Chapter Three:
18 Years Ago
Gerard Lambert stood in the slim corridor of the training facility, pondering the warmth of bodies occupying the cells along the way, the quicksilver flash of their psyche played upon his mind but one was different from the others, icy and unobtainable.
"How is she doing?" He asked turning to Master Gryfalcon.
His expressive eyebrows drew together as he spoke forming a line of bushy grey-white hair. "Her agility and reflexes are advanced for her cohort. She's doing very well considering."
"Considering what?"
"The other recruits describe her as…cold."
His lips quirked in an almost smile remembering the petulant 10 year old he had met in Sentinel Gardens. "Will she graduate to the next stage?"
"I'm certain of it."
Gerard nodded.
"Don't be so pleased, Lambert." Gryfalcon murmured. "She may fail at the next hurdle."
He left Gryfalcon and entered one of the small rooms, the buzz of the halogen was there to greet him and the petite figure sat ram rod straight behind the desk.
She glanced up for a moment no expression flickered on her face or in her eyes as if she had been expecting him. "How are you, Luna?" He asked. Her eyes were focused on a fixed point in front of her once more and she made no effort to respond.
He took the seat opposite her and her eyes met his, he was startled by the lack of emotion, no suspicion, fear, hatred nor even curiosity. Just blank pools of gold-green eyes encircled within a dark green ring.
"I want to see him." She said abruptly.
"See who?" He asked, one brow arching
She blinked. "The one who gave me this…opportunity."
"Not yet." He replied and his eyes took on the eerie sheen of the predator. Her coldness provoked something in him, a wariness crept over him, a thin and undeniable trickle of fear.
"Then when?"
"When you've graduated the training programme."
"That could take another four years." She said dangerously close to whining if it weren't for her tone, cool, precise empty of emotion.
"Yes." He conceded.
She leant forward in her chair. "You will give me what I ask for, won't you?" She asked in a near whisper.
"You will be given whatever is within your benefactor's power to grant, I've had his oath on this." He said and slowly began to reach out with his psyche to touch hers, curious to know what she held in her heart behind the cold blankness of her stare but found only steel hard walls instead.
"They're training us to use psychic shields." She explained and he saw the smallest crease at the corner of her mouth that almost made her lips form the beginnings of a smile. "Do you think steel is best?"
"You're a credit to your instructor, Luna." He said.
She sat back in her chair, her stare going back to that point, the blankness and it was the end of the conversation for her. Gerard knew when to stop pushing, he felt wholly unsatisfied and out of control, not understanding how a thirteen year old girl could have made him feel this way.
He stood, his chair scraping, staring down at her dark head. "Goodbye, Luna."
Miss S