Chapter Seven

Alexis

I sat on the far wall of the gym, watching the door to the conference room, curious about what was happening in there. Curious about who the older man was. Given the deference the Dragonborn had showed him, I had to assume that he was somebody important. Some member of royalty, perhaps.

When the door opened and the others started to file out, I got to my feet. I ran over to Ella and cornered her.

“What's going on?” I asked. “Who is that guy?”

She looked back at the door and then guided me away, taking me across the gym and sitting me down on a bench. She took a seat beside me.

“He's one of the Dragonborn Kings,” she said. “Shango, of the Forest Clan. He's also a member of the Council of Kings – the body that oversees the Rangers and Wardens.”

I looked at her, expecting more. Expecting some sort of deeper explanation about why everybody was so tense and scrambling around like chickens with their heads cut off.

“Is that it?” I asked. “Is that why everybody's freaking out?”

“No, by aligning with us, Quint violated his oath,” she said. “It could have been a very serious offense. I mean, I knew about the whole never revealing themselves to us thing – I went through it with Zarik. But for whatever reason, I didn't think it applied to us – to what we're doing here – or something.”

I gave her a long, level look. “How serious is it?” I asked. “Is he going –”

She put her hand on my knee and gave it a gentle squeeze. “No, I think everything is going to be okay,” she said. “The King seemed impressed with what we're doing here, actually. Surprisingly.”

I looked to the closed door, realizing that Quint and the King had yet to come out. Knowing that Quint – and all of us – could be in trouble, worried me. It worried me a lot. If the Dragonborn shut this operation down, I had no idea what I was going to do. I had nowhere else to go.

When the Children – when Ella – found me seven years ago, I was a twenty-year old runaway. I was living in an alley, sleeping behind a dumpster covered in some ratty old blankets I'd found tossed out behind a store. I was fending off rapists, begging for change and eating whatever people threw away. Life was pretty miserable and I was sure that a day was going to come – and come soon – when I was going to die there in the dirt and shit in the alley.

As bad as it was though, it was nothing compared to how I grew up. Sleeping in the dirt was preferable to sleeping in a house with a father who abused me, who locked me in a room and pimped me out to his friends. It was preferable to going to a school where some of the staff knew about my upbringing and zeroed in on my weaknesses, on the things that froze me in terror – and took advantage of that.

There were more nights than I could count that I almost killed myself. I came so close so many times. Ultimately though, I decided that I wanted to live. But I knew that I couldn't live in that house anymore, so I packed up what little I had and ran away. Left it all behind.

I only wish that the past, that everything I'd endured, had been as easily discarded as that home and those people were.

But then Ella found me. I was standing in the doorway of a store, begging for change when she stopped. She told me that she could either give me some money and walk away forever – or she could give me an opportunity to clean up my life. To make something of myself and serve a bigger, more noble purpose.

I was hesitant at first, but I took Ella up on her offer. And I never regretted it. Not for a minute. Not through all of the hard work, the blood, the sweat, and the tears. I loved what I did. And I was eternally thankful that Ella had given me that chance. She'd changed my world. She'd changed my life.

And the idea of having that life – a life I'd worked so hard to create – ripped away from me, stressed me out. I had nowhere else to go.

“So, if everything is okay,” I said, “then what's going on in there?”

Ella shrugged. “Dragon business,” she said. “The King had something to talk to Quint about.”

I felt my shoulders tighten with tension and a surge of nervous energy shoot through me. Not knowing what was happening in that room, what was being said – it was scaring me half to death. Ella put a hand on my arm and gave me a gentle squeeze. I looked up and she gave me smile, as if she were intuiting my thoughts.

“It's going to be okay, Alexis,” she said. “Whatever happens, everything is going to be okay.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Call it instinct,” she said. “Call me psychic. I just know that everything will be fine. Everything is going to work out.”

I looked at her and she gave me an encouraging smile. I wanted to believe her. Wanted to believe that everything was going to be fine. But life hadn't exactly taught me to be optimistic about things. If anything, it taught me to expect the worst. It was something I tried to overcome – and was doing a better job of it – but it was something I still struggled with from time to time. Especially when I was stressed out and my emotions were running hot.

“By the way,” Ella said, a mischievous grin tugging at her lips. “Great work out there today. You really took Deyro down a few pegs – a much needed few pegs. He was limping around like an old man who'd busted a hip. It was fantastic.”

I gave her a small smile, blushing beneath the weight of her compliments. “Thanks,” I said. “I don't know what happened. It was like seeing him smirking at me and dismissing me like he was – it was like he just flipped a switch inside of me or something. I was so mad and –”

“And you let your confidence out,” she said. “You became a force of nature.”

“But I always fight with confidence,” I said. “I always feel powerful with a sword in my hand.”

“Most of the time,” she said. “But something Quint and I have both noticed is that you hold yourself back when you think somebody is your superior in some way.”

I chuckled. “I certainly don't think of Deyro as my superior.”

“Not in most things, no,” Ella agreed. “But when it comes to fighting, you allow yourself to take a back seat to him. You allow his cockiness and arrogance to overshadow you. You pull yourself back and let him take the lead. I've seen it more times than I can count.”

I ran a hand through my hair and let Ella's words rattle through my mind for a moment. I certainly never thought that I'd let myself take a back seat to Deyro – never on the field of battle. But then, how would I know? Others can see those things I can't see. I tend to perceive myself in a certain way, and it's only when others point something out to me that I can see it. Maybe this was one of those cases.

“Anyway,” Ella said. “I'm really proud of you, Alexis. You were amazing today.”

“Thanks, Ella,” I replied. “For everything.”

“I need to catch up with Zarik,” she said. “But we'll get together later? We still have a training session to do.”

“Looking forward to it.”

Ella gave my arm one last squeeze before getting up and walking away. Zarik was across the gym from us and gave me a wave as they departed. I looked at the closed door to the conference room again and felt a wave of trepidation wash over me.

I had no real reason to feel so sketchy about what was going on in there – but for some reason, I still did.

“You cheated.”

I looked up to see Deyro standing there, a dark look upon his face. He obviously wasn't taking his humbling defeat very well.

“How do you figure?” I asked.

“You hit me in the balls,” he seethed.

I shrugged. “That's not cheating,” I smirked. “That's just using everything available to my best advantage.”

“There are rules –”

“Oh,” I snapped. “And the Shongtal or whatever other creature we're fighting out there is going to adhere to your little set of rules? Are you really that naive? Or just stupid, Deyro?”

His face darkened and I could see the anger in his eyes. He was genuinely upset. But, that was his problem. Our fight had been on the up and up. He'd taken me too lightly and he'd paid the price. Maybe he'd learn something from it.

But then, knowing Deyro, he probably wouldn't.

“Did you ever stop to think that maybe, just maybe, I'm pretty good in a fight?” I asked.

“I never said –”

“And that maybe you underestimated me?” I went on as if he hadn't tried to speak. “That maybe, I'm better than you thought and you took me too lightly?”

He looked at me, opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. I could see in his eyes that it wasn't a thought that actually had occurred to him. Which figured. Of course, it had never dawned on him that I could be better than he thought because he didn't respect me. Didn't respect my abilities. He – like a lot of other people – saw me as less than. As somebody not up to their level. Their standard.

Anger flashed through me, coursing through my veins like a raging river. I was so mad, I wanted to get him back out on the sparring mat for another round right then and there. I wanted to make him bleed. Wanted to make him hurt. I knew he'd hurt me in the process, but as long as I got my licks in, I was okay with that.

But I knew I couldn't do that. I knew that Quint demanded that we all – human and Dragonborn alike – find a way to work together. Find common ground. If we were at each other's throats, we were going to be useless when it came to battling the evil in the streets. We had to stay sharp and we needed to be unified.

But that didn't mean I had to keep working so closely with Deyro.

“I think we should probably get new partners,” I said. “I don't think us working together is going to work anymore.”

A surprised – perhaps even hurt – expression passed quickly over his face. But he managed to rein it in and stuff it down quickly. As fast as it had appeared, it was gone just as quick.

“Probably a good idea,” he said, his voice tight.

“Deyro, Alexis,” Quint's voice boomed from across the gym.

He was standing in the doorway, a grim look upon his face – which, of course, sent a jolt of fear through me. Whatever went down in that room, it didn't look to be good. I just wondered what it was – and what it had to do with us.

I cast a look of pure disgust at Deyro as I got to my feet and walked toward Quint without waiting for him. He fell into step beside me, but neither one of us looked at each other or spoke to each other. It was out there – I wanted a new partner. I wanted to be away from his smug, condescending face. I didn't want to deal with his arrogant crap anymore.

I deserved respect and I wasn't going to settle for anything less.

“Yes, Warden?” I asked when we got to Quint.

“I need to speak with the both of you,” he said, his voice as grim as his face.

“About what?” Deyro asked.

“Not here,” Quint replied. “I want you both at Heat tonight at seven-thirty. We'll have a nice meal and – discuss – what King Shango asked of me. Of us.”

The way he said the word “discussion” plunged a dagger of ice into my heart. It sounded ominous and foreboding. Like whatever he wanted to discuss was going to have some very dire ramifications for the both of us.

“I'll be there,” Deyro said.

I nodded. “Seven-thirty.”

“Good,” he said and then looked meaningfully at both of us. “And the answer is no. I will not pair you up with a new partner. Make this work.”

He turned and strode off across the gym, leaving both of us with our mouths hanging open, trying to figure out how he knew what we'd been talking about. After a moment, we both cleared our throats and looked at each other. And personally speaking, I felt no less anger.

“So,” Deyro asked. “Since we're going to be stuck together, do you want to ride over to Heat together?”

I looked at him and guffawed. “Yeah, no thanks.”

I turned and walked off, leaving him standing there looking after me.