“I get to have a sword as a weapon. You get bare hands.”
He shrugged. “That’s fair.” What it was, was suicidal on her part. She could have ten swords and he’d still be inside her guard in a heartbeat. “Is that your sword in the corner?”
“How did you see that?” she asked. “It’s in the shadows.”
He didn’t say anything, just watched her until she broke eye contact and walked to pick up the sword she’d propped up neatly against a wall. It was in its scabbard and when she drew it out, he saw it gleamed. Either Galen had drummed it into her to clean her weapons, or this weapon had never actually been used in any kind of serious combat. She probably just used it as part of her routine with the flowing, patient stretches.
He snorted under his breath.
“Ready?” she asked, taking a wide-legged stance across from him, enough distance between them that she probably thought herself safe.
“Yes.”
“In that case, three, two, one!”
Naasir lunged, not holding back his speed or agility. All he had to do was put her on the ground and this ridiculous exercise would be done and he could leave and his mouth would stop watering at the intoxicating scent of her. The air whistled past his eyes, the world so slow in comparison to his speed, the stars blurring together—
“Grr!”
He snarled as he came down on his feet, looking in disbelief at his upper arm. There was a thin line of red across his biceps. Shaking his head, he looked again but it was still there. It healed before his eyes, the wound superficial, but the blood remained behind to mark the spot. “You cut me,” he said to Andromeda.
*
Heart a racehorse and breath coming hard and fast, Andromeda wondered if she knew what the hell she was doing. She hadn’t meant to challenge him, but he’d been so horribly, unnervingly polite that her mouth had opened and the words had tumbled out. He’d clearly decided he didn’t like her, and for some reason that infuriated her.
Now he was looking at her through narrowed eyes of glowing silver, his hair hanging over his face before he shoved it back. “How did you cut me?” A demand.
She was the one who shrugged this time. “I cheated.”
A long, slow blink. “Cheating’s not allowed.”
“Yes, it is. You’re bigger, faster, and far better trained than I am. If I don’t cheat, we’ll have no fun.”
Another slow blink . . . and she realized he was moving, and she was moving instinctively in response, the two of them circling one another. Going into that space inside her head where she was one with the blade, she reacted on instinct again when he moved, and scored him across the hard ridges of his abdomen. Only he didn’t stop in surprise this time but kept going.
She’d never worked harder with the blade in her life.
He still pinned her to the ground in under three minutes, his body heat on her front a stark intimacy. Knees on either side of her hips and hands gripping her wrists above her head, rendering her sword useless, he leaned down until his breath kissed hers and she could look into those astonishing eyes at a proximity she’d never expected.
They were clear, so clear, and utterly beautiful. The silver glowed in the night, the striations within the irises a darker silver. “You cut me seven-and-a-half times,” he said, his voice holding a gritty, growly undertone.
Chest heaving, she tried to shrug again, as if she wasn’t trapped under an unfriendly predator. “Pretty good for a scholar.”
He moved even closer, until his nose was a bare whisper above hers. “You have secrets,” he said slowly. “You wear another skin, too.”
Andromeda went motionless, the game suddenly dangerous. “No,” she said through a hoarse throat. “I don’t have secrets. I’m exactly what I seem.” At least for her final fifteen days of freedom, fifteen days where the people she respected still believed in her, still trusted her.
“A scholar who wields a sword?”