The Elementals - The Ice Princess

Chapter 31

There is a soft knock at the door and Alexander pokes his head inside the room. "Any luck?" he says with a half smile.

Laney looks over at me, and I at Alexander and give him a head shake.

"Aside from her scaring me half to death. No. Unfortunately not."

"I know you haven't been at it very long, but maybe you should get some rest, maybe our run this morning took a lot out of you."

Almost as if on command, I begin to feel my muscles ache and begin to think that maybe Alexander is right. Perhaps my mind is not fully into this and maybe some rest would help.

By now, Alexander has fully entered the candlelit room. The light makes him look bigger than he is and the shadow that he casts is massive.

He reaches down and helps pull me off the floor. As I get to my feet, I begin to feel my knees throb and the pain in my legs intensify. Alexander was right, the run did take a lot out of me. It takes me a second to notice that even though I am on my feet, Alexander is still holding onto my hands and I can feel the warmth go immediately to my face.

I think Alexander notices because he quickly pulls his hands away from mine and looks over to Laney who is now standing beside us with her arms crossed and her eyebrows raised.

"If we're going to let her sleep, we should do it soon. She needs to get back to her training tonight."

"Tonight?" I ask surprised.

Laney laughs a little to herself. Do you think that because we're somewhat safe in this dive of a hotel that the darkness is going to stop looking for you? We know that for sure there are two Achlys after you and our goal is to train you and protect you so you can help us stop all of this. So your training takes precedence over all else, eating, sleeping, flirting..." she casts a quick glance over at Alexander who even in the candlelight I can tell is beginning to blush as he can't look me in the face. I can feel my face begin to the do the same but try my best to maintain eye contact with Laney who appears to be on a roll with her motivational speech. "Training will be the only thing that we do until you are ready to fight because without you, everything is almost certainly lost."

An awkward quiet fills the room. Motivational was right. I totally feel ready to put my life on the line. It would have almost have been better for her to say that "We have a snowball's chance in hell because you can't even call upon these so-called super powers that you're supposed to have and as of right now, you're pretty useless to all of us, so we're just going to babysit you until you either become of some use, or die!"

"Get some sleep Eira," Laney finally says as she breaks the silence. "I am going to be in here to wake you up in about 2 hours from now. We're going to do some training in the dark." And with that said, she exits the door leaving only Alexander and I standing in the candlelight.

"Well she's certainly a ball of joy," I say softly to Alexander, so as to make sure that she doesn't hear the comment as she left only moments ago.

"Yeah, but she's worried. We all have a lot riding on you. Not just you, all of the elementals." He smiles a little at me "No pressure or anything."

There isn't much that I can do other than just laugh nervously which lasts only a few moments.

Alexander realizes that there is an awkward silence between us and takes it as his cue to leave. He walks to the door, his shadow still bulking. I watch as he slowly opens the door and then pauses and turns back to me.

"I know you don't believe it, but you can do this. We all believe in you. I believe in you." And with that said, Alexander closes the door leaving me in the candlelit room, alone, with only my thoughts and doubts that he is right.