A Pride of Lions (The Lion Souls Trilogy Book 1) by Yvonne Nartey

Author:Yvonne Nartey [Nartey, Yvonne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nartekie Reads Press
Published: 2025-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Adeben

Hours pass after I leave her in the garden, and the guilt I have ignored swells when she does not return. I looked out of the kitchen window an hour ago, and she was still there. In the same spot. Even after it was too dark to see her fully.

I should have gone out back, told her we would try again tomorrow. That it was okay, that this task is hard. But I didn’t. Instead, I find other things to do. I busy myself around the house. I write my report to the tribe, though there is nothing new to say. And I pretend I do not know she is still outside, right where I left her.

She frustrates me. More than anyone else I have ever met. She is capable of so much, yet something is always holding her back, dulling her light. As a boy, I mastered the art of raising and dropping the veil in seconds. It was not difficult. I let go, and the Lion Soul came forward. I pulled back, and my human form returned. This is the easiest of all the lessons she will need to learn. No one ever struggles. Not with this.

The only reason she is still outside is because of her own wilfulness. Her protest. Initially, those were my thoughts. She’s being obtuse, protesting the way I became angry and left.

But she stayed. She kept trying. She is trying. I can see that. As well as the frustration I unknowingly passed on to her.

My frustration isn’t with her. I am stuck trying to teach her things I have no real understanding of, that I don’t know how to explain. The words my own guide had given me were clear; they provided a roadmap to the Lion Soul, instructions on how to connect, how to care. Even if I never needed them. For me, from the moment I changed, I felt him. I was one with the creature inside of me. I understood him and welcomed him in so easily. Eshe is different. She rejects it. Her rejection is clear even though she says she is open to it. It colours everything. How am I, someone who has never had the same problem, expected to find words that can reach her?

Maybe I expect too much from her. Am I too hard on her?

I want to spare her the way I was trained. I am trying, although failing, also to be kinder, softer than they were.

I tried to show her another side of me, a side that isn’t a warrior or a taskmaster when I stood closer. I wanted her to feel my presence, to know that whatever she was afraid of, she did not have to face it alone.

But that, too, was a mistake. She latched on to me and my proximity. It affected her. Affected me. Once again, she pulled me into a place where I was connected with her, her essence moving through my body as though she owned it – as though I and everything I am belonged to her.

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