Mated (The Queen's War #1)

Chapter 18

"Again!" Abaddon bellowed at her. Perci snarled at him in reply.

He was currently throwing balls of demonfire at her in the arena. In the stands around the enormous oval floor, a few dozen demons sat and watched. One of which she recognised as Senika, but she ignored the bitter demoness. She knew the others only wanted to see their new Queen in action, but she was incredibly embarrassed at how unimpressive her physical efforts were. The only saving grace was that she didn't see any censure in their gazes but only a strange sort of intensity that she didn't know how to decipher.

For the last two hours her training session had consisted of a timed forty laps of the pit in which afterwards she'd collapsed into the sand heaving for breath. Ten minutes and an energy bar later, she was then led through a number of different defensive hand-to-hand combat manoeuvres, similar to yesterday's. Abaddon had taken great delight in putting her on her arse over and over again.

But even though she was pathetically weak and had a long way to go, Perci loved the empowered feeling of actually taking steps to protect herself. It was only a matter of time before a pissed-off immortal breached her bubble of protection and tried to kill her. Again. So though the feeling of a demonfire ball singeing her arm made her want to scream, she powered through because there were more important things than responding to pain.

Perci dodged Abaddon's rapid attacks with growing ease, until finally he doused the arm that was lit up in purple flame and gestured for her to come to him.

"Have you tried summoning demonfire yet?" He asked as she reached him.

"Uh no. I thought I'd have to gain that ability as my power grew."

"It's something you either have or you don't." He shrugged, grabbed her arm and placed her palm face up. "Since you're an Archdemon, it's almost a certainty that you can summon it. How well you can do so is something we are about to ascertain."

"Okay." Perci took a deep breath and nodded for him to continue.

"Now, demonfire is easiest to summon through strong emotion. Think of a memory or something specific that makes you rage inside."

Perci closed her eyes and immediately thought of the bitchy demon who even now sat in the stalls above silently judging her every move. She thought of Senika's hands roaming over her mate's skin and intense feelings of anger rose immediately. Sudden heat focused in her wrists instantly made her stumble backwards and lose her momentum.

"You almost had it." Abaddon looked proud and she flushed. "Why did you stop?"

"I felt the heat under my skin." She rubbed her wrists where a soreness was taking hold.

"Instead of holding that heat inwards, this time try and expel it through your hands." She held her palms out once more and followed the same process. "Okay, now visualise every pore of your skin opening up like they do when you sweat-"

"That's really gross." She mumbled.

"Concentrate!" He barked, and she barely stopped herself from smiling. "See the pores, okay yes, that's it."

He continued to coax her until with a sigh she shoved the heat outwards. She had expected it to feel like a wave of fire but instead the sensation was shaky and sputtered uncontrollably. Opening her scrunched shut eyes, Perci gasped at the erratic flames that were shooting off like fireworks from her fingertips.

"Is this normal?" She asked, struggling to hold on to the heat, but before Abaddon could answer the fire poofed out of existence and the connection between her emotion and the demonfire was gone.

"It's okay, that's enough of that for today." Abaddon waved off her attempts to reconjure them.

"What did I do wrong?"