I walked down the line and stood in front of her. Fear clouded her eyes, and I felt bad for doing what I had to. It didn’t take much to knock her onto her ass.
One by one, I pushed and shoved my fellow recruits. Some stayed on their feet, most fell. When I got to Diego, I had a feeling he thought I’d go easy on him. I didn’t. He lost his balance after one hard shove. Revana kept her feet, even after two hard pushes from different angles. She grinned at me in triumph.
When I reached Melany, she looked like she was already ready to go to war. The fierce expression in her eyes made my gut clench. But I didn’t think it had anything to do with being afraid of her.
“You ready?”
“Take your best shot.” She lifted her chin in defiance.
I came at her from the side and pushed on her shoulder. She stayed pretty much in place. I tried again from the front. As I stretched my arms toward her, she stepped into me and swept my leg. I ended up on my ass. A ripple of laughter went through the room.
Stunned, I gaped up at her. She shrugged and offered her hand to help me up. “He said to not let you knock me down. So I didn’t.”
I grabbed her hand, and she pulled me to my feet. I felt a buzz of something not entirely unpleasant on the palm of my hand. I quickly let her hand go and rubbed it on my pants. The skin still tingled.
“Oh, I like this one.” Clapping, Heracles walked over. “Name?”
“Melany Richmond.”
“Melany, the dark one. I love it.” He looked at the rest of the group. “All right, everyone pair up. We’re going to learn to spar.” He pointed at me and Melany. “Congratulations, you two are now partners.”
When he moved away, we gaped at each other.
“We are going to learn how to jab, cross, and uppercut properly. Three fundamental punches in your arsenal. One of you grab a pair of focus pads from the wall, then we will start.”
I looked at Melany. She sighed. “I’ll go get them.” Then she jogged to the far wall and grabbed a couple of rectangular pads and came back.
I took them from her. “You can practice first.” I slid my hands into the holders and lifted them up in front of my body.
“Get in your stances,” Heracles instructed. “Then we will practice a jab, cross, jab.” He demonstrated, smacking huge fists into pads that one of the wooden dummy robots held up. I was surprised he didn’t break the robot with his punches.
Melany got into position, then jabbed my one pad, then did a cross punch with her left, then another jab. Her punches were solid, and I liked that she didn’t seem to hold back.
I nodded. “Not bad, Blue.”
“Thanks.”
She did it again and again, landing every punch with power. I could feel the zing of her fists even through the pads. It was impressive.
“Switch!” Heracles shouted.
I took off the pads and handed them to her. She slid them on and raised them up. I got into my stance and led with a jab. I may have not put all my weight behind it, and I think she must’ve known because she gave me a disgusted look.
“I’m not fragile. You’re not going to break me into little pieces.”
“Are you sure? You are kind of small.”
She shook her head. “You really do have a big ego, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “No bigger than most.”
Her lips twitched, but she fought back the smile.
I took up my stance again and jabbed with full power. Her arm snapped back a little, but then she pushed it forward, so I could hit the pad again. I did. Then I was doing my sequence of punches without any hesitation.
By the time Heracles yelled to stop, sweat covered my face and rolled down my back. It was the same for Melany.
“Woe ho ho, looks like we got ourselves a dream team here.” Heracles grinned at both of us. “Keep up the good work.” He smacked me on the shoulder, and I stumbled backward, but not before I caught Melany snickering.
“Are you laughing at me?” I gave her a searching look.
“No, of course not.” Sarcasm dripped off her like the sweat dripped off her brow.
At first I’d been hesitant to be paired up with her. I thought she would slow me down somehow. But the truth was we made kind of an awesome team. It was both surprising and unnerving. There was something about Melany that unsettled me. It was more than just her unconventional good looks, her dark blue hair begging me to touch it; it went deeper than that. She was different in many ways. In ways I think she didn’t even realize.
I’d spent my entire life around true believers. I’d been training for the day I got invited to the army. There had never been a question whether I would or not. I was certain that I had Gods’ blood in my veins. I suspected that my friends had Gods’ blood as well.
And here was this girl, who looked completely and utterly out of place, and I wasn’t sure she even truly believed she should be here, but out of every first year recruit, I was sure she had more reason to be at the academy than anyone.
Chapter Seven
MELANY
There was a buzz of excitement and nervousness as we descended a large stone staircase into the deepest and darkest part of the academy. Everyone was psyched to go to metallurgy class with Hephaistos. Everyone except me. I just wanted to go back to my dorm room and hide under the covers. I’d had a day of embarrassing blunders and didn’t really want to suffer through any more.
The morning’s archery class with Artemis had been mortifying. I’d wanted to impress Artemis, as she was badass. During the demonstration, the way she moved, so gracefully, so flawlessly, as she sprinted across the training field and shot three arrows into a moving target, rendered me speechless. I wanted to do that. I wanted to be that skilled.
But as it turned out, I had no skill whatsoever for the bow. During training, I couldn’t even hit the static target. All my arrows had limply hit the ground in front of them. The first few I understood. I mean, not everyone had hit the target on the first few tries. But even after an hour of pulling back the bow, I still couldn’t hit anything but grass, while almost the entire class had at least struck the target. Jasmine had gotten a bullseye and Artemis’s praise.
The disparaging looks and cruel snickers I’d gotten from Revana and her crew had nearly reduced me to tears from frustration. I didn’t cry, though. I refused to, especially in front of them.
Jasmine nudged me in the side as we walked down the stairs. She knew how upset I was. “You’ll get it next time. No one is expecting you to be great the first week of training.”
“You were.”
“I guess it’s just my thing.” She shrugged. “Anyway, you more than kicked ass during hand-to-hand combat. And you made Heracles pump his fist and clap. From what I heard, he’s not an easy person to impress.”
“I had help,” I wanted to say, as I spotted Lucian on the stairs in front of me. He was with his usual group, Diego, Revana, and a couple others I didn’t know. Why did he hang around them? They were all kind of mean, and he wasn’t. At least he wasn’t with me. They were laughing about something, probably making fun of someone, then his head turned, and his gaze met mine and my belly clenched. I immediately turned away, but the sensation still lingered.
I peered down the long, winding staircase. It felt like we’d been walking on them for an hour already. “How many floors down are we going?”
“I heard the forge is deep in the bowels of the earth.” This from Georgina, who’d been quiet until now.
Jasmine and I snickered.
“Bowels of the earth?” I gave my roommate a look. “Seriously?”
She shrugged.
Mia, she was in the room one down from Georgina and I, came along Jasmine’s other side. “You were so good in archery, Jasmine.”
“Thank you.” She dipped her head a little, as if she was embarrassed.
As Lucia moved on down a couple of stairs from us, Jasmine watched her.
I nudged Jasmine. “So, what’s going on there?”
“Nothing.” She frowned.
“Looked like something.”
“Oh, like the something you have with Lucian?”