Dorian
Three days had passedsince the meadow. Three days since she’d called on her magic not by accident, but by spite. I sat in the trees’ shadows, where Eury couldn’t see. Her sparring sharpened when she thought I wasn’t around; her arm became fluid. She and Haskel fought with real iron under the shade of the great old tree, both of them nearly spent but neither willing to acknowledge it.
Since the meadow, we’d barely spoken except to pass the salt at the dining table or when we nearly ran into each other coming around a corner in the citadel. Otherwise she wouldn’t even meet eyes. She wouldn’t train her magic with me; she trained with Haskel or Faun or gods knew who.
Haskel swept her foot out from under her, and she hit the bare ground ass-first. She did that a lot. He set the sword’s tip to her chest. “Dead.” Then he reached for her hand. “Lunch?”
She took his hand and let him pull her up. “Again.”
She did that a lot, too.
Haskel groaned. “You’re going to be the death of me, girl.”
She picked up her sword. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“Not therealdeath.”
She took a fighting stance, one leg back and her sword low and ready. “You tired, old man?”
“Fuck yes I am.” He regripped his sword, raised it. “But you do know fighting words.”
She knew fighting words. She knewspite.Even now I could feel the acid rain hitting my forehead, her weight on my chest. Those blue eyes wide with fury and hate andsomething elsethat kept me up at night. A twisted passion like she wanted to kiss me or kill me.
And the most insane part: from her, I would have accepted either outcome. So long as it washerlips,herfist.
In some strange way, that moment of madness felt like vulnerability. It felt like Eury showing her truest, barest self—the fighter she contained, controlled, kept down. And unleashing it had worked for her. Just like it had worked for me.
Spite had always been my easiest path to magic, but I hadn’t expected it to be hers, too.
Sharp iron clanged through the air, gleamed silver in bands of sunlight. Hunger didn’t matter; exhaustion didn’t matter?—
All that mattered was winning this battle under the old, gnarled tree.
Haskel disarmed her; her sword went spinning to the earth. She seemed defeated, until out came the old guard’s knife, flashing from nowhere. She held it backhand, swiped it to ward him off.
Haskel lowered his sword. “Now you’ve gone and violated the rules of the Fields.”
“No seconds, no outside aid.” She swiped once, wide and hard, stepping forward. “I’ve violated neither.”
“And you’ve conveniently forgotten the oldest law”—he tossedhis sword into the dirt and turned toward the shade—“no weapon that isn’t of the land. So leave your human trinkets behind, girl.”
A week until we left for Highmark. Haskel sent me a rare summons to his chambers. I knocked, and his grunt ushered me in. I opened the door and found his bedchamber empty. Familiar old black-bear skin on the bed, his boots set side by side near the door, everything neat and right and spare.
An old soldier’s habits. He didn’t speak much on his eight hundred years of life, but his living space said everything about him.
“In the study,” he said through a doorway.
I came into the doorway and found him with two fists on his desk and an array of objects laid out before him. Half I recognized, half I didn’t.
His gaze lifted. “You haven’t been sleeping.”
“Not well, at least.” I came forward to the desk. “But you didn’t summon me here to be my nurse.”
“Nay.” He picked up a pair of crystals. “Highmark may offer light, but there’s darkness, too.”
I didn’t move to take them. “You didn’t bring me here to give me those, either.”
He shoved them against my chest until my hands came up to take hold. “When’d you get so suspicious?”