Max
The north wing of Vossmark Training Center smelled of oiled leather and sweat.
Two stories of bone-gray structure, rack after rack of practice weapons along the walls, heavy timber dummies bolted to the floor, a bank of narrow windows set high near the ceiling.
Gray morning light came through at an angle and cut the mat-covered floor into stripes.
Weapons master Jack Xiao called us to attention before the last cadets had filed in. Compact, Asian, mid-thirties, with the settled economy of a man who’d stopped wasting motion decades ago.
“Dull blades.” He selected a practice sword from the rack. “You earn a sharp edge when I decide you’ve earned it. These will still break a wrist if you’re careless. Break a wrist in my class, you run the obstacle course left-handed until it heals. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Instructor Xiao!” We snapped to attention.
An hour of foundation forms. Guard positions, footwork, the geometry of a proper parry—the same sequence until muscle memory took over. Jack Xiao corrected my over-extension four times.
“You’re not a spear,” he said each time. “Stop using your arm like one.”
I adjusted. At Greyhold, Frost and Marco had given me the basics: stance, grip, the logic of lunging and parrying. But basics were not fluency, and the gap showed.
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 proved her 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.
The demon fed me each move a half-second before I needed it, the angles arriving ahead of the action.
Block high, step left, the middle segment low.
My opponent jumped it—good reflexes—and I used her jump to redirect, the tail segment snapping toward her guard hand.
She deflected hard. I reversed the momentum, and the tail end of my sanjiegun cracked across her sword arm from a direction she hadn’t tracked.
These Coldiron were from within the DarkVeil, aggressive in nature, and they’d learned battle moves when we went against the horde of mutant wolves. And they adapted fast.
The wooden blade dropped from Delia’s grip.
She lunged for it. I swept the sanjiegun low, the tail segment hooking behind her lead ankle, and yanked.
Her foot kicked out from under her, and gravity did the rest. She hit the ground back-first, the impact driving the air from her lungs in a sharp, ugly bark.
Before she could roll, I planted my boot against her hip and pinned her flat.
Then I put the Coldiron tip—the sentient metal making its own editorial call—against the soft notch of her throat.
Delia went utterly still.
The training hall sank into absolute silence. Jack Xiao stood with his arms loose, expression complicated. Two cadets near the rear had their mouths open wide enough for a bug to fly in. Delia’s circle took a full step backward. Bryn had both fists in the air, a wild glee in her eyes.
“Yield,” I called.
Let’s murder her, Coldiron offered instead.
Not today, I said, and gripped the shaft.
Delia’s face had gone beet red. Her jaw worked. No words came. Not concession, just hate, and the expression of someone who had never had to swallow her pride in front of a crowd and didn’t have the muscle for it.
“You lost, Cadet Delia,” Jack Xiao said. “In battle, you’d be dead.” His gaze moved from the sanjiegun to my face with the look of a man filing something new into a system he’d thought was complete. “Cadet Max. Stand down.”
I stepped back and lowered the tip of my sanjiegun. I didn’t drop my guard, and I didn’t give my back to my nemesis.
Jack Xiao scanned the crowd. “Next cadet who wants to challenge Cadet Max—step forward.”
No one moved. Around me, the space reshaped, cadets drifting back to their positions, the knot of the ring loosening.
“No one?” Jack Xiao spread his arms in exasperation. “Anyone?”
The Fae’s here! Coldiron tattled.
Frost strolled forward. Pewter uniform, silver hair, reading the room in one sweep before his eyes settled on my sanjiegun.
No more challenges, then. I told Coldiron to stand down. The sanjiegun shifted in my hand, the armguard flowing back to my forearm.
“Cadet Max. Prince Aelindor requires your presence,” Frost said.
“Run along.” Delia’s sneer followed me. “I’m sure the prince has a very specific use for you. Go practice spreading your legs, Cadet Max.”
“You are way out of line, Cadet Delia!” Jack Xiao barked.
I’d already turned back. I wouldn’t let her openly disrespect Aelindor. I stepped toward her, eyes burning, ready to shove her face into the dirt until she apologized and kept apologizing. Instructor Xiao couldn’t have stopped me.
But Frost beat me to it.
He moved like a flash. Delia’s sword arm was captured at an awkward angle, Frost’s other hand closing around her throat with two fingers and a thumb, Delia’s heels lifting off the floor by a foot.
Frost had answered the insult because it had crossed to Aelindor, which made it his to answer more than mine. The heirs had their own lines, as did their officers. Delia had stepped over one she hadn’t seen coming, and I had no sympathy for her.
“Do you know who I am?” she managed, her face turning purple. “Drakken will hear about this—”
“He will.” Frost’s voice carried no heat, which made it all the more menacing. “How he’ll deal with you is his business. As for me, disrespect my prince again and I’ll tear out your tongue. I won’t warn you a second time.”
He tossed her aside like she was nothing. Adjusted his cuff.
Delia stayed on the ground, one hand at her throat, everything she usually wore on her face stripped away. She’d seen the killing light in his eyes. So had everyone in the room.
Nobody made a sound. Everyone tried to make themselves a little smaller.
“Cadet Max.” Frost turned on his heel. “Let’s go.”
I fell into step beside him, shoulders level, pace steady. Not gloating. Just a cadet following a major.