A Cruel Kindness

Chapter 7

Bellamy

I kept my hands out of view, tucked under my crossed legs so that the dickwad in front of me didn’t know I was holding them there so that I wouldn’t attempt to strangle him.

I needed to remind myself that I maintained composure in much more irritating circumstances.

But those instances hadn’t been preceded by a night of tense sleep, trying to prevent my body from shamelessly burrowing into Soren’s warmth lest I risk waking up plastered to him.

“How much training do you think you’ll need?” an older, clearly arrogant soldier asked me with a sneer on his face, like he was responsible for training me and viewed me as nothing more than a fresh fawn on wobbly legs. He’d introduced himself as Corporal Dulik with a tone so biting, you’d think he was hiding razor-sharp teeth behind that curled lip of his.

I breathed in through my nose, held it for a second, then let it out slowly. There we go . Now my voice would be steady. “What is Soren’s level of competency?”

The snort he let out made him sound like an angry horse, but I wasn’t going to point that out. Especially not as he was shaking his head in disbelief.

He rose from his chair and stalked out the door without another word. With much less haste, I stood and followed him, assuming that was what he wanted. I didn’t think the training he was convinced I needed would occur in a small, dimly lit office.

I trailed him down the hallway, widening my stride in a way that would go unnoticed to a passerby but allowed me to catch up with him quickly. “That wasn’t a rhetorical question, Corporal,” I said with as much levity as I could squeeze into my tone.

Corporal Dulik turned to me slowly, his eyes widening ever so slightly. Well, at least he was somewhat good at maintaining a stoic expression. I’d still clearly shocked him with how quickly I caught up to his strides. Raising one disbelieving eyebrow he said, “He trains newbies when he has time.”

Of course, Soren did. I bet he secretly liked it even if he bitched about it to his superiors. “And who trained him?”

The corporal’s mouth straightened into a thin line. “Me.”

“Is he better than you?” I asked, as Corporal Dulik sped around a corner without any warning. As if he was trying to see my reaction time, he cut the corner too short, pushing me into the wall. I kept my steps in time and my smile wide.

A fact which only seemed to piss him off further. He was about to get a lot angrier if being steady on my feet was that annoying. “Maybe in a few years.”

I hope when that day came Soren decided to flatten this pompous asshole, and I would be around to see it.

My heart clenched at the thought, knowing that I would be here when that happened. I’d be with Soren for the rest of my life, or if he died first, I’d follow him shortly after.

God help me . This was deeply annoying.

“Then you’ll be the judge of how much training I need,” I said, right as we walked up to the large, swinging doors hiding the training room. You could hear the soft sounds of limbs connecting as people fought and the smack of fists slamming against training pads. Based on the sharp slicing sound that cut through the back of the noise, I assumed there was weapons training here, too. “If you trained Soren, you’ll be able to tell how far apart he is from me.”

Corporal Dulik’s steps faltered at my statement, and I assumed he was smart enough to understand that I’d phrased it intentionally. The notion that I was on par with Soren was so mind-blowing that a soldier who probably had twenty years of service under his belt tripped over his own two feet. Unfortunately for him, his misstep was perfectly timed with his approach to the training mats, causing him to trip and stumble inside.

The entire room stilled, people stopping in the middle of a wrestle, or with their arm pulled back in preparation to let an arrow fly. Even though I wanted to laugh, years of training kept a pristine smile in place.

“Alright,” Corporal Dulik snapped, whipping to face me. Oh, dear, he was about to say something distasteful wasn’t he? “I guess we will start with hand to hand work.” So he could see me get knocked on my ass, I assumed. “Then there’s a survival skills evaluation. Then gun and archery range. Do you know how to ride a horse? Not in side saddle, I mean.”

“I do,” I said, smiling through that unfortunate comment. “I’ve—”

“That was a stupid fucking question,” Soren barked from across the room. Now that he was speaking, I was forced to acknowledge that I’d not only felt him the second I stepped in the room, but I recognized his voice, even when it was unleashed in a sharp snap. “Leave.”

Corporal Dulik clearly deemed it unwise to argue with a newly bonded paranima and left the room, but not without turning to a soldier running the room and snapping, “Deal with her.”

The soldier’s cheeks colored slightly as he nervously looked between me and Soren across the room. I was sure he’d seen horrors most could never even fathom, and yet he was still faltering in the face of the Bond.

He muttered a quick introduction, simply giving me his name. “Williams.”

Williams took one step back, his eyes bouncing to Soren in respect. God help me , I muttered in my head. If people were going to treat Soren like a territorial asshole and let him crowd me all the time, I had plans that would need to be rearranged.

After a moment, he looked around the large room, and said, “We’ll start you with Esme.”

At this point, everyone else was shamelessly staring, itching for a chance to see the Emperor’s prized princess fall on her ass. I couldn’t blame them. There was something enticing about seeing diamonds weather and tarnish.

“Oh, no, thank you,” Esme called, and I turned to find her at the back of the room, standing by the throwing knives. I’d missed her during my initial sweep of the space. I really needed to ask her how she managed that. Invisibility was a priceless skill, especially for my priorities.

“Esme, seriously, ” said a voice, thick with exasperation. I turned to find Ford with a group of soldiers who looked far too young to be here. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his mouth—scar and all—was turned down into a frown.

“I don’t answer to you,” Esme snapped back, her voice hardly rising in volume and yet piercing the silence of the room. She technically did, though I wouldn’t point that out. Ford answered to her, too. The Bond was settling in quickly, and if there was one thing I knew for certain, it was that Soren was probably the only person on Vir whose opinion I felt compelled to consider.

Regardless, Esme set a knife back on the rack and walked over to me, her hands moving to her throat to straighten her necklaces. “Just promise not break any of my jewelry.”

“I won’t,” I said, a true smile threatening to replace my practiced one for the first time today. “Though you might wish I would. I’d have to pay you back from the Royal collection.”

Esme’s smile transformed her entire face. She looked to Soren and pointed at me. “I like her.”

“You said that yesterday,” Ford cut in. I would likely end up dead if I pointed it out, lest it challenge the notion that Ford and Esme had somehow escaped the effects of the Bond, but it seemed like he was listening to her even when he was separated by an entire room of people.

“Bears repeating,” Esme said, a challenging look glowing in her eyes. Ford scoffed, and turned back towards his new recruits, who looked like they were in for an even more intense run than they’d initially signed up for. After a moment of staring at Ford’s back, Esme rolled her shoulders and looked back to me. “Alright, princess. Let’s see what you got.”

I had half the mind to correct her for using the term.

As she walked up on the mat, I quickly noticed her gait and the length of her limbs—both critical for understanding any opponent. That old adage had been all but beat into me by the masters that had trained me.

Esme hopped into position quickly, a testament to the years of her service. She’d said she’d been Matched to Ford for eight years. She couldn’t be any older than twenty-five. Ford seemed a few years older, but that still meant they’d both been enlisted as teenagers.

The wave of empathy I felt was quickly pushed away by the slight cock of Esme’s head, a clear sign she was about to start swinging. Sure enough, her right arm hooked towards me in a quick snap, and I ducked under her hand just in time.

Though she was incredibly steady on her feet, there was just enough leverage from her swing for me to knock her off balance by pushing on the back of her knee with my foot.

Her knee dropped to the mat, but she recovered quickly and brought her elbow back into my own leg, breaking my stance. I let myself fall, using my knee to anchor me as I swung my other leg to hook around her waist and flip us both, ending the maneuver by locking her arm out in a strong hold.

Right as I was loosening my grip, Esme rolled over her shoulder in an agile move and took several steps back, her hands raised. “Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “She’s good. I know when to tap out.”

I opened my mouth to apologize, especially as a red mark bloomed on the arm that I’d locked out. Before I could, Ford barked, “Esme.”

With a dramatic eye-roll she clearly hoped he saw, she walked over to where he was supervising two young people rolling around on the mat like playful puppies. At first, Ford didn’t look at her while she approached. After a moment, though, I could have sworn his gaze slid to the mark on her arm.

“Soren,” Williams said, arms crossed over his chest and jerking his chin towards me. Well, I guess now they were listening to me about pairing me with Soren. Skill level was also a much better excuse to pair us than trying to explain that I would get far too agitated with someone else touching me and would likely accidentally hurt them.

Soren sauntered up to me, a cocky smile blooming wide on his face. “Give me all you got, princess.”

Ugh. I hoped I’d be rid of that nickname soon.

Without giving me even a moment to prepare, Soren lunged at me, immediately going for my left side. He had the advantage now, having watched me with Esme. Though it was a short spar, it was clearly long enough for him to realize that my left side was weaker.

He went for my hip, right to the core of my balance, to try to knock me to the floor. I countered by twisting and kicking up, but his arm shot up to block my leg before it could get anywhere close to striking him.

Something happened then, while I was focused on Soren and the sparring. The entire world melted away from us. My peripheral vision went blurry and hazy, tunneling in on him. Every detail about him suddenly got much clearer. The exact color of his eyes, where all the swirling blues darkened and lightened.

The small bead of sweat, forming over his handsome brow.

The way his lips curved and twisted in focus.

I was still fighting him, my body moving on pure instinct. Every time our limbs struck, a warm hum melted up my leg or my arm, pooling in my very center. Even strikes that were supposed to hurt felt as comforting as a soft caress.

I would never know if it was my distraction or Soren’s skill that landed me on my back, but the next thing I knew, Soren was hovering over me and taking up more of my world than he already had.

He had my wrists pinned in his large hands, secured to the ground and sending that hum buzzing towards my shoulders. He was braced, easing his weight, but he still had me thoroughly trapped beneath him.

Soren’s mouth curved into a sly grin and he said, “You would have gotten me if you were a bit more scrappy.”

Before I could think twice, I twisted my hands and dug my nails into his skin, which were thankfully still sharp and well-manicured. Soren winced, giving me the leverage I needed to hook my leg around his and roll us so that I gained the upper hand.

I also happened to gain a seat perched right on top of him. I lifted as quickly as possible, replicating the way he pinned me to the ground, with his wrists in my hands.

As Soren’s laugh dripped from his mouth, clapping broke out in the room. I stood quickly, launching off Soren like he was hotter than a lit stove.

Clearly, he was much more used to having a Match than I was. I guess his years of feeling a brotherly protectiveness and instant kinship with Carson made him able to weather the side effects better. Meanwhile I was a blushing mess that still felt every place his hands had touched me.

It took great strength to meet the eyes of everyone staring at me, looking at me like I had sprouted a second head. I knew it wasn’t something they would have guessed from the princess who had never been anything other than gracefully poised and perfectly well-spoken.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Williams said, his lower lip curled in an impressed expression. I liked him much better than Coporal Dulik. “We still have to run you through the rest of the drills, but I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

His eyes lingered for a moment, like he was viewing me in a new light. Right then, Soren popped up off the ground and took a step in front of me. His face had returned to that impassive expression, though there was a hint of darkness this time.

Without speaking, Soren jerked his chin towards the very far wall. I turned to find a wall full of computers, lined with a table with keyboards and tablets. “Survival evaluation, I presume?”

Soren simply grumbled and took off towards the computers. My feet started moving before I could tell them too, as if my body was tied to Soren’s with an invisible string.

Whether Soren felt it too, I wouldn’t dare to ask. All I knew was that through the next several hours of evaluations, from a mind-numbing series of tests to figure out whether I would be able to survive in the wilderness on my own and another round of weapons training, Soren stood no more than four feet away from me at any given time.

When I finished with knife throwing, something I was told mid-session was essential to protect against the wildlife of Muliterra , that were known to jump out at you in a mass of fangs and claws, Soren pulled me aside, right into the small, secluded hallway leading to another room.

The second my back hit the cool, metal wall, my hands went clammy. Whether from the proximity to Soren, or the fact that being alone with a man would be considered breaking protocol back home, I didn’t care to figure out.

Soren stepped close, as if he had the right to crowd me like this. He dragged both of his hands down his face, in an expression that seemed far too emotional for his usual style. “Who trained you?”

“General Anderson,” I said, watching as the words landed. He breathed out, one heavy breath that sounded oddly like relief. General Anderson was who trained Soren. The day after Soren got drafted, I walked right up to him and asked him to prepare me in case that ever happened to me.

For years everyone who was privy to my training—though it was only a handful of people—wrote my request off as a childish fear, nothing more than a sixteen year old girl’s passing anxieties.

Now it felt a hell of a lot like a premonition.

“Okay,” Soren said, breathing out again. His hands descended to his hips and he nodded while his eyes went slightly unfocused. “Good. Good.”

“Relieved I’m not going to drag you down?” I asked, a rare hint of sarcasm sliding into my voice.

Soren’s eyes shot back up to mine, the blue in them turning icy. “Not the farthest jump to make, Bell.”

I breathed in deeply, if not to avoid the way his use of my nickname hit me square in the chest. “We don’t know each other.” We barely did before. He was the older, more powerful son of the Emperor. At the time, I was nothing more than another Royal.

“I know enough,” Soren gritted out through clenched teeth. “Even more now.”

“That’s all you’ll get,” I snapped, my irritation breaking my commitment to speak calmly. “You have no right to leverage this Bond against me.”

I hadn’t intended to say that second part out loud, and for good reason. Soren’s nostrils flared in warning, and he took another step closer, pining me firmly to the wall. “Oh, really? Why’s that?”

Tell him. Trust him . The Bond’s voice was insistent, pressuring. I almost listened to it before I remembered that the Bond wasn’t strong enough to make me throw away my belief that the only person you could truly trust was yourself.

“We both have jobs here,” I said, evading his question and tilting my chin up in defiance. “Let’s just do them.”

Soren took his time evaluating me—standing in silence with his body pressed close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him and scanning my face, neck, and chest with his eyes. “I will find out your secrets all the same.”

“What?” I asked, smiling. My voice was soft, more of a prodding whisper. “You want to know my first crush? Find my diary and read it?”

Soren tsk ed, tilting his head to the side as he did it. “It was your mother’s guard with the floppy hair, and anyway, that doesn’t tell me all that much about you. I’m thinking a little deeper.”

“No, thank you.” My words were nearly trapped in my throat, it squeezed so hard in response to Soren’s words, to the low, caressing way he spoke them. A shiver ran down my spine, before shooting back up and landing in my hands, making them spark with the need to move.

Soren wasn’t deterred by my disagreement. “Come on. I know you well enough. Be nice and let me in.”

Panic flared, my mind latching on to the more illicit meaning in his words. “You don’t know shit.” Soren’s eyes widened, his lips rolling to conceal a smile, as if it was just the funniest thing in the world that I’d cursed. “You know things about me not me— eep! ” My words ended in an ungraceful shriek, startled by the sound of a too-loud gunshot banging through the space. Someone clearly forgot to attach their silencer, and my body seized in response.

Soren’s hand landed on my chin, making me look at him. The touch burned hotter than a brand. But it settled me, it loosened the tension in my limbs. He noticed. “I think I might know you, Bell.”

My composure snapped, as easy as a twig under a heavy boot. Soren didn’t know anything about me. We’d suffer the effects of this … curse, but that didn’t mean he deserved any more from me.

Pushing him away from me, and trying not to note how right his chest felt under my hands, I stalked past him and into the gun range.

When people noticed my entrance, a few people muttered Princess or Your Grace under their breath in a show of respect, while others just felt it fitting to stare at me. I had lost the ability to care.

“Hello everyone,” I said with a forcefully kind tone. I wanted to run through these evaluations and get this the hell over with. The last thing I had to do was the gun range, and even if I’d been spooked by one, that didn’t mean I’d let anyone see me falter.

Refusing to look back at Soren, though I could feel him trailing me, I walked over to an empty stall and picked up the pistol that someone had abandoned there. Quickly and without dramatics, I checked the chamber and loaded in another round of ammunition.

“Bell,” Soren said, trying to get my attention. I ignored him.

I aimed the gun at the target, hung at the furthest distance down the dim, gray expanse used for this range. I passively wondered what ancient part of the temple had been destroyed and converted for this. Based on the length of the space, I would guess a crypt. I was sure the bodies of priests and priestesses that had rested here were unceremoniously cast aside, their rest not even a consideration in light of the benefit of refurbishing the space to churn out well-trained soldiers.

Placing my finger on the trigger, I shot off the entire round of bullets, creating a larger and larger hole in the center of the target with each piece of heated lead that ripped through it.

Once I was done, and my chest was sufficiently heaving, I slammed the gun back down and turned to Soren. Before I could speak, he pushed me against the small wall separating the stalls, his expression serious.

“Like I said, you don’t know me. You don’t know anything about the person I've become over the last six years,” I tried to snap at him, though my tone held little fire. I was exposing too much about how I felt about other people’s assumptions, especially when they were regarding my strength.

Soren didn’t respond, just moved his eyes around my face like he was trying to catalog every little feature. It was as if he was physically restraining me. I didn’t think I could move—even if I wanted to.

A second later, his hand came to rest on mine, the warm, calloused skin of his palm pressing into my shaking hand.

Soren’s expression turned pained, like I’d just slid a knife into his abdomen. I shook my head, my eyebrows creasing together in my own expression of anguish.

This felt like too much already.

How well he seemed to read me. Add in the fact that he did know quite a bit about me, even if they were basic facts, and his bone-deep stare felt like fire lancing over my skin.

His hand tightened over mine, trying to stop the shaking. It wouldn’t go away for probably another thirty minutes, I’d wager.

When I got overwhelmed like this, my hands gave me away first.

Unfortunately, the jitters and nerves felt quelled under his hand.

A different sort of jitters pooled in my stomach when he lifted his other hand and trailed it lightly over the perimeter of my face, stopping on every spot where my skin was slightly discolored from scars I’d gained as a young girl.

My mother had always told me I was far too pretty to have scars like that marring my face. Unluckily for her, the concentrated pigment intended to cover them up hadn’t made its way into the small bag I was allowed to bring with me.

“Is it the guns?” Soren asked, his voice soft, yet somehow still strong as steel as he looked for the reason behind my shaking.

I shook my head, which only served to make his hand scrape against my face. “I’m okay with them. Better than a bow. Safer.”

Safe . That word seemed to do something to Soren. He cursed under his breath, his eyes growing distant as he retreated into his mind. Trying to bargain with the Bond to shut up, I assumed.

I took a step back from him, needing the distance for my own sanity.

“I’m fine, Soren,” I said, bringing fire into my tone. I needed to forcefully keep distance between us, even if that meant inviting strife. It was the only way to keep him disinterested in my every movement and do what I needed to.

I couldn’t trust that the Bond wouldn’t fuck it up for both of us.

Soren’s eyes hardened, his own show of pushing away the insanity the Bond was causing both of us. “Go on, then,” he said, almost daring me to step further away from him.

I intended to. I really did.

But he’d spoken, which had drawn my attention to his lips. My gaze snagged there, caught like prey in a spider’s web. I had never felt something like this before, the intense pull in my stomach. If I thought I’d felt attraction before, I was sorely mistaken.

This was an entirely different beast.

My eyes flitted up to Soren’s, seized when I found him staring at me. So much, yet nothing at all, passed between our stares.

I could feel him daring me to walk away, while simultaneously challenging me to stay right where I was and drown in the blue of his eyes.

As strong as the Bond was, and as alluring as Soren was even without it, I’d spent my whole life working to resist impulse. It was only my training that helped me drop my gaze to the floor and take a measured step away.

I heard Soren’s scoff hit the top of my head, then watched his feet stride away from me. Helpless, my chin lifted so that I could watch him walk away.

Everyone was staring, something that would clearly be common for us. One poor kid got in Soren’s way while he was trying to leave the gun range.

“Um, you ne—need to … you can’t leave with a gun. No loaded firearms outside the ra—ange,” the kid stuttered, his eyes dropping to where Soren still carried the gun he’d carefully taken from my shaking hand.

Soren lifted it, looking at it like he hardly realized it was still in his hand. In a few quick moves, he discharged the ammunition, unscrewed the silencer, and placed the gun in the kid’s hand. As he scurried away, fear on his face, Soren turned over his shoulder to me. There was something searching in his gaze, and the Bond made me think it was me.

I had to grip the thin wall separating stalls behind me to stay where I was instead of giving into the urge to run towards him.

Soren scanned the room quickly for something, making me watch in some mixture of awe and horror. His eyes landed on something in the corner of the room, then marched over.

People made way for him like waves parting for a ship. Only one person didn’t move, and it was a soldier who clearly had a large chip on his shoulder. His expression was one of someone who had been convinced the world was against him, yet accepted no responsibility for his own actions.

Soren walked up to him and ripped the gun out of his hand. “Didn’t your mommy teach you not to use a weapon that’s not properly assembled?”

The soldier folded his hands over his chest in indignation. “It’s just a silencer, Soren. It’s not that serious.”

Soren laughed bitterly, shaking his head. I couldn’t see his expression, but I figured it was one that would make anyone with wits wither. “Rules are rules, Charles,” he said to the solider. “Break rules, and there are consequences.”

Charles scoffed right in his face. “Since when did you give a shit about rules?”

Soren took a step towards him, tapping him on the shoulder with the still loaded gun. “When they give me an excuse to dole out punishments.”

Charles’s face fell, right as Soren lifted the gun right next to his ear, aimed it at the target and shot it. The loud bang rang through the room with force, though the jolt it gave my system was nowhere near as bad as the pain Charles was suffering.

He fell to the ground, holding his hand over his ear. I was sure the drum was ruptured.

Soren simply stood over him and said, “Silencers on.”

Then he turned as if nothing had even happened and strode toward the door.

Unfortunately, the Bond was panting like a happy puppy in the face of that move. So when Soren walked out, I followed.