The challenges started after the hour mark. Twelve of them, every one of them with my name on it.
Bryn exhaled sharply beside me. I kept my face flat.
“First, Delia,” Jack Xiao called.
She stepped out of the ring of cadets with confident ease. She’d been waiting for this and had already chosen her weapon: a wooden blade. Not dull steel.
The choice registered slowly, then landed.
Delia knew about my affinity with metal. Someone from the outpost had sent word back ahead of me. The only people in that room had been Karrik’s officers, the heirs, Frost, Holt, Marco—and Drakken, who had a messenger link to the base and who’d ordered me to demonstrate in front of all of them. I didn’t know if he’d told her, but the suspicion sat in my chest like a splinter.
I picked up a wooden sword and stepped into the ring.
Delia provedher worth in swordplay.
Clean footwork, high guard, years of drilling demonstrated in every movement. She mapped me in the first ten seconds then threaded through the gaps she found.
The flat of her blade caught my ribs with a force that the blunted weapon shouldn’t have carried. Pain bloomed sharp along my left side. I reset my guard.
She pressed. I parried two, missed the third, took the tip in my thigh. My leg buckled half a step. Her follow-through grazed my shoulder before I recovered.
Shit.
Half of the cadets in the watching ring went quiet, and the other half cheered for Delia. My speech earlier on would be like a fart in the wind if Delia won this challenge and set the tone. Soldiers might root for an underdog, but no one applauded for a loser.
“Instructor Xiao!” Bryn shouted. “This isn’t a fair match. Cadet Max has been here a couple of months, and everyone knows that Cadet Delia has trained since she could hold a spoon.”
“Cadet Max or Cadet Delia says yield, the match stops.” Jack Xiao didn’t look up. “That’s the rule.”
Delia smiled sharply.
Yielding wasn’t an option. Once I said it in front of a hundred cadets, Delia would own me. This wasn’t a challenge; it was a demonstration. A legitimate arena, a target whose capabilities she’d specifically neutralized. If she hurt me badly enough in the process, it would be a training accident. Those happened.
She came at me faster. Same rib. The accumulated pain turned white. She drove me toward the edge of the ring, her footwork lithe, cutting off angle after angle. The cadets gave way as I ran out of floor. Another hit on my forearm, and my grip wavered.
Delia’s circle erupted in applause, welcoming her back like a conquering hero. Delia took a small bow, savoring their approval and my humiliation in equal measure.
Bryn stood with her fists balled and her jaw tight, a calculating look in her eyes as she weighed the consequences of stepping into the ring. She wouldn’t be a match for Delia either.
Now,the demon ordered.
Sometimes it was eerie that I understood its every intent without it explaining further.
I twisted away from Delia’s next swing, took it across the shoulder rather than the ribs, and stripped the Coldiron armguard from my forearm.
Cheating, sort of. The gray area where I’d lived long enough not to flinch.
Delia had chosen wood, believing only metal answered to me.
The armguard warmed in my palm. I pushed the intent through: three linked segments, specific weight, specific length, and Coldiron received it with the chatter of recognition it always made and came apart at my command.
The joints reformed, the brace lengthened, and a sanjiegun balanced in my grip.
I’d never fought with a sanjiegun.
Your body knows leverage, girl,the demon coached, sliding behind my eyes the way it did when it meant business.Follow the geometry.
Delia saw the weapon and adjusted. Too late for that.