That should not have been so difficult, Tamra thought again, as the whisper of doubt wormed back into her mind. Focus, Tamra. You’re better than this. She’d once controlled five kehoks at the same time! Just one shouldn’t have even been a challenge. Bending over now, however, she worked to catch her breath. She ached everywhere and knew she’d pushed her body too far. She’d never had so much trouble bringing a kehok into a stable, especially one in chains.
Maybe this was a mistake.
“That is not a racer,” one of the other trainers, Osir, proclaimed. He’d been a trainer for a decade longer than Tamra and thought he was at least two decades wiser. He always spoke as if pearls of wisdom were dripping from his bulbous lips. He’d disapproved of Tamra and her methods from the moment they’d met. Tamra wished she could have picked a day when he wasn’t working to bring in her new prize.
“He will be,” Tamra said.
“No chance. You can tell. He’s got the kind of will you can’t bend. At best, you break him. But right, you don’t like to break your monsters. You’ve got a ‘better way.’” He waved his fingers in the air, as if he thought her “way” was no better than a sleight-of-hand magic trick.
“It works for me,” Tamra said through gritted teeth.
“Until it doesn’t. Mark my words: you don’t have a racer here. You have a killer.”
The second trainer, a woman named Zora, nodded firmly. When Tamra had first arrived at the training ground, Zora had offered to share use of her kehoks. She withdrew her offer after realizing Tamra was that trainer and hadn’t spoken to her since. Despite running to her aid just now, neither Osir nor Zora qualified as supportive colleagues, which was fine.
I don’t need friends, Tamra thought. I need to win.
“My new student, Raia,” Tamra said, introducing her. “This is Trainer Osir and Trainer Zora. They also have use of this training facility. You won’t have much interaction with them, though, because they have their own students.” She wanted to add, “Also, they have the souls of roaches,” but she refrained. After all, they had just helped her.
Raia bowed her head. “Honored to meet you.”
Zora snorted.
Osir slapped a hand down on Raia’s shoulder. “Your new trainer won’t break kehoks. But she won’t hesitate to break you. Watch yourself.”
Tamra expected Raia to murmur a polite response. It was what a well-educated rich student would have done. It was also what a poor just-off-the-streets student would have done. But instead, Raia met his eyes and said softly but firmly, “It’s why I chose her. I don’t break easily.”
Tamra didn’t even try to hide her smile.
Chapter 6
Per Trainer Verlas’s orders, Raia spent the night in the stable, which was not at all what she’d been hoping for, after a string of terrified nights spent hidden in sheds, alleys, and abandoned houses. She’d wanted a nice cot in a quiet corner inside a house.
The stable was definitely not that.
She was supposed to work on conquering her fear. Not banishing it. Just dealing with it as a constant that didn’t have any power over her. Easier said than done, Raia thought. But at least she had a roof over her head and didn’t need to worry about being run off by the stable’s owner or a city guard, which was an improvement.
And it wasn’t as if she had to sleep in a stall. There was an office off the stable that boasted a cot and a washbasin. It even had a cabinet stocked with sausage rolls for her dinner and fruit for her breakfast.
The only flaw was all the monsters on the other side of the wall.
How did I get myself into this?
She was supposed to be on track to becoming an augur, her future assured. The fact that it wasn’t a future she wanted was less important than the fact that it would provide her with wealth, security, and comfort—or so her family had repeated ad nauseum. Maybe in a past life, she’d earned her place with the augurs, but she didn’t remember that existence, and she wasn’t that person anymore. Her parents had never understood that.
What would they do if they could see me now?
She knew the answer to that. Haul me back in chains as if I’m a kehok. Toss me in a house that might as well be a locked stable and tell me to breed.