Elektra Read Online Free

instructor gasping on his knees before her, and there was a tickle—just that—at the back of her brain that hinted maybe she shouldn’t have gone this far. But there was nothing to be done for it now, and so she let the bo slip from her fingers, turned her back, and walked away. That would teach him to be more careful about his lessons to her in the future.
    She could feel the unfriendly gazes of her fellow students as she crossed the courtyard and headed to where Stick waited in the doorway of his modest cabin. Perhaps she should have been bothered by their displeasure, but she wasn’t—she simply didn’t care. There was no camaraderie for her here, no feeling of family or belonging. She had left her classmates behind almost immediately in the training, and when a student is superior to her teacher, it’s very difficult to find friendship among her so-called peers. Since leaving Matt Murdock behind and losing her father, Elektra wasn’t sure she could feel affection again, for anyone. Still, if she could find anything left in her being that resembled affection, it would be for Stick, the enigmatic blind man she thought of as her rescuer from death.
    Funny how someone not particularly tall or broadly built could radiate so much power, so much constrained grace and… ability. His age was a mystery to her, his calm face at odds with his snow white hair and the resilient way he trained and carried the trim body beneath the black gi. He stood straight and still, his slender right hand wrapped around a black staff. If eyes were, indeed, the windows to the soul, then the man must surely be soulless, because Elektra could see nothing in Stick’s pale blue orbs but the reflection of herself. She saw that now, reading, somehow, the consequences of all that she had done in the last few minutes in a split-second of sightless eye contact, in the way his left hand gestured at her to join him.
    Damn.
    She stopped before him and bowed her head slightly in respect, even though he couldn’t see the movement—he would know if she didn’t, she was sure of it. “Sensei,” she said. Suddenly she felt it all—the loneliness of being ostracized by her classmates, the anger in her own heart, even the shame felt by her instructor of being bested by a student. If only she would learn to think with her head instead of her heart, to weigh her choices before acting. Next time, she vowed silently, she would do just that. Next time, she—
    “So what do you think?” Stick asked, breaking into her thoughts.
    She inhaled. Perhaps, if she answered candidly, there would be no need for a next time. “I’ve got nothing more to learn here,” she replied. “When do I get to do it for real?”
    He didn’t answer, just kept staring at her. Elektra couldn’t help shifting uncomfortably. If this was how it felt to have him study her when he couldn’t see, she didn’t dare imagine what it might be like if he could.
    Finally, he spoke. “Do you know the way, Elektra?”
    She blinked in confusion, not sure how to answer or what response Stick was looking for—sometimes her teachers delved more into the philosophical than she was able to handle. Perhaps this was one of those times?
    “Kimagure,” Stick continued when she stayed silent. “That is the way. The ability to control time, the future… even life and death.”
    Okay, this was even more out of her realm. “I don’t understand,” she admitted.
    He nodded sagely, still gazing straight ahead. “No, you don’t. And that is the problem.”
    Elektra frowned. “I know I’m the best student here.”
    Stick’s expression turned regretful. “Not the best— the most powerful. You understand violence and pain, but you do not know the way.”
    Elektra stared at him as a chill rippled across the back of her neck and crawled down her arms. Something here wasn’t good. “Teach me, then.”
    As they always did, Stick’s crystalline blue eyes stared straight ahead, making him impossible