Page 9 of A Touch of Stars and Stones
It’s still so strange, feeling the powers of my mother mixed with my own. I knew my strengths were those of a traditional Warrior Order. They hadn’t settled, as was common in adolescence and pre-transference.
But I never considered what would happen if that were mixed with Guard powers. I didn’t fully understand what they were still.
Crimson smiles at me, too fucking sweetly.
She and her twin, Calix, are both Warriors. Calix is brutishly strong, while Crimson is agile and has unnatural speed. They’ve been here since before their Transference, working as a team, just as they have since we were all kids, growing up in The Chamber residence together. It’s hard being best friends with a twin, especially when their sister is Crimson.
“Can’t I tempt you? You know I can make you forget?—”
“Leave it, Crim.” She’s never stopped pushing for us to be more than we are—friends. Who occasionally sleep together.
“Tomorrow, then,” she concedes and then slips back out of my room.
Three moves, then I’ll have him.
Six weeks into training, I still flinch when my mind does this—strategising, working out the plan to overthrow my opponent before I even give it thought.
In this case, it’s Calix. His strength is the added advantage, but he has tells, and I’ve been watching him fight my entire life. Now that knowledge fuels a part of me, as if I’m feeding wood to a fire.
My feet play out the plan my mind has mapped out, and my right hand reaches around my back to my dagger resting at the base of my spine, where it always is, as I twist and spin, dodging Calix’s right hook.
“And you’re dead.” The tip presses against the back of Calix’s neck.
Our contact is limited—a few brushes of knuckles or blocks with arms, but it’s enough for me to feed off his strength and push it back at him.
This is the hardest and most exciting part of training. The unknown of how our own power will meld and work alongside others through touch.
That was the purpose of training: to learn.
Experience. Master.
Calix grins at me. “Didn’t take you long, Ten. Maybe I’ll stop holding back next time.”
“I know you. You weren’t holding back.” I grin at him.
“Really? Care to place a wager?” His eyes light up. Calix loves to gamble, always making bets. Luckily for him, he’s only wrong half of the time, but he never learns.
“Aten, Calix, next round,” Rowan, the Warrior Custodian overseeing our training, barks.
We all have to spar against one another. All trainees, all Orders, it doesn’t matter if some of them have never thought of fighting before. They have to go up against Calix, or Crimson, or me. And we’ve been fighting our entire lives. Raised as Warriors.
But while we had advantages in the sparring ring, training wasn’t just about fighting skills.
I was the ninth trainee this year, and we represented all the Orders of Kirrasia. Natural, Elemental, Warrior, and Guard.
My next round has me rolling my eyes. Micah Star.
He’s a weak Elemental, his power limited and basic. I can feel it whenever we have to spar, but he seems to love everything about training. It’s clear he feels that the opportunity is the greatest gift that anyone could give him. Or maybe he’s fed up with living in one of the poorest parts of the Elemental district.
Not everyone has friends when they move to training, and I didn’t know much about Micah or the other trainees when I arrived. That hasn’t changed on a personal level.
Micah steps into the ring of sand as if he has a chance of winning this. He doesn’t.
Our instinct at this early stage of training is to work solo. Twenty years of that is hard to shake off, but the ultimate goal of training is to find our Triune—the other two partners who complemented our own magical powers so evenly, so well, that all three of us became a force far beyond the sum of our individual gifts.
It’s rare. Stupidly rare, and only a few dozen Triunes exist throughout Kirrasia, which has always made me sceptical, especially after working with these trainees for the last few weeks.
“Come on, Micah,” I encourage, sheathing my dagger.
