Chapter 72 The other side of power

Chapter 72 The other side of power
Sera's Pov

“We have to resume her training immediately. There's no time left.” Maera matched forward.

“I agree, let's go Sera.” Gia interrupted.

"I was talking about her Werewolf training." Maera said it like it wasn't up for discussion.

"I was talking about her Witch training," Gia said it exactly the same way.

They were standing on opposite sides and the space between them felt like the beginning of something nobody wanted to be in the middle of. Unfortunately, I was already in the middle of it.

"She has three weeks," Maera said. "Three weeks before the Blood Moon. Every hour she spends away from combat training is an hour she doesn't get back."

"Every hour she spends ignoring a bloodline that just activated is an hour that bloodline spends learning to work against her instead of with her," Gia replied. "You can't train half a person and expect a whole warrior."

"I've been training her for a few a weeks. The wolf side is what will keep her alive in a fight—"

"The witch side is what will keep her alive through everything else." Gia took one step forward. "What happens when they send something the wolf can't handle? What happens when she's facing power that doesn't respond to strength and endurance? What does she do then?"

"She will adapt," Maera said flatly. "Like every warrior does."

"She adapts using tools she doesn't have yet," Gia said.

"Do you think two weeks of witch basics fixes that?"

"I think it's better than pretending that side of her doesn't exist."

I stood between them and listened to my entire training schedule get argued over.

"Two days,” I cut the argument short. “Aunt Gia gets two days. That's what I'm offering."

"Sera, this isn't right," Maera started.

"Let me finish." I looked at her directly. "You're right that the wolf training is what carries me through a fight. I know that. I'm not arguing it. But Wren is lying in that room and she needs me to know enough about this power to help her, and I cannot help her if I've never once touched that side of myself." I held Maera's gaze. "Just two days. Then I'm back on your schedule."

Maera pressed her lips together. "Two days is nothing."

"It's enough to learn the basics," Gia replied evenly. “I know my bloodline,"

Maera looked at me for a long moment.

"Fine," she said finally. "Two days it is them. And when you come back I'm adding an hour to every morning session to make up for it."

"Deal," I said.

She walked off muttering something I decided not to hear.

We kicked off training immediately. Gia didn't train me the way Maera did.

Maera's sessions started with the body. Push it, test it, find where it breaks and rebuild that part stronger. Every drill was about endurance and force and how long you could sustain both before you ran out.

Gia sat me down on the ground, crossed her legs, and said: "Close your eyes."

"We're sitting down?” I said.

"Correct."

"Maera never lets me sit down."

"Maera trains warriors," Gia said. "I train something else. Now, hush and close your eyes."

I obeyed her command, curious to touch that part of myself.

"The wolf power," she said, "comes from the outside in. It fills the adrenaline, muscle, instinct. It responds to threat and pressure and physical need. You've been training that for a while."

"Yes."

"The witch power is the opposite," she said. "It comes from the inside out. It doesn't respond to pressure. It responds to stillness, to clarity. To knowing exactly what you want before you reach for it." A pause. "Right now, what do you want?"

"To help everyone, and not to cause a disaster."

"Why?"

I opened my eyes. "What?"

"Keep them closed. Why do you want to help everyone?"

I closed them again. "Because I can, I don't want anyone to suffer when I can help.”

"Feel that," Gia said quietly. "The feeling underneath your declaration. Find it."

I sat with it, and something moved.

It felt like a second heartbeat that had always been there and I'd spent my whole life walking past without ever once stopping to listen.

"There you go," Gia said.

My eyes opened on their own. "How did you—"

"Because I felt it too," she said. "That's the bloodline recognizing itself." She looked at me steadily. "You're not going to have to force this, Sera. That's what I'm trying to tell you. The witch power doesn't want to be forced. It wants to be chosen."

I looked at my hands.

The marks were still. It wasn't on rampage any longer.

By the end of the first day I had done things that made no physical sense. There was no combat or strength training.

I looked up once and found my mother watching from the side.

The expression on her face stopped me mid motion.

It wasn't anger. I understood her perfectly at that moment. She was watching a door she had deliberately closed swing open without her permission, and not knowing whether to be glad or devastated.

I didn't say anything to her. She turned around and walked away.

That evening I found food outside my door.

I hadn't asked for it. Hadn't thought about eating but someone had noticed. I didn't have to think hard about who had done it.

I found my mother sitting alone near the east tunnel entrance, her back against the stone, her hands in her lap. She looked up when she heard me coming and frowned her face. I sat beside her.

"I'm not angry at you, I need you to know that. Because I know it probably looks like I am. And I have been…..I won't lie about that. But when I was out there today and I could feel what that bloodline actually is—" I stopped to face her properly. "I don't think you wasted anything, Mom. I think you made the only choice that let you survive. And I think I got here, to this moment, with any kind of power at all, because you kept me alive long enough to find it." I looked at her. "That wasn't nothing, that was everything."

Her eyes filled with tears. She looked away fast.

"I was so afraid," she said. "Every year, every birthday. Watching you grow up not knowing. Terrified that not knowing would hurt you and terrified that knowing would destroy you faster."

"I understand, mom.” I said.

She pressed her hand over her mouth briefly. Pulled it back together.

"You sound so much older than you are," she said.

"I drowned and came back," I said. "It ages you."

I moved closer and put my head on her shoulder the way I had when I was small, before everything, and she put her arm around me without hesitating.

We sat like that for a while. Then we heard footsteps. I looked up.

Gia stood a few feet away. Her eyes moved to her sister's face, then back to me.

"Elena," she said quietly.