Building the Tension | ✔ | 18+

Chapter 32 - Ready for a Fight

"Oof!" I exclaimed as I landed on my ass on the mat in the gym again, "This is killing me, Comrade."

Dimitri leaned in and offered me his hand to help me back up. "Roza, do you want me to go easy on you? To hold back? Or do you want me to train you hard?"

I smirked. "I want you to do something hard to me, Comrade, but I'm not sure training is what I was thinking of."

"Not funny, Roza. Hit the speed bag for five minutes. You need to be ready when Adrian comes for you. We know he will come," he said.

"I know," I said, as I walked over to begin punching at the speed bag, "but even my bruises have bruises, Dimitri. We've been training hard for the past week - hours each day more than any other novice! I'm going to be so sore by the time I take my trials that I'll be limping my way through the obstacle course."

"Is Lissa still offering to heal you after every session?" Dimitri asked.

"Yes," I said, "She knows what the darkness does to me, though, so I keep turning her down."

Dimitri nodded. "Good. Physical pain will make you stronger, but the darkness from her healing you is just going to make you both more volatile."

"It does make me fight harder, though," I told him, "That could be a good thing against Adrian."

"You haven't told her about him, I hope?" It was a question.

"No," I told him, "I understand why she wasn't told. If there's even a little bit of darkness that I haven't taken from her, she isn't going to handle this well. Let's focus on getting through high school, and then we can tell her. Besides, she is up to something. She's been closing her thoughts off to me again."

Even as we trained, I could feel that she was blocking me out. It was the time on her class schedule when Lissa would be in her element training time and I could feel that she was building up darkness, but I couldn't tell how. I tried not to worry about how and why she'd be blocking me during her spirit training, but I knew that - whatever she was doing - it couldn't be good if she was keeping me out.

"Maybe it is a surprise for you?" Dimitri offered, "Graduation is only a little more than a week away."

"Let's hope so," I said, as I finished with the speed bag. If it's something she's doing during her spirit training, it's absolutely not a surprise for me, I thought to myself.

"Time to hit the weight room," said Dimitri, patting me on the back, "I think you can max at two hundred pounds in the leg press today, Roza."

"Comrade, you're killin' me! I think you're doing this just so I'm not going to be able to walk right for a week if I do that," I told him.

Dimitri replied, "Roza, if my goal was just to have you not walking right for a week, there are much more fun ways to accomplish that." As we made our way down the hallway to the weight room, Dimitri got close to my ear and whispered, "Besides, how else am I going to keep your zadnitsa so nice and toned like this?" He gave me a little pat on the ass as he said it, effectively letting me know exactly what zadnitsa meant. I smirked, knowing he was unintentionally teaching me more Russian swear words.

-=o0/&\0o=-

"I know I should be excited," Lissa told me, as I laid there on her bed while she and Jill studied for their final exams, "but I just don't think I'm ready for the real world. Don't get me wrong, Rose: college seems exciting, but I just don't feel like an 'adult', ready to take on the responsibilities of being at Court, starting to think about living on my own, and taking my family's seat on the council."