Chapter 19

Chapter

Nineteen

"Aisling and Kohen finally have powers to show us!" Lieutenant Ashendell told our squad. I'd gone to her and told her that the night I was attacked I had acquired the ability to conjure fire. Though it was really smoke, Liana had assured me I could conjure fire when needed.

Everyone cheered and I swallowed hard. Hopefully, Kohen had something else to display, because everyone finding out he could see the future would sign his death warrant.

"Kohen, will you please do the honors of going first? I think we've waited in anticipation long enough." Ashendell looked bored, and I perked up as I watched the former Imbrian prince walk across the field and stand in the middle.

He looked so calm. Like he'd been practicing, or just wasn't scared. I envied that. I was terrified as hell to turn into a fireball for the first time, and in front of my peers.

Onyx and Liana stood off to the side with the other creatures and watched.

"Lieutenant Ashendell, would you please direct your attention to that bush over there?" Kohen pointed to a shrub that stood at the edge of the tree line over forty feet away.

The lieutenant's brows pinched together in confusion but she did as he asked. We all did. I turned to face the plant, my gaze flicking back to Kohen and then the bush, and back to Kohen. Kohen looked to be in deep concentration, arms at his side as he stared at the shrub and then…

We all gave a collective gasp as the bush burst into flames.

Wow, to be able to direct flames to something from so far away… without shooting the flames across the lawn. It was pretty incredible.

My fellow cadets burst into applause, myself included, and Kohen gave a slight grin of pride.

"Wow, okay, that's very impressive, Mr. Badshah." Ashendell had her clipboard with her and marked something in it.

Then she turned to me. "Miss Everhart?"

‘I'm going to vomit,' I told Liana.

‘Well, then vomit and get it over with, because they expect great things from you, and that's what you need to give them right now,' Liana said.

Oh great. That was not helping with the pressure.

I stepped forward, sweat beading my brow as I stood in the center of the practice field with my fellow cadets all around me. A few higher-level soldiers who were here for officer training stopped what they were doing and walked over to watch me.

I was Aisling Everhart, future empress. If I couldn't handle pressure now, I couldn't run this country.

‘How do I make the fire come?' I asked Liana.

‘Tell everyone to step back,' Liana advised.

I raised one eyebrow at my creature. "Take a step back!" I told everyone.

They exchanged curious glances but took a giant step back.

‘More,' Liana said.

Oh stars, this was embarrassing.

"Farther," I told the surrounding crowd, and they stepped three paces back.

I took a deep breath.

‘Now crouch down, make yourself like a ball.'

If this didn't work I was going to look like such an idiot.

I did as she asked and lowered my head to my knees, tucking myself into a ball.

‘Now go inside your mind. Remember the fire beast? Remember what it felt like to fight her? That all-consuming heat, the way she grew when you cut her down and didn't let up…'

‘Yes,' I said, because I did remember. I would not soon forget that experience. Even more now that Liana had told me the fire beast was a part of her.

‘Reach for her, and let her out,' she coached.

I was keenly aware of the fact that I likely looked like an idiot curled into a ball on the practice field while I had a conversation in my head with my creature and everyone stared at me. But I didn't focus on that. I focused instead on the heat in my core, the fire beast who was wild and terrifying and glorious and impossible to control. She was there, inside of me, like a second creature almost, Liana's alter ego, this one slightly terrifying. I reached out and touched that power and then opened the invisible cage she'd been resting in all this time.

One second I was just sitting on the ground concentrating on this power, and the next there was a flash of heat and dozens of screams. A blast exploded from my skin and I looked up just in time to see a wall of fire rushing outward from me towards my fellow candidates. People ran farther back, screaming, including Instructor Ashendell, and then the fire dissipated as its pressure was released.

My skin, hair, and clothing were untouched, though I was sweating and felt slightly warmer than usual. With a hard swallow, I stood and surveyed the giant circle of scorched grass I was standing in the center of.

Ashendell just stared at me for a full thirty seconds before marking something on her clipboard and then smiling. "Our future empress is a human bomb."

The class erupted into cheers and I smiled, rubbing my sweaty palms on my pants. I'd finally given them something to be excited over without revealing my dark hidden power—the power I'd already put in my little black box and would never think about again. I hoped word got back to Admiral Blade about this, because if Sahiri had forced such a power, it would have burned her and whoever stood nearest me alive. This would explain my behavior that day, and the admirals would trust me again. Most of all, my father would be pleased.

After Kohen's and my power display, we had sword practice with our fellow cadets. We were just finishing up when I got in line behind Kohen to turn my practice blade back in to the instructor. Kohen turned to Anika and asked for her practice blade, and when their hands touched, he sucked in a breath.

She cocked her head to the side. "You okay?"

He just stared at her for a second as if lost in a trance, then he seemed to snap out of it. His hand shook, but he slipped it into his pocket to cover it. Did he just see the future? Even now he still had a far-off look in his eyes.

"I'm fine. I'm gonna go for a walk, clear my head," Kohen said to Anika after setting the practice blades at the instructor's feet, and then stormed off into the woods. The guilt that had slowly been rising up inside of me reached a level I could no longer tolerate. Kohen should not have broken into my house, but I couldn't let him go through this alone.

I didn't hate him. I should but I couldn't.

I turned in my blade and then went after him, stepping into the thick woods to find that Kohen was… running. His legs pumped fast as he bolted full-speed through the trees, leaping over fallen logs and dry brush. I didn't think, I just acted. I ran after him, pumping my legs hard as I streaked across the dense forest.

"Kohen!" I screamed, and he slowed.

His back heaved as he fought for breath, and when I reached him he fell to the ground on all fours, hands splayed out, breath coming out in rapid gasps.

He was having a panic attack.

Victory had had one once when she shot her first deer with a bow. It had looked like this.

"Hey, deep breaths." I rubbed small circles on his back, like I had for Victory, and he stilled, calming.

He looked up at me for the first time since I'd gotten here and I was shocked to see the anguish in his eyes.

"So much death," he whimpered.

Chills broke out onto my arms and I staggered backward a little, falling onto my butt.

"What? What did you see?"

He reached up and ran his fingers through his hair before slipping into the Imbrian language, a string of incoherent rambling that was both beautiful and terrifying because I couldn't understand any of it.

"Kohen, what did you see?"

He quieted, looking at his hands as if there were something on them. He brushed them on his pants and then shook his head. "I don't think I can live like this," he said, and my heart tore in half. It was such a vulnerable thing to say, and to say it to someone who'd held a knife to your throat just a short time ago probably made it so much worse.

"Yes you can," I told him.

He shook his head. "I see an attack. Here. On this very campus. I see my friends near death… I don't know if they make it. And the worst of it all is that I'm falling in love with someone who hates me." He held my gaze, staring at my lips in a reverent way and my mouth popped open in shock.

Me. He was talking about me.

That was a lot to process, but strangely the L word scared me less than the attack he spoke of.

"Attack? Here? We need to tell my father." I stood, ignoring the falling in love with me part.

He glared at me. "And how do we tell him that without getting me killed? My stars, Aisling, you're my best friend and you don't even know it yet. I can't do this."

Best friends. Lovers. My heart yearned for that with him and I knew it shouldn't. I hated that he told me these things. It made me wonder if I would desire him on my own or only because he planted the thoughts in my head. It didn't matter either way. He was a Badshah.

He stood and started to walk away, leaving me to sit there in shock.

"Hey!" I snapped, storming after him. "That's not fair!" I reached him and yanked his shoulder so that he spun to face me.

Best friend. Love. This is insane!

"How do you know your visions or whatever are even real?" I hated to ask but I did.

He didn't look hurt, he just sighed. "The night you were attacked by the drill instructors, I saw it in a vision. That's how I got there so quickly. Then I had a vision of your father coming to chew out the admirals, and a flash of his office desk drawer with my father's pocket watch inside."

My mouth popped open again. I had wondered how he'd been the one to find me and so fast. I'd assumed Liana told Onyx, who in turn told him, but there wouldn't have been that much time. I'd have been dead without his help. So that's why he fought to get my father there, so that he could sneak into his office and get the pocket watch back just like he'd seen in his vision. I still wasn't convinced that his visions and seeing the future were real. He was a Badshah—cunning and ruthless—this could all be an elaborate ruse.

"I also know that if you don't braid your hair before bed, you wake up with it all tangled." He reached out and fingered the strands hanging over my shoulder. My breath caught as he then trailed his fingers down my neck. Red hot need pulsed throughout my body but I fought it. This was too much. What he was saying was crazy. But I also wanted it to be true, all of it. I leaned into him, licking my lips to wet them, warring with my own desire. "I know that under this shirt you have a group of freckles that look like a constellation." He pulled his hand back and sadness filled his gaze. "And I know that no matter how much I want to kiss you right now, this isn't where we have our first kiss because you freak out and?—"

I ran. I couldn't hear another word. I bolted out of there as my heart pounded like it was in a cage begging to be freed.

‘Liana, I need to get out of here,' I called for her, and then followed the nudging in my chest that told me where she was. Kohen had scared the crap out of me. All those things he said were true. My braid… the freckles… I felt sick. It was overwhelming. Not because the thought of kissing him or doing any of those things made me sick, but doing them meant I would betray my father, my family. Kohen Badshah was the son of the man who'd brought great pain to my country. If I did these things in his vision, if I gave into these fleshly desires, then I was a traitor to everything I ever knew and loved.

Liana appeared, dipped her head, and I leapt onto her back. Without a word she shot up to the sky and took off for the clouds, higher and higher than we'd ever flown before.

So high that my ears popped, and when I was all alone in the sky, just me, Liana, and the clouds, I let loose with a gut-wrenching scream from the depths of my soul.

This was impossible. Kohen was the one man in the entire world that I couldn't have. My father would kill me.

So why did I want him so badly? And why did I believe that everything he said was true?