The Midnight Sea (The Fourth Element #1) by Kat Ross Read Free Book Online Page A

afternoon. He wanted me to watch our daēvas fight each other.
    Tommas was already waiting. He grinned when he saw me and tilted his head in greeting.
    “Mine,” Ilyas said, with a possessive edge to his voice. “And here’s yours.”
    Darius walked up. Tommas got a nod. I didn’t. If Darius was nervous, I couldn’t feel it. If anything, his emotions were flat, blunted, like he’d found a way to hide them from me. Well, good for him. I hoped I could learn to do the same.
    They each selected wooden practice swords. The daēvas began to spar, slowly at first, testing each other’s infirmities. Tommas’s leg versus Darius’s arm. Tommas was taller, but Darius moved like a striking serpent. Soon, they were slashing the air so fast I could only follow their sparring by the sharp crack of the wooden blades coming together with bruising force. When they shattered their fourth staves, Ilyas called an end to it. I found myself as flushed and sweaty as the combatants, which made him laugh.
    “I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like in the beginning,” he said. Then his face hardened. “But you must learn to separate yourself, Nazafareen. To keep focused. In a real fight, it can kill you to let the bond take control. To think that what he’s experiencing is real. It is real, but it’s over here.” He made a pushing motion with his hand. “You must use your will to keep him in one part of your mind. Like a box. You’re aware of what’s happening in the box, but it’s not yours. Do you understand?”
    “I think so.”
    I closed my eyes, tried to find the place where I ended and Darius began. I could almost feel it, like the edges of a bubble. Something tangible, at least. I imagined the bubble shrinking, growing smaller until it fit into the palm of my hand. He receded, and for the first time since the bonding ceremony, I felt some measure of control over the contents of my own mind.
    Then the bubble burst and he came hurtling back. But it was a start.
    “Now we fight in pairs,” Ilyas said to me. “Get a sword.”
    I pulled one out and went over to Darius.
    “On his left,” Ilyas snapped.
    I reddened and moved over. Of course, I was supposed to compensate for my daēva’s infirmity. That was my purpose. To keep Ilyas out of the way, while Darius engaged Tommas.
    We squared off, Ilyas on the side of Tommas’s bad leg. An instant later, Ilyas lunged, and it was like my first day in the yard. Before I could blink, my sword was sailing through the air.
    I stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. I had fought Ilyas countless times, but I had never seen him move like that. Had he been toying with me the entire time? Embarrassment and fury flooded me as Darius lowered the tip of his own sword to the dirt while he waited for me to retrieve my stave. How could my captain leave me so unprepared? Was part of my training to make me look a fool in front of my daēva?
    I gritted my teeth and pulled the sword out of the horse trough.
    “Blade up!” Ilyas commanded. “Come, Nazafareen. You can do better than that.”
    I adjusted my grip on the hilt and managed to keep it for about ten seconds before Ilyas disarmed me again. This process repeated itself several more times, until he mercifully called for a break. I had staggered over to the well for a drink of water when Darius came up behind me. I expected pity or scorn, but that wasn’t what I sensed from him. It was something closer to frustration.
    “Listen,” he said. “You have some of my strength and speed, if you’ll just use it.”
    I opened my mouth and he held up his good hand.
    “I’m not asking you to let me in. I understand that you don’t want to do that, and frankly, I don’t either. But if you loosen your grip on the power, just the tiniest bit, you’ll get what’s called backflow. It will help you. Ilyas is using it.” He tilted his head, and I didn’t need the bond to see his amusement. “Unless you enjoy playing fetch.”
    I stared at him. One