“I expect nothing from you.” Kalani bent to pick up the knife. “The question is what do you expect from yourself?”

First Inyoni’s smack talk and now Kalani’s psychological mumbo-jumbo—I shook my head. “You watch a lot of kung fu movies, don’t you?”

“Of course.” Kalani grinned. “Are there any other kinds? But no, there won’t be kung fu here. What I teach is more like tai chi. Not that stuff old people do for exercise. I mean, it’s basically the same thing, but our tai chi is for attack and defense from real and actual violence. We go into it with a different mind-set, okay?”

“I don’t really understand,” I said. “But I’m sure you’ll show me.”

Kalani nodded. “We’ll begin with a basic pattern of movements. When you learn those and repeat them without error, we’ll move on.”

Kalani and I spent the afternoon dancing in measured, fluid steps, watching my form in the wall mirrors. Kalani had endless patience, and after a frustratingly slow afternoon that would have brought me to tears with any other instructor, she praised my effort and said reassuring things about my progress. I didn’t believe her, but the encouragement was nice to hear anyway.

That night at dinner, Inyoni and Kalani entertained the other women, telling stories about my training. They ribbed and cajoled me until I agreed to get up from the dinner table and give an impromptu recital of some of the things I had learned. Embarrassment burned in my cheeks, and I wanted to shrink under their scrutiny, but at the end of my performance, they all laughed and cheered for me.

I had survived the first in a long line of strenuous but good-natured initiation rituals put on by the coolest sorority ever. With the exception of my family’s small bakery, I had never belonged to anything greater than myself. I had lived in Mani’s shadow and been quite content to do so; I might have been the sun incarnate, but between the two of us, my brother had shone the brightest. Now I wondered what I had missed out on. I wondered if something more, something of my own, awaited me beyond the reaches of wolves and egomaniacal gods.

Chapter Thirty

In the evenings, after our group dinners, Tori took me to the reinforced concrete basement under the barn, and we worked on honing my fire. For days we tried every technique she could think of to bring out my heat and light—meditation, chanting, picture associations, even a little screaming and yelling. None of her methods worked. Only intense emotion brought my powers to the surface.

Near the end of the second week, after an especially trying day in which Inyoni had repeatedly thrown me to the ground and Kalani had beaten me soundly with a small stick, I sat in the basement beside Tori, exhausted and frustrated. “I can land a decent punch and run the three-mile course without falling into an asthma attack. In another two weeks, I might be a marginally dangerous woman with my hands and a stick. But we’ve made absolutely no progress with controlling my fire. I’ve never felt so helpless.” I growled an articulate noise. “So frustrated.”

“So, do you want to give up?” Tori asked.

“No, I don’t.” I scrubbed a hand over my face and tried to figure out a way to explain my thoughts. “Failure is hard to take. Self-doubt is becoming its own hindrance, another obstacle to overcome. I’ll keep working on it, Tori. I just wish someone could reassure me, tell me that this is all going to be worth it in the end.”

I missed Skyla. She would kick my butt and tell me that whining didn’t turn her on. Heck, I missed Val and Thorin, too. They had accepted my mediocrity, or if not, then they had had the decency to keep silent about it. At first, I resented Val and Thorin for allowing me to be so easily kidnapped, but now I worried for them, especially Skyla. It had been two weeks since the Valkyries took me. Had Helen taken proactive measures against them in my absence? After practice, I planned to insist that Tori allow me to contact them.

Tori shook her head and stretched out on the dirty floor beside me in complete indifference to her white sweatpants and tank top. “I can’t tell you if you’re wasting your time or not. I am not an oracle, and I’m not sure such a thing exists anymore. I can tell you that I believe something is about to happen. I feel the earth holding its breath in anticipation. You are a key to whatever that is. Ensuring your safety is worth everything to us.”

“I understand your conviction,” I said. “But I can’t help wondering about the inevitability of it all. I’m sure Sol did everything she could the last time around to keep the wolf from eating her. He got her anyway. Will all this training tip the scales in my favor this time?”

“Who knew you were so fatalistic,” Tori said.

“I thought the gods were all about fate.”

“They are. But even if something is destined, you must choose how you will meet it. Will you go to it mewling like a newborn or will you scream like a fury?”

“My brother screamed. He fought and bit and scratched and punched. It did him no good.”

“He didn’t know what was coming for him. You do.”

“I do?”

“A wolf. A man. You can beat him.”

I might have been slow to start sometimes, but I’d never been a quitter. I didn’t intend to change my ways this late in life. I pushed myself off the floor and dusted the dirt from my borrowed sweats. “Okay, thanks for the pep talk.”

“Are you ready to try again?”

“For what it’s worth, yes, I am.”

“Good.” Tori stood beside me. “We’ll try something different tonight. Close your eyes.” I did as she said. Her footsteps shuffled around and then came to a stop in front of me. “In your mind, visualize an image of Hati as wolf and hold him there.”

I reviewed my dream and paused on a frame of Hati ripping into Mani and focused on his sharp teeth and bloody jaws. We’d tried this exercise before, but nothing came of our attempts. Why did Tori expect this time would be different?

“Picture your brother fighting him,” Tori said. “Feel his pain and fear. Don’t be sympathetic. Be empathetic, put yourself in his place.”

I went further into the memory, but my mind protested. My chest cramped. A sob escaped my throat.

“Don’t resist. If it hurts, then it means you’re doing it right. Take it in you, and let it rip you up. Let the anger, fear, and grief stab you and cut you.”

“You’re crazy,” I said, opening my eyes.

“Close your eyes!” she ordered.

I snapped them shut; her voice held that much command.

A set of hands emerged from the dark and clamped around me, pinning my arms to my sides. I opened my eyes again in time to see Tori rearing back. She let loose and sank her fist into my gut. My knees went out, and I would have fallen if not for whoever held me. I struggled for breath, and stars danced around my vision. My lungs came back on line and heaved in the breath driven out by Tori’s strike.

“What the hell—” I began but didn’t get to finish before Tori’s fist rammed into my jaw, popping my head back with an audible crack. I struggled against whoever held me, screaming and whipping wildly. I panicked for a second, but then my training clicked in. I switched into action and jammed my heel into the instep of the Valkyrie holding me in place. Her grip relaxed, and I shoved my elbow into her solar plexus. She grunted and bowed over. “Good job, princess,” Inyoni said, panting. She looked up at me and smiled. “I see your training is starting to sink in.”

“What are you doing?” I wheezed.

“Helping you find your fire,” Tori said as she struck a kick toward my ribs. I turned and her foot ricocheted off my hip, but the pain of her hit went all the way to the pit of my stomach.

“You going to stand there and take it?” she asked. “Or are you going to fight back?”

I growled and aimed a punch for Tori’s face. She blocked and jabbed her other fist. Her strike landed, a perfect black-eye blow, and my left lid immediately began to swell. “I can’t fight you,” I said. “You’re too good.”

“Am I?” Tori bounced on her feet. Inyoni waited from a safe distance, watching for Tori’s directions should she call her to the fight again.

“Yes. You’re fast and strong.”

“Those are my weapons. You have weapons of your own. Use them.”

“I don’t know how,” I shrieked.

“I am the wolf, Solina. Do you think I will give you mercy? Fight me like you would fight the wolf.” Tori spun in a blur of movement and kicked my legs out from under me. I hit the concrete, and stars sparkled before my eyes again.

“Uh-uh-uhhh,” Inyoni said, sing-song. She waggled her finger at me like a condescending grandmother. “You know how to take a fall better than that. Guess what we’ll be working on again tomorrow.”

As I lay there, waiting for the daze to clear, Tori launched herself on me and bit me.

“Ow, you bitch!” I clawed for her eyes and managed to smack her away. Tori laughed and gnashed her teeth at me. I might have laughed, too, if her bite had not drawn blood. She crouched low to the floor and growled. Tori had her wolf impression down pat. The hairs rose on the back of my neck in anticipation of her next move.

Tori licked her lips. “I’m going to eat you, little piggy. Just like I ate your brother.”

The decision to leap flashed in Tori’s eyes. I threw up a hand and caught her jaw in my grasp. She shrieked and pulled back, revealing an angry red mark on her face shaped like a hand. We both stared in awe as my fingers glowed, red-white like charcoal in a grill. Flames crawled from my palm and up the length of my arm, turning whiter and brighter as they moved.