain. I couldn’t bring myself to ask and hurt her more by dredging up bad memories.
She swallowed and turned her cheek to me, and sighed as she gazed at the castle. “It was born the night we lost our parents and brother in an attack on the castle in Belkarthen.”
Now his hatred of that city made sense, and so did the way he had reacted to me being hurt, his need to tend to me. I had triggered terrible memories for him, had shattered the floodgates on the pain that still clearly lived within his heart, and in turn, his pain had reopened Vyr’s wounds too.
“Teach me to fight,” I said as I tipped my chin up and squared my shoulders. “Please. Teach me to fight. I want to be stronger. I want to be able to protect myself. I don’t want that to happen again.”
Vyr nodded several times, her expression thoughtful but a little lost, as if the memories still had her in their grip, haunting her even as she moved to face me. “You said you had some training.”
“Only a little.” My heart hurt as I remembered Chase and Morden arguing over my lessons and where they should start. They never had been able to agree on what was necessary for me to know and what wasn’t. “Chase and a friend tried to train me once. We only managed a few basic attacking and blocking techniques before we were discovered and my parents spoke tothem. They fell in with pack tradition. At our fourth meeting in the woods, they told me I didn’t need to know how to fight because they were there to protect me, as were the other males in the pack.”
If they hadn’t been discovered, or if I had been treated like the males of the pack and given the same rights as they had, I might have known how to defend myself when Lucas had set upon me and I might have escaped before he could put me in that cage.
Or it might have done nothing to help me.
Lucas was an alpha, a strong one. All the training in the world probably wouldn’t have helped me.
