Years. She still didn’t know how to reconcile the time difference.
Solan shook his head. “No weapons.” He flashed out his wings with a jerk of his shoulders, then sent a bolt of power flying towards the nearest target. The paper caught fire with a flash and burned almost too fast to see. As soon as the fire was out, a wire descended from the ceiling and automatically replaced the paper.
“Neat trick.” Lena subtly flexed her shoulders like Solan had, but her wings stayed stubbornly retracted.
“Once you’ve practiced enough, you won’t need your wings extended to call your spark, but it’s definitely easier that way.” He looked at her expectantly, waiting to see her wings.
Lena could do this. If Emily could summon her wings like it was nothing, so could Lena. Piece of cake.
She looked within herself for that power she’d felt before. Solan had said it was tied to her emotions. The wings would protect her. So she needed to think of something scary.
Killer clowns. Creepy bugs. Jail. Jail with killer clowns.
It didn’t work.
She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her jaw. She could almost feel that power. She just had to reach for it.
Come on. Come on.
There!
Lena had it for a second and wind rustled behind her, but when she opened up her eyes, Solan was still looking expectantly.
“A little help?” She hated asking, but she didn’t want to stand here all day.
His face grew thoughtful. “I’m going to try reaching for your spark.”
A sarcastic comment sat on the tip of her tongue, but Lena held it back. She and Solan weren’t at the witty banter portion of their relationship yet. She just nodded.
She knew the second he was inside her. It tickled. But it no longer felt wrong, not exactly. He was more guest than intruder. Until he jolted something inside of her that made her wince and jerk back.
“Hey!” Her arms were up and she was ready to fight.
But he grinned. “It worked.”
“What?” Lena jerked her head back and got the impression of electric green and red out of the corner of her eye. “I really need a mirror.”
“There’s one in the changing stalls,” he offered. “I’ll wait, if you want to take a look.”
The offer sounded genuine, but it made Lena feel vain in the worst way. “I’m good,” she said. And she was going to figure out how to call her wings out on her own so she could see what they looked like in private.
Solan shrugged. “Here are the goals for today. You are going to use your spark to hit at least three of the targets. Once you’ve done that, we will combine our sparks to see what we can hit.”
She looked back. There were five targets, two made of paper, the others freestanding metal of some kind. None of them far away. If Lena had her gun, the targets would be toast. But the point of this was to train her new powers so she’d never be unarmed. “Sounds easy enough.”
“It should be,” he agreed. “We’ve been given a directive to begin training and these are the most rudimentary exercises, designed to train a newly Matched pair where one partner has an underdeveloped spark. Once we complete these, we’ll be monitored more closely and judged by military trainers before we can be put in the field.”
That wasn’t exactly how they did it back home, but it didn’t matter. She had to hit a few targets before they took the training wheels off. Fine. She flexed her shoulders and imagined her new powers, that lightning that Solan could call so effortlessly. Her fingers tingled and when she looked down she saw white light dancing between her knuckles.
She wasn’t going to miss this chance. Lena aimed, palm up, fingers down, and tried to shoot like she was slinging webs in a Spider Man comic. There was a small puff of air, crackling with electricity, but the closest target, which was only about six feet away, was untouched.
“Maybe some advice would help,” she admitted, turning back to Solan. “You Zulir make this look easy.”
“I’ve been doing this since I was a child. It will come.” He stepped close and ran his fingers over her arm.
He was off to the side so he wasn’t interfering with her wings, but her wings seemed to have a mind of their own. The one closest to him flared out and rubbed against his shoulder, sending sparks raining down on both of them.
Solan’s fingers tightened around her forearm and he