Two hours into the pain and agony that was Sir Piers’s idea of light conditioning, I found myself dry-heaving at one of the wooden benches on the side of the field. I heard Alex off to my right making similar noises. All over the stadium, first-years were dropping one by one.
Piers had decided we would run five miles. Five miles, he had added, interspersed with twenty lunges and presses each time we completed a lap. That would have been fine, hard -but fine, if that were all he had asked of us. But it had only been a warm-up.
Once we had completed his first demand, Sir Piers had barked new orders for everyone to line up across from one another. When we did that, he had heaved heavy wooden staffs at us and instructed us to “proceed.”
Since most of the girls and a couple of the lowborn boys had never held a weapon in their life, Piers then had to show us how to hold the poles, where to stand, and which way to lean our weight. We spent just as much time rapping each other’s knuckles as we did the staffs.
When one girl had dared to quietly ponder the usefulness of the drill to her partner, Piers snapped: “You think you’ll never need to use a weapon, girl? What happens when you have used the last of your magic and you are stranded in the middle of a battlefield? When a mage is powerful enough to send daggers cutting through the air, do you think he randomly decides their course? No, he studies and practices exactly which cutting blows are needed to hit those precious arteries. Nothing I teach you here will be pointless!”
For the remainder of our lesson, no one dared to brave a single complaint. Even when he decided to introduce a new routine involving the many flights of stairs surrounding the field.
But that still didn’t stop our bodies from reacting to the horrible circus of exercises Piers was putting us through.
Taking a deep breath, I told myself that it couldn’t get any worse.
We were on a fifteen-minute break before our session with Master Cedric, but for most of us, the fifteen minutes was spent trying to crawl or limp our way to a display of water pitchers on the other side of the stadium. Refreshments had been brought courtesy of Constable Barius’s staff, all of which had decided to take a late afternoon break.
I think the water was just an excuse for their entertainment.
Still, entertainment or not, water was what I wanted. As luck would have it by the time I reached it there was almost none left.
Greedily, I downed what remained and then scanned the bench for any unattended glasses I could finish off. None. Had I really expected anything different? Deciding I had only a minute or so left, I sat down to observe the rest of the student body from my resting place.
Ella stood a little way off, red in the face and a little clammy, but somehow still charming in her disheveled state. She was talking to my brother as he attempted to stretch his calves. The two of them were chuckling at a joke he had just made. I winced. I couldn’t even imagine laughing. My lungs were still burning from those stairs.
Shifting my gaze to the left side of the field, I spotted a group of five that appeared much better off than the rest of the class. At their center was the newfound bane of my existence. Admittedly, the non-heir wasn’t that hard of a poison to swallow when he was far away. He looked so casual, leaning against the fence post, surrounded by laughing companions.
Whether or not he was a prince, Darren had clearly spent a large part of his lifetime in the sun and immersed in some sort of physical engagement. Far from being out of breath and drenched in sweat, the prince made Piers’s drills appear as if they actually were an intended warm-up.
Even his hair seemed unaffected. While most of us, myself included, had hair sticking to all sides of our face, Darren’s had somehow maintained its natural, slightly tussled state. Short, choppy, side-swept bangs and jaw-length locks that could trick a girl into thinking he was attractive.
That is, if you could get over his charming personality. Because no matter how alluring he might seem from afar, up close Darren’s hostile eyes would undoubtedly tell a different story.
Still, as I watched him now, I was not seeing anything remotely unreceptive in them. Possibly, very likely, because of the beautiful girl on his right: Priscilla.
Ah, yes. The one young woman who had out-distanced, out-lunged, and out-pressed the rest of my gender. How someone from such high lineage was able to best those of us who had had to actually forage and hunt for our food, I will never know. With her long, silky brown hair, violet eyes, and sinewy curves, I could understand Darren’s interest but not her status. Priscilla looked the part of a highborn lady, and I wondered why she was here at the Academy. Usually, girls like that went to convents. They didn’t bother with magic or knighthood. They had no need.
Priscilla was older than most nobility in attendance too, and I vaguely wondered if it had anything to do with Darren since he seemed to be around the same age. Maybe she had followed him.