Chapter 6 - Ado

She moves like water—fluid, agile, but utterly uncontrolled. I watch because I have to, I tell myself. I almost believe it.

“Feet, feet, feet,” Aris shouts with his stolid, unyielding patience. “Feet apart, keep your torso rotated—no, again, again. Let’s go again.”

They both step back from one another. Keira breaks for the sidelines and bends to swipe up her water bottle, rubbing the inside of her wrist against her forehead. Her ferociously curly hair is raked back into a high ponytail. Her long neck shines with perspiration in the glow of the gym’s overhead lights.

“Tell me I’m making improvements here,” she groans. “I don’t care if it’s true or not, just tell me that.”

“You’re making improvements,” Aris parrots dryly. He bends to adjust his knee brace. “It’s only been a few hours, and your form’s already better than it was.”

“I’m glad you think that, because I feel like I’ve only gotten worse.”

Aris shakes his head. He’s like a shark scenting blood when he’s training people. He can tell in an instant that someone is talking just to prolong their break between drills.

“Again,” he says firmly.

Keira settles back into form in the center of their makeshift ring. They have laid out mats under their feet. The two of them aren’t yet sparring—Keira isn’t advanced enough to fight for real, and probably won’t be for a long time. She’s been out of action for years, and her body knows it. All of this feels new to her all over again.

I think back to how sparring with her used to be, all that time ago. What she lacked in strength, she made up for in speed and agility. Clearly, that much hasn’t changed. Her style has always been reactive, defensive, waiting on her enemy's movements to establish strategy. Sometimes, that kind of style is helpful. Other times, it can get you killed.

As I watch her raise her fists in front of her face to block, I think Keira probably knows that much. How could she not?

Aris swings for her throat. A fast, incapacitating move, but easy to intercept. It’s not his usual style, but if he was fighting in his usual style, she’d already be down for the count. Keira tilts her body hard left and blocks with the outside of her forearm. Her leg powers up toward Aris’ stomach, and he dodges it backward easily.

“Good,” he shouts. “Again!”

This time, Keira moves onto the offensive. When Aris jabs at her ribs, a move difficult to catalog from the side, she grabs for his wrist and tries to twist her body around the back of his to hold him still. Aris tears free. He has her on the ground within half a second. She grunts, then lies still, panting, gaze fixed on the ceiling.

“That was good,” Aris encourages her.

She makes a face. Even from here, against the wall, I can see the frustration in her eyes.

“It’s good progress.”

I only realized that was my voice a second later, when Aris and Keira turned to stare. I never meant to speak. What power does Keira have, that she can do this to me? Why is it that now that she’s back, I find myself blurting out sentences I never planned? I wonder whether she knows she has that power. Whether she would care to know.

“It is,” Aris agrees haltingly, still looking curiously at me.

I clear my throat. “You’re not being trained to fight hand-to-hand on missions. You just need to be able to buy time if there’s ever a scuffle, or an abduction attempt, until one of us can get there. The longer you can draw out fights like that, the better your odds.”

Keira sits upright, hands falling into her lap. The gentle slope of her narrow shoulders is particularly steep now. I know implicitly that it’s going to be a long time until she believes in herself again. She remembers losing. She remembers what it cost her.

“Ado.” Aris beckons with one hand. “You try. I need to meet with Byron to discuss recent intelligence soon, but I think we’re making progress; I don’t want to interrupt Keira’s momentum.”

Both Keira and I begin speaking at once.

“No,” Keira says emphatically. “No, it’s fine; I think I need to stop anyway—I have documents Olivia and Byron sent over concerning the case that I need to review, and—"

At the same time, I find words pouring from my mouth, halting and stilted: “Not a good idea—you were—and she’s—"

Aris raises a hand to silence us both. I wonder what it must be like to be able to do that in a room. If I could, I’d have a lot more peace and quiet in my life.

“Just go until she can consistently stay on her feet for ten or fifteen seconds at a time,” he says. “And Ado, don’t go too hard.”

I narrow my eyes at him. By the look on his face, as he raises an eyebrow in my direction, I know Aris means the opposite. He thinks I won’t risk hurting her.

“Okay,” I say. I have no real choice, not when he’s like this. The pack is democratic, our structure is far less hierarchical than most. When there’s something we seriously don’t want to do, any one of us can refuse. But training and combat are my job. When Aris asks any one of us to do our job, he asks with the kind of implicit trust that it will get done that keeps the pack running, the trust we all rely on every day.

Aris nods. He picks up his gym back, wiping his face with his towel.

“Keep it up,” he tells Keira.

Still sitting on the floor with her legs stretched out in front of her, Keira nods tiredly. “Got it, boss.”

Aris disappears. I shrug my hoodie off and take a long drink of water, then stretch out a hand to pull Keira to her feet.

She stares at my fingers, then my face. Her bright, intelligent eyes flicker with something I can’t identify. She takes my hand, and the soft skin of her palm against mine sends an electric pulse through my body. A soft, rumbling feeling, like the first shuddering of an avalanche, seems to ascend through my abdomen; I have to settle my weight back on my heels and steady my body just to keep my balance. What’s wrong with me?

Keira lets go of my hand fast. She flexes her fist, then balls it, settling into form. Her high-set shoulders shine with sweat. I can’t look her in the face.

“Let’s go, then,” she says.

I spread my feet. “Catalog these moves,” I tell her, then swing.