In Which Ash is Finally Forthcoming

I staggered back with a gasp, panting in the sudden dimness and cold. My wild gaze darted around, looking for my attacker, but Al was absent… as was the rest of our audience. The heat and light of Al's fire-curse were gone, leaving me shivering in the training room with a lingering sweet taste of anise on my tongue. The previously blood-drenched floor had reverted back to its worn stone state, leaving the air saturated with the scent of faded burnt amber and only a faint tang of iron. The blood soaking my clothing wasn't entirely gone, but there was far less of the gore than there had been.

My right hand had just given my left wrist a good solid whack just above the shackle… with a long golden feather, which was simply not up to the job of amputation and had, predictably, bent.

I lifted the feather and stared at its new, jaunty angle stupidly. The numbness that had stolen over me retreated into a serious jumble of adrenaline-induced shakes and mental confusion. My knees buckled. Ash caught me from behind. From the cooling patches of warmth on my temples, I could tell he'd previously been touching me there. Had been for a while. Nausea bubbled in my gut as my brain fought to reconcile realities. Hadn't Ash just been in front of me? Unconscious? On the floor? And shouldn't the iron-tang of blood in the air have been a stronger scent? The air in here had reeked overpoweringly of blood and fear and pain for hours.

Ash staggered at my weight and we both sat heavily. I turned in his arms to see him, ashen and looking every bit as exhausted as I felt. Al was still nowhere to be seen. My gaze returned to the feather in my hand, white fingers creakily unclenching to reveal the imprint of the shaft and ribs pressed into my palm.

You have got to be kidding me…

"Was… was any of that… real?" I asked, gut twisting again.

"Yes," Ash said. "All of it." He gave me a moment to digest that, then added, "Only the first time was physical. The rest was a curse-induced hallucination I controlled. But it was real."

There were no words to describe what I felt at that moment, an ugly mingling of fury and relief and shame. What I'd done… all that horrible, bloody imagery, the nauseating sensations of steel on flesh, forever burned into my memories… my self-hatred began to grow into loathing for everyone in this damned hellish place. Ash, Al, even Newt. "You lied to me," I rasped through chattering teeth. "I trusted you and…"

"I spoke no falsehood," he replied. "The deception was necessary. I'm not that tough."

I'd wondered that, hadn't I? "Why?" I demanded, voice rising as shame drew forth senseless fury. Shouldn't I be feeling relieved that I hadn't actually been torturing him for hours upon hours? But rage, not relief, bubbled up in me. Coupled with the adrenaline, my mind tried to slip back into that battle mode I'd just learned about the previous day… but shackled and weak from the ordeal, a pathetic beating of fists against his chest was all I could manage. He took it, face expressionless. "Why? Why would you do that to me? What was the point?"

"We told you."

"You fed me bullshit!" I struggled against him, but I hadn't had my demonic strength restored yet, and Ash could've held me down with his little finger. "What I did to you—" My voice choked off, but I continued to berate him with wordless mental accusation. How could anything justify what you just did to me? What you made me do to you? What you made me do to myself?

"It's not bullshit. You absolutely cannot be squeamish in a fight. Compassion and empathy will kill you. Secondly," he added, forestalling my angry reply, "we had to teach you to separate emotion from action, as we said. To torture the man you care most for — it is literally the worst thing we could make you do."

I gaped at him, openmouthed. "That was the point?"

"To induce in your mind the strongest negative emotions — hatred, fear, loathing, shame, disgust — to the highest degree possible, and have you push yourself to act through them. Yes."

My lone mote of rational thought wondered if adding murderous wrath to my emotional stew was Ash's intention right now. "Mission accomplished," I rasped, renewing my struggle to free myself. I didn't want to touch him any longer — I couldn't even bear to look at him. The frothy mix of anger and shame were warring with each other until I wasn't sure whom I hated more — Ash or myself.

But he kept me firmly clamped against his chest, keeping his own cool with an effort. "For a purpose," he insisted. "You said you'd trust us. Will you listen to me?"

"Ash—"

"Let me calm you a little first, Saenat," he said, his mind brushing over mine with a sensation of cool water over my internal fire. Breathing heavily, I allowed myself to be stilled under his soothing. Though still mad as hell, at least I could think beyond that red haze. Fine. I'd listen. I wouldn't act on my growing wrath, not right now. I'd listen and then I'd go be alone for a good long think/sulk.

"Imagine feeling all you felt just now, artificially. Randomly, suddenly, and completely unpredictably. You're in the middle of some benign casting and suddenly what you feel is indistinguishable from stabbing your loved one through the gut."

I shook my head. What he was describing… well, sure. All witches felt hints of foreign emotions sometimes, but you learned to ignore it quickly. "If it was in the middle of a casting? I'd know the difference—"

"Would you?"

"Compared to what I went through today? Hell yeah, I'd know!"

"And yet, nothing you experienced after I put this feather into your hand was a genuine emotion arising as a response to your actions. What you experienced was entirely curse-induced. You felt the emotions first, and your mind confabulated explanations as to their source."

Stunned out of my anger now, I stared at him. Good lord. The last few hours were just… some… curse?! "But… you just said it was real."

Ash had to pause to gather his thoughts. "It was real. I was providing mental cues for your hallucinations, while monitoring your conscious decisions and intentional actions. The association between cause and effect is blurred enough for you that the exercise was as real to your mind as if you actually took that knife to me over and over. Thus this day served the dual purpose of desensitizing you to the sight and feel of violence by your own hand, and training you to continue with an assigned task, regardless of feelings."

I blinked rapidly as I tried to assimilate what he was saying, even as his words conjured some truly cringe-worthy memories. "So… I didn't really hurt you at all. I only dreamed I was hurting you…?"

"Aah… sort of. Mostly. I had to imagine the scenarios and simulate the pain to make it as real for you as possible, so I had to draw from my recent memories, over and over, with variations. Which is the other reason we needed a physical trial first. It rather sucked."

"So that part really did happen." I swallowed hard, tears springing to my eyes again at the horrible, colorful memories that the afternoon had burned indelibly into my brain forever. "Ash, I—"

"Don't apologize." Ash's face was grim. "You're on the accelerated learning program, Evie. Whenever possible, we're going to combine lesson goals if we can. You've got a lot of… modern sensibilities we'll have to work around, because we risk fracturing your psyche if we do otherwise. I'm willing to be flexible if it keeps you sane."

I shifted a little, not so much to escape him as to escape the thought of future brutality. Because I wasn't an idiot, and I now had an idea where this was heading. "So, the training… it's about blocking the emotions?"

"No, it's about learning to continue on despite the false sensations, whatever they may be. After long experience, you may learn to distinguish false sensations from true."

Commitment. "So...'training' means you'll be inducing horrible emotions in me until I don't break my concentration when casting shit?"

Ash smiled. "Exactly."

"And making me feel the real feelings, then the fake ones, until I can tell them apart…? And it's easier to tell them apart if they're really strong…?" I guessed.

"Much easier." I felt his own tension easing a little as I started to relax. "Though it matters little in the long run if you do learn the distinction. Whenever the magic hits just the right spot, it still feels real, no matter what your conscious mind knows."

But I'd latched onto the unpleasant implication. "You mean when you use higher order magic, it still makes you feel that? Like I felt today, even if you know better?"

"Sometimes."

"And you still do it anyway?" This morning I couldn't even have conceived of feeling the way I'd felt today… let alone acting in opposition to those feelings. To do it voluntarily? To learn, perhaps, to enjoy flinging around demon magic despite those sensations?

"Yes. They're not always bad. They are always distracting."

Because the emotions were false, an artifact of the demon mind. I started to see the logic behind the exercise today. Much as I hated to admit it, it made perfect sense. "And the feather?" I asked, because mangled as it was, I was reluctant to let it go. It felt significant.

"The feather was your anchor. You will hold one for all future exercises, and it will cue your subconscious that what you feel is illusory."

I had to work through a wave of nausea, because I'd just mentally reviewed the emotions associated with my first action and those from the subsequent nightmare, and apart from Ash setting the feather into my hand I had no way to distinguish them at all. "Ash… it didn't work yet. I can't… I'm not feeling the difference."

"You're not expected to, yet. In fact, this early in your training it's preferable that you don't try. Treat it all as real, and develop your focus."

"Does that mean we have to do all that again?" Please no. Please say no.

"Not this particular exercise, no," he said, unsmiling.

Not exactly comforting, Ash… "Can't you just show me the difference?" I blurted, clutching at his shirt. I meant through our mental bond, through which we shared all kinds of nonverbal communication.

"If we could, this would all be a lot easier," Ash said. "It's unconscious. Your mind has to pick up on the patterns on its own. It's not something I can just show you how to do."

I butted my head against his chest a few times, in lieu of a wall to pound it on. "No substitute for experience?" I grumbled.

"Indeed. You should also know that Al objected to me revealing the deception. He fears your conscious mind will interfere if it knows the nature of the trials ahead of time. I disagree; I feel it is necessary for your mental well-being, as well as a potential shortcut. We've debated this for years. Al's is the traditional method used to train demon children. There are no precedents for training adults, apart from the techniques we developed for training familiars. With you, we are trying it my way."

The idea of putting children through something this awful was simply beyond horrifying. "Seriously? Children? What did you make them do?"

"The elves did the training," Ash reminded me gently. "And rest assured, it was worse. We hacked each other up, mostly, but whenever someone balked they dragged in a parent or sibling. We learned quickly never to refuse our exercises."

I made a hurt noise and decided that I would not ask more questions about Ash's early childhood. "Why start with that, though?"

"Weeds out those who won't learn, or can't. You are not one of them," he assured me. "And you can now rest assured that the worst is over. You may hate some of the exercises, but they will never be this bad again." He let me mull this over. "As a side benefit… if you must ever threaten anyone, look into their eyes and recall this day. Their subconscious will see the truth — if you can do this to me, you can certainly do anything to them."

True. One thing demons never do is bluff. If they threaten to use your guts for garlands, that is exactly what they'll do if you call them on it. You can see in it in their eyes, even behind their benign just-kidding smiles, that they were fully capable of carrying out any atrocity. Perhaps I could acquire that look. If the idiots I might have to threaten in the future were less likely to call my bluff, I might never have to actually get so brutal. Though if there was one thing I'd learned today, it was that I was fully capable of brutality. I didn't like that knowledge, and it sat uncomfortably in the pit of my stomach to be examined later. "And the… test? With the fire? Was that just a hallucination, too?"

Ash hesitated. "No, that actually happened. We held your trial in the Collective, in a shared mental replica of our courtroom. I allowed Al into your mind briefly to simulate the attack, and provided the sensory details to make it believable. Your actions were free from any outside influence. The Collective witnessed everything you did from Al's perspective."

"So… it wasn't real." Why not do a physical test? Perhaps because if I'd failed, they'd have had to deal with two more resurrections, and the Collective's patience with those shenanigans had to be wearing thin today.

"We have to get you a better definition of 'real,'" he replied, irritation prickling his voice. "It was real, it simply wasn't physical."

But I'd latched onto that earlier hesitation. Oh, no. Had I failed? Did I blow it in front of everyone? "Did I pass? What was the right answer? Was I supposed to cut the shackle off you instead, to show how badass I was?"

Ash's grin was genuine and fierce. "You passed. You performed beyond expectations. Most endure a simulated death, their first time. If they can think at all, they hack off their partner's shackle and sit there expecting to be saved. Or they give up and drop the circle, so as to die quickly." I warmed at the outright possessive pride that had entered his voice. "Nobody will doubt your potential, now. I chose well."

"So you're not mad at me?" I asked, hating myself for needing the reassurance. "You're not mad that I did what you asked instead of protesting and fighting Al? You don't hate me for hurting you?" Ash just snorted derisively. I probably wouldn't have believed his reassurances anyway, but his eyeroll was too spontaneous to be faked. Some tight little coil of terror inside me eased up a little more. I drew in a long, shuddering breath, expelling it in an equally long, shuddering whoosh. I looked down at my hand. "So… whose idea was the magic feather?" I asked drily.

"It's always been a feather," Ash said.

"Not because I'm learning to fly?" I was relieved when Ash just looked blank. Then I was mildly annoyed. Oh, sure. Big fan of Bambi, but the Dumbo reference just sails right over his head. I sighed, too tired to explain it. "Where's Al?"

"We are done for the day. He's left me to… how did you put it…? Pick up the pieces. Not to mention, we both must rest again. Such an extended illusion is exhausting." He still held me cradled in his lap, and only now did he begin to relax his grip. "You don't look like you're about to murder me any longer. Can I let you go now?"

I did a brief check of my mood, and found that the red haze of rage and self-loathing had dimmed back into exhaustion. There was a long stretch of today that would haunt me for weeks to come, and no amount of convincing would make me believe that all of it hadn't actually happened. I would rest, but thank all that was holy that I didn't need to sleep, because the nightmares that awaited me would be vicious. But for now, I would try… try… to accept that this torture had honestly had a purpose. And the aftermath of the adrenaline was having another side effect on me, one that superceded my logical, rational mind. The emotional energy shifted from anger and pain to an entirely new path. I'd just spent hours taking Ash apart; I had to reassure myself that he was OK. That we were OK. "You could," I agreed, unmoving.

Now there was a reference that Ash understood. How I loved the way he stilled and refocused on my face, intent and searching, demon eyes wide with surprise and rapidly dilating with desire. He took a long, deep breath, nostrils flaring, lips parting. "Still mine," he breathed. "No conditions. No restrictions. No bargains."

"No magic," I added, twining my left hand into his hair, silver still attached firmly to my wrist. I was still angry and hurt, too deeply to even know where to begin, but Ash was here, warm, alive, and I needed to know I hadn't ruined everything with what I'd done. I needed to feel him. I'd examine every inch of him, to assure myself he wasn't hurt.

"No escape," he agreed with a husky voice, claiming my lips. From the tingle that tickled my tongue, I discovered that the jerk had managed to lose his own silver cuff, sometime after he'd duped me with his magic feather trick and sent me into a curse-induced nightmare. I was bound and he was free, and it was even the same room as his first seduction, and oh God I was suddenly on fire for him. Something within me shifted into savagery as Ash yanked away the artificial blanket of calm he'd cast over my thoughts. All the pent-up emotions rushed back in, transformed by some strange alchemy into a haze of red lust. I attacked him with renewed vigor, clawing ineffectively at his shirt as he tore through my garments with long demon talons. He wished his garments away with a guttural curse. I yanked his head down for a savage kiss, raking nails over his biceps, using the limited magic in my chi to make his mark burn.

Ash laughed, lips curling into a fierce snarl. The world spun as he pinned me to the stone floor. I fought him tooth and nail, drawing blood from his lip as he forced my legs apart and thrust savagely into me. I bucked my hips and moaned against his lips, meeting his thrusts as best I could. There was an urgency there, a roughness that hinted at an unquenched thirst that was more than simple lust. He dominated me, punishing me with kisses and light jabs of sharp fangs into my skin, as I writhed beneath him and reveled in his touch, his strength. Then he lifted his head, eyes closed, wings lifted to form an unfocused backdrop of rustling amber-chocolate stripes. Fury vanishing into mounting pleasure, I watched him with rapt enjoyment as my demon, completely focused on pure, raw sex, fucked me very, very thoroughly. His movements became faster, his breathing harsher. Then with two deep, penetrating thrusts, he came, groaning as he spilled his seed inside me. Predictably, I felt my inner muscles latch on tightly as he collapsed on me, his breaths quick and warm on my neck.

"Needed that, did you?" I asked, bemused, as I caught my breath. He only neglected my own pleasure when he was feeling a bit off-balance himself. I wasn't worried. He'd rectify that shortly, and just now, I craved intimacy more than orgasm.

"You have no idea," he replied, voice muffled. He was trembling. From exertion? Exhaustion? I didn't think so. "The last twenty-four hours have really fucking sucked."

This was the first time we'd made love since my resurrection, probably because Ash had been too caught up in the web of lies he'd had to untangle first. The aftermath had sucked for both of us. I'd been pretty prickly, too, even despite having agreed to be his mate. I supposed he'd been giving me space to deal with it all. Not to mention the ordeal I'd put him through today. No wonder he'd been putting it off, this whole training business. My thoughts turned briefly to Al and Rachel. Heh. No wonder Al wanted me to train her.

"I hated hurting you. I can't stop seeing—"

"I know." He tugged, but I still held him tight, so he shifted a little to ease his weight on me. "Would that I could have spared you this day, and those to come."

I closed my eyes, but the tears once more ran freely from my lids. Another huge knot of tension began to untie itself. I dug my nails into him, anchoring myself in his warmth, reasserting my claim on him. Having to put me through all this shit today hadn't been easy on him either. That one admission meant the world to me. "I'm still terrified I've ruined everything," I whispered against his ear.

He released another long, unsteady breath. "Likewise." Surprised, I leaned back to try to see his face, but he'd turned his head away. "Al defers to my judgment. If… if I'm wrong…"

"Ash…" What could I say to that? Saying everything would be fine, that I had faith that it would work out… it sounded empty and worse, ignorant. I should be worried. On the other hand, had I gone to Dali, and undergone his idea of Boot Camp, I'd be sitting here alone, licking my wounds and trying not to jam that knife into my own heart out of sheer despair. "I chose you. You, not Dali. You are mine. We chose this together."

Ash raised his head to gaze at me, rolling onto an elbow so he could push my hair back from my forehead with a tender affection. Then he smiled. I caught my breath. The open look of relaxed, sated male happiness had transformed his face. He was just so beautiful… but it was his words that made my heart stutter for a moment. "Have I ever told you, my Saenat, just how much I adore you?"