“One day, you won’t be. And you’ll be too stubborn to see it until it’s too late.”
“Not before you learn to focus your attack on my centerline,” he countered, slipping from side to side as her prodding strikes fanned wide. Brie’s short brown locks swished about her face, causing her to puff now and again as they fell across her eyes. “You’d do well to crop that hair, too.”
“And look more like you? I’d sooner not.”
She nearly caught him then with one of those stabbing lunges. Like an asp she was, with that one, her reach swift and long. Too long, it seemed. For, as usual, she failed to return her guard in time to defend her face against a counterstrike that Kylac chose not to take. “You won’t look a thing like me when you lose your ear,” he admonished her instead. “And you will, if you don’t remember to raise your guard when you snap back from one of those.”
“Oh? Did I nearly lull you again?”
“Keep your elbow down. You’re flapping like a wounded gull.”
Brie just laughed, a sound so rare that it spawned a comforting warmth in Kylac’s chest. She had long yearned for this—a chance to try him in the arena as though she were a fellow student, rather than a scrub girl relegated forever to sopping up their blood and sweat. But Talonar was the preeminent combat school in the city, in the land, likely in all of Pentania. With the long list of wealthy, highborn students clamoring to pay the school’s prohibitive fees, Kylac’s father flatly refused to make room for those who could not.
Least of all some blind pauper’s eleven—no, twelve-year-old granddaughter.
It rankled his father that Kylac should waste his time sparring with her at all. But, at age thirteen, he was already the most skilled student at Talonar, and had been for the past year. So long as he kept excelling in his own lessons and exceeding every staunch expectation his father had for him, he’d been allowed his “petty diversion with the rag,” as his father called her—provided, of course, he did not interfere with her chores, and they confined their after-hours play to the parks and alleys beyond Talonar’s gates.
A pair of stipulations they were breaking now, obviously. But then, it was a special occasion. And truly, what was the harm? Should it come to it, the memory of that laugh would be enough to soothe the sting of a lash or two.
“Guard up,” he cautioned her again. “That’s twice already I might have slit your throat.”
“A fine boast. Feel welcome to back it up at any time.”
And so it went as they danced their dance across the arena floor: Brie letting loose some of that bridled fury of hers, and Kylac offering admonishments where he felt them most needed. In truth, she was a fine athlete, both vigorous and disciplined, with strong endurance, natural instincts, and the even rarer skill of adaptation. She wasn’t as fast as him, nor as polished, but then, with her limited training time, how could she be? Even among the full-time students, he’d met only one or two others who could match him—and they each had a dozen years on him. While they stood at or near their full potential, his remained yet untapped.
“Faster,” he coaxed her, and quickened his own pace, forcing her to respond. “You’ve got to be faster. Weight and speed—”
“Breed power,” she said. “Yet you never advise I grow thicker. If I were to sprout breasts or belly, would you still fawn over me as you do?”
It was Kylac’s turn to redden. As its warmth brushed his forehead, Brie launched another diving thrust. “Guard up,” he reminded her in counter, this time razing her gently across the jaw.
Brie scowled. She was tiring, though neither torture nor deprivation would lead her to admit it. Nor would she ever suggest they stop. Her passion ran too strong, her pride even stronger.
“Open your stance. Guard up. Guard…”
He hesitated as a sudden darkness entered the arena. It might have been a cloud shouldering past the setting sun, except that this was a darkness felt, not seen. Brie pressed him as he slowed and withdrew, perceiving some unexpected advantage, mayhap, or thinking it a ruse. But it took her only a moment more to register the truth of his grim expression. Her gaze lifted past him, and she gasped, drawing to a startled halt.
“Master Rohn,” Kylac acknowledged, turning toward the near entry. “Master Xarius.” He bowed briefly to the pair standing within the shadowed alcove, barely more than shadows themselves.
His father stepped forward from beneath the arch, his heavy brow pinched inward, the corners of his mouth anchored low in stern disapproval. The expression itself told Kylac nothing, for it was the only look his father ever wore. But the weight of his silence felt heavy enough to crush stone.
At his shoulder stood Xarius, arms crossed, smirking coldly. His father’s prized pupil and personal warder. Ever the first to taste it when Master Rohn unleashed wind, as Brie had once whispered, though far from the school’s grounds. Xarius had killed for lesser insults.