The reflection of the Queen: Exile

Chapter 31

"Well, you're back. Did you enjoy having the whole island worried sick about you?"

"Hello, Scilla."

"Did you have fun fraternizing with traitors?"

"Shut your mouth."

The woman's shattered face was filled with twisted satisfaction, her hands on her hips with an attitude of superiority. We were back in that dreadful training ground, surrounded by mirrors covered by sheets. And to think that only a couple of days ago I thought I would never go back there, or see her.

"From now on I will not tolerate the slightest insolence on your part, understood?"

"Sit and wait."

"I heard about the deal you made with his highness."

"So what?"

"If you dare to step out of line, I intend to tell the general and the prince, and have your lover the spy executed."

I gritted my teeth until I felt my temples throbbing.

"You're happy, aren't you?"

"I bet not as much as you making us believe you were kidnapped and in the hands of the enemy, which would have happened to you if they didn't find you."

With every word that came out of those broken lips I became more enraged, so I advanced towards the stool in the center of the clearing. Again there were dummies near the mirrors, I highly doubted any of the soldiers would volunteer again after one of the last ones ended up with an arm in a sling.

By returning to that life, I had returned to a certainty that had haunted me for months. These people were going to send me to die, there was no doubt in my mind. If the best preparation I was going to fight against elite soldiers and impossibly powerful witches was disarming dummies, I didn't know how long I would last on a real battlefield, but what was clear was that not long. I had no chance of beating the Queen or the Princess, it was inconceivable that someone so weak and inexperienced could pull it off. When I had been with Lokih, I had brushed the hope that my existence no longer had an end date, but now I saw that nothing could save me from dying for the Insurrection.

"You'd better make an effort from now on, the war is closer than we had planned."

I closed my eyes for a second in an ineffective attempt to calm down.

"Now that Furya knows of Cavintosh's existence, we have to make sure we are the first to attack. We're not going to let the filthy Ethryn get the upper hand, let them take advantage of us."

"Do you really think that what you have taught me is enough for me to win a war?"

She had taught me practically nothing, everything I had learned I had done on my own.

"You are a witch! You are more powerful than any of Ethryant's soldiers!"

"Yes, but I don't think that will do me any good if I don't know how to use that power."

"If you still don't know how to use it, it's because you don't try hard enough and don't take anything we do for you seriously. That's what you are, lazy and ungrateful, but I'm going to make sure our men don't lose the war because of you."

Sure, the war could go down the drain because of me. I shouldn't find the idea so comforting.

"You are going to repeat the exercise you have been doing for the last few training sessions: I want you to disarm and knock them all down, understood?"

"Yes..."

A monotonous exercise that I was finding easier and easier, for lack of any other method that Scilla could have come up with to teach me.