Page 68 of Kissed By the Gods
I don’t look up. I don’t need to. I can feel the weight of Caius’ gaze. He’s watching me with that quiet understanding only fathers carry, tempered by the sharp edge of a commander who can’t quite afford sentiment.
“Try again, Leina,” he says, endlessly patient. “Temperance training isn’t about walling off your emotions. It’s about facing them. Meeting them head-on and accepting the danger that simmers inside you. If you can’t do that, you won’t be able to control yourself.”
Beside me, Kiernan hums softly, as if he understands perfectly. He may not be very good at masking his emotions, but he certainly excels at meeting them. He lifts the next blossom with careful fingers and begins separating each petal from the corolla. His hands are steady.
“Don’t worry, Leina. It’s like folding silk.” Kiernan’s voice is gentle. “You just have to let it fall into place.”
He is trying to be helpful, to soothe. But his words land wrong.Silk.I’ve never folded silk in my life. I’ve never even touched it. I grew up stitching old burlap sacks into underwear.
My hands twitch around the bloom. I don’t want metaphors soaked in privilege. I want this to beeasier. I want to be good at it already.
Each buttercup holds hundreds of petals. Every ward must collect thousands of them in pristine condition and sew them together with gossamer thread to create a veil that stretches to the floor. When it’s complete, we’ve passed temperance training.
We’ve been at this for hours and I don’t have a single unbruised petal.
I flex my fingers, willing them to obey. I breathe in slowly, trying to soften the tension threading through my body. Then I reach down and pick up another buttercup.
They’re from Elowen’s garden, these perfect flowers that have the most delicate blooms.
My fingers tremble as I reach for the first petal. I try to still them. I try to stillmyself.
But my control slips. My hand spasms. And the flower crumples in my palm.
Leo’s screams echo in my ear.
“Fuck!” I whisper, but it doesn’t matter. Not here. These men hear my whispered frustrations as if I’d stood up on the table, danced around, and sang them. Kiernan fumbles on his bloom at my whispered shout. He drops his damaged flower and startsover. Faelon, reading a book in the corner, flips to the next page without looking up. He acts like he didn’t notice, but he did. It’s only the four of us in this little room.
Caius comes to sit down next to me. His large, calloused hand settles over mine. I close my eyes against the wave of grief that reminds me of my father. “Leina?—”
I shove back from the table with enough force to topple my chair. The crack of the wood against stone is satisfying in a way the petals falling silently to the floor never could be.
Just two weeks ago, I would’ve given this training everything I had. But that wasbefore.
I’ll never see Leo again. What’s the point?
I stab a finger at the curling petals on the ground. “Why is this even important?” I demand. “I don’t gently stab the Kher’zenn to death, do I?”
Faelon snorts a little in the corner but doesn’t look up from his book. I don’t know what he’s reading. The smooth leather binding doesn’t have a title, but he occasionally scratches out a note on the parchment.
“It’s about control, Leina. You want to have control over your emotions, don’t you?” Caius’ voice is steady, the kind that won’t rise to meet my anger. Instead, he’ll wait for me to bring it back down.
I cross my arms over my chest. A little flicker of embarrassment flames to life, but I squash it.
“I do have control. I haven’t thrown anyone across the room, have I?”
“Yet,” Faelon mutters from the corner, turning another page.
I shoot him a glare even as Caius rubs an exasperated hand over his face. “Not helping, son,” he mutters to Faelon. “You’re supposed to be learning to train a ward today, not hiding in the corner with your poems. This isn’t ‘Faelon’s free hour.’”
His tone carries a reprimand, but it’s softened with a hint of apology. Like he wishes he had more free hours to give him.
Faelon slaps his book closed and pushes himself out of the simple wooden chair he plopped himself in at dawn. He bends over to set the book on the ground, next to an open crate of buttercup blossoms. “You want to throw me across the room, Leina?”
Caius’ eyes go sharp, but I heave out a relieved breath and crack my neck, releasing some of the pressure of sitting for so long.Finally. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
Faelon grins, but it’s the kind that saysyou just walked into something, sister. It’s a look I know well. It’s a look Levvi shot my way dozens or even hundreds of times.
“Great. Come try,” he says as he rises from dealing with his book. “I’ll even fight you one handed.”
