“I’ll stand back on this one, Majesty. Let you find your own feet,” he said. “But if you need any advice, or encouragement, look to me for a quick nod.”
I gave one in return. “Thanks, Blade.”
“Any time.” He reached back to the table nearby and grabbed a notepad and pen. “Now, I want you taking notes for this part, because you’re going to learn all the loopholes in the laws you can and cannot be overruled on, and those you can be punished for breaking.”
“Great,” I said, and I meant that. Up until now, learning anything made my eyes roll, as if I was back in school, being treated like a kid again. But, in suffering curiosity and belittlement for too long, I’d come to realise just how important it was to be informed. If I knew what I was talking about, no one had cause to argue with me or doubt me.
He was small, just a dot on the horizon, almost completely shadowed by the two giant cliffs guarding either side of the small beach, but before I even reached the steep steps leading down to the sand, I knew it was Jase.
He crossed his arm over his body and under his elbow, then flicked it out quickly toward the waves, sending a small stone skipping across the choppy surface as best it could considering the almost violent conditions out there today.
I could tell, even from up here on the cliff side, that something was troubling him—could tell he came out here to be alone, but I didn’t really care. I needed some space, too, and my skin had been craving the fury of the ocean for about a week now. We weren’t supposed to be in the same space alone but, if one of us was leaving, I was sorry to say it’d have to be him.
“Hey,” he called, without even turning around.
“How’d you know I was here?” I projected my voice over the noise of the wind, even though I knew he could hear me just fine. A habit, I guess.
“I can smell you.” He turned slightly and smiled at me, then ditched another stone from his handful into the water.
“But I was downwind.”
“Trust me, Ara. My senses are very finely tuned when it comes to you. I could smell you before you even knew you were coming this way.” He laughed.
I laughed too, closing my shawl around my chest as I stopped beside him. “Hey, did you get that reading you were trying for at training the other day?”
He shook his head. “And now I need a new ammeter, thanks to your telekinesis.”
“Telekinesis?” I frowned. “What d’you mean?”
“That’s how you threw him.”
“I thought it was my light.” I waved my fingers.
“Your light doesn't have that kind of power. Maybe to knock someone back with the blast, but not pick them right up and toss them aside.” He threw another stone.
I reached across and stole one from the cup of his palm. “Show me how.”
“How what?”
“Show me how to do it.”
He looked at the stone in my flat hand, then dropped his collection on the wet sand at his feet, the pebbles scattering like pearly black diamonds. “On one condition.”
“Anything.” I smiled sheepishly. “Well, almost anything.”
“You keep everything I teach you a secret.” He wrapped both hands over my own and the stone. “They all believe your blue light threw that knight, Ara, and it’s probably safer if you keep it that way.”
I nodded. “Okay, agreed. But what about David?”
A thin smile stretched his lips. “I’d never ask you to keep something from your husband, Ara. You can tell whoever you like, as long as you trust them.”
“Okay.” I looked at my hand all tucked up and warm in his. “I accept the terms of our agreement. Now, show me how to make it move.”
“Right. Well, you only discovered this because of your survival instinct. Quite often, a vampire’s power can lay dormant for thousands of years, until a situation arises where they need to use it.”
“So, I could have more powers I don’t know about?”
“Ara,” he said with a small laugh. “I can’t even begin to imagine the potential within you. You’re not only a child of Lilith’s blood, but you’re also deemed a goddess by Mother Nature.”
“And that means I’m supposed to be magnificently powerful?” I asked disbelievingly.
“Not just powerful, sweet girl, a force to be reckoned with, something that should scare the wits out of any man who opposes you.”
I smiled at my own small hand, so feeble against his long, ancient and athletic fingers. “I can just see Drake shaking in his boots now.”
His hand tightened around mine. “He should be.”
“He will be, when I figure out how to use this power.” I grinned up at Jase’s very slight dimple—the one he’d get when he was enjoying something. “Now, stop stalling just so you can hold my hand, and show me how to do it.”
He laughed, but we both knew he wasn’t really stalling. “Okay, as I was saying before, you found the ability because you had the need for it. So, I want you to imagine I’m trying to steal this stone from you, and I want you to use your mind to throw it into the ocean.”
“Okay. But since we’re role playing, why are you trying to steal it?”
He thought for a second, looking up when the idea struck him. “Because if I get it, you have to let me kiss you.”
My spine straightened.
“On the lips,” he added.
I pictured it for a second, and before our lips even touched, an imaginary David came down and ripped Jason’s arms out of their sockets, laid his face down on the boulder by our feet and smashed his heel into the back of Jason’s head, knocking all his teeth out. “Okay.”
“Give me your word.” He held out his pinkie.
I linked mine over it. “You have my word. If you get the stone, I’ll kiss you.”
“He will hurt me when he sees the kiss in your thoughts, Ara. It’s not a joke.”
“Then you better hope you’re not wrong about me having telekinesis.”
“Hoping?” He took a step back and crouched down, pulling his jeans up his legs a little. “Ara, I’m praying right now.”
I looked at his white teeth under that smile, and a faint memory of what those lips felt like flooded my senses.
“Ara,” he said, his tone playful but warning. “You better start moving that stone.”
I jerked my hand back as he swiped at it, almost catching it in his palm, but my so-called powers didn’t surface. So, I ran—turned on my heel and bolted down the beach, my feet sinking into the softer sand further away from the waves.