Page 51 of Lost and Stolen Gods
I crossed to the bedding on the floor, thicker somehow. Was that one of his furs?
It totally was.
I glanced back at the bed and his sleeping form.
What did this mean?
My stomach was full, and my mind was ready to shut down.
I’d figure it out in the morning.
I stripped off my pants and climbed under the furs in my undershirt and panties.
Araz’s scent filled my nose, forcing the memory of our encounter to the forefront of my mind. I pushed it away.
My last thought before I passed out was that I’d probably smell like him all day tomorrow.
Then it was lights out.
Chapter 19
I’LL TAKE ALL THE DEALS
The morning training session was with Pashim. Now back in his black armor outfit, he was far removed from the drohi who’d sat with me in the kitchen late last night while I scarfed food.
It was a sunny day with clear skies, but the air was cold and biting, whistling through my hair and seeping under my clothes. We warmed up quickly when we set to work with laps and lunges before moving on to sparring. Pashim put me with Dharma and Priti, and we took turns attacking each other. I got to test out my strength, and even though the number of spectators today was much smaller, I made sure to hold back, always pulling the punch at the last minute.
True to his word, Pashim spent a half hour extra with me after class, teaching me proper form when throwing a punch. We practiced without makingactual contact for a while, and I was getting the hang of it when he said, “Hit me.”
“What?”
He canted his head, a half-smile playing on his lips. “There is no one here, Leela. No one watching. You can hit me.”
I wanted to because it was the only way to know the true extent of my strength. “Are you…Are you sure?”
He arched an amused brow. “Leela, I’m a drohi. I can take a hit from a mortal.”
“Okay.” A little moth fluttered in my belly as I prepared my stance and then swung.
Contact with his hard abs radiated up my arm, and Pashim’s boots left the ground as he shot away from me, arching through the air toward the platform.
I let out a shocked cry because he was going to smash into it, but he vanished before he could hit it, reappearing in a crouch a few feet away, fingers grazing the sand.
We stared at each other for a stunned beat before he stood slowly, almost warily. “You will continue to hold back in training sessions.”
I winced. “Ravi said the same thing. He said that I should have been a broken mess from being repelled by Guru Chandra’s shield.”
“Because he knows what the shield can do. Guru Chandra’s shield is what we call an astra, a powerful weapon gifted to him by the chakra. As a born god, heachieved his astra through centuries of mediation, and karmic deeds. But since the rise of the devouring force, he along with all other born gods are barred from the battlefield.
“Training the future gods is the only way he can contribute to the war now. The shield should have crippled you, and the rakshasa is right, the other demigods who saw the incident will also know this. So going forward, use your true strength only if you have no other choice, otherwise save it for the labyrinth. Hopefully people will conclude that maybe Guru Chandra’s shield wasn’t fully activated during contact.”
“Do you think that might be the case?”
“I don’t know.”
“You really think the other demigods will try to hurt me if they believe I’ll grow to be stronger than them?”
“I’m certain.”
