Page 69 of Kissed By the Gods
His posture is loose, casual, with one hand tucked behind his back. I’ve seen Faelon fight, though. He only looks lazy when he’s planning to make someone regret underestimating him.
Caius groans a little, but he doesn’t stop us. He steps back, arms crossed, watching like he already knows how this ends. Kiernan stops peeling petals to watch with wide eyes and a slight grin.
“You’ve got this, Leina!” Kiernan shouts.
I don’t think I do, actually. I roll my shoulders anyway. Anything is better than one more minute in that chair. “You sure?” I ask Faelon. “I’ve been known to punch above my weight.”
Faelon tilts his head. “You’ve also been known to punch first, think second.”
I lunge, trying to grab his arm, maybe sweep his legs. But he moves too fast, sidestepping me with an infuriating lack of effort. I spin to face him, and he just raises an eyebrow.
“Is that it?” he asks.
I growl and lunge at him again, more forcefully this time. He ducks, spins me around, and taps two fingers to the back of my neck before stepping neatly out of reach.
“Dead,” he says matter-of-factly. “Twice.”
“Shut up.”
“Nope.” He flashes me a grin. But then he holds up the hand he’d kept tucked behind his back. In it rests a perfect buttercup blossom, its petals open and unbruised. “You see this?”
I roll my eyes. “The flower? Yes.”
“This isn’t a flower,” he says. “It’s a baby. A Kher’zenn is holding it by the blanket, dangling it high in the air. It’s taunting you with the baby, Leina. The baby is crying. His arms are pumping, his legs kicking frantically. You have seconds to act. What do you do?”
I freeze. My mouth opens, but no words come out.
Because Iseeit. Not in this room, not with the table and petals littering the floor, Caius standing in front of me and Kiernan watching without blinking—but in Faelon’s eyes. Faelon’s not teasing anymore.
He’s there, in that moment. One with a baby dangling by a blanket.
Caius shifts. Not a word, not a sound, but tension radiates off him like heat. The way his jaw is clenched, the way he looks at that buttercup—he’s not watching a lesson. He’s watching a memory walk back into the room.
Faelon lets the flower drop.
My knees scrape stone. My palms slide. My hands form a cup in midair, like a prayer I didn’t know I was whispering.
I catch it. Of course I do. I’m as fast as the gods.
But the petals curl in on themselves from the pressure. I crushed it trying to save it.
And in the silence that follows, I can’t breathe. Faelon turns away. All I see are his boots returning to the corner, and his hands as he scoops up his book off the floor. Still, I don’t look up.
Caius crouches beside me. His voice is barely more than breath, but I know we all hear it. “It’s not about the flower, Leina. We’re trying to make sure that when something like that happens—and it will—you don’t crush the very thing you came to save.”
I don’t want to look at Caius. I don’t want to look at Faelon, either, once more on his uncomfortable wooden chair, one foot crossed over another on an unopened crate, immersed in his book.
I don’t want to look because I already know what’s there. It’s thick in the room.
Loss.
I stare down at the crushed petals in my hands and, for the first time all day, acknowledge that I’m not angry. Or at least, notonlyangry.
I’m terrified. I raise my eyes, and Caius is still crouching next to me. He offers me a fresh buttercup. Its petals are open like it still has faith in this awful, terrible world it bloomed into.
I don’t take it.
“Strength without control is just destruction, Leina,” Caius says. “Try again.”
