Chapter 17 #2
I closed my eyes, thinking of the door, but I was also thinking of him. Not being able to see made me more aware of how close he was standing. How he was likely watching me, picking up the small details of my posture or the flicker of my eyes behind my lids.
“Daemaria,” he whispered, breath painting the shell of my ear.
A shiver raced over me. It wasn’t just from his proximity, though that was certainly part of it—there was an inexplicable sort of magnetism that came with standing close to Kallen, like dancing on the edge of a cliff and wondering what it would be like to fall.
But there was power in the air, too, the delicate vibration of an invisible string being plucked.
“Daemaria,” I repeated breathlessly.
The word seemed to change in my mouth—as if the language were a living creature, too wild to be tamed. I felt a prickling over my skin, and then the sensation was gone and the air was still again.
“You can open your eyes,” he said.
When I did, I gasped to see a curtain of magic hanging over the door, just as I had envisioned. Red and glimmering, dotted with spots of silver like tiny stars. I spun to face him, eyes wide. “I did it!”
He inclined his head. “A very fast learner, as expected.”
“What language was that?” I asked, breathless with my success.
“We call it the old language. It’s as old as memory. Maybe it came from the stars, too.”
He hadn’t backed away when I turned, and I was again aware of how close we were standing. There was just enough room between us for me to raise a hand and press it over his heart, and I felt an abrupt craving to do exactly that. To know the steady beat beneath black fabric.
I wrestled against the urge. Why was I thinking about touching him? Maybe it was a side effect of my new magic, making me more attuned to the bodies in my vicinity. Blood House was a house of the flesh and the senses, and touch was one of those senses.
Kallen’s expression hadn’t changed, but his chest was rising and falling more rapidly than the moment warranted.
I turned and took a few steps away, putting space between us as I battled a surge of flustered anxiety. This bizarre awareness that pinged between us…did he feel it, too? Did his skin also feel like it was coming alive whenever our bodies drew close? Why was this happening?
I closed my eyes, rejecting the answer my mind had started to whisper.
“I don’t hear other faeries speak when they cast wards,” I said, grappling to get back to safer territory.
We needed to return to a state of equilibrium, one where I didn’t imagine the beat of his heart under my palm or wonder what else might make him breathe hard.
There was a pause, and my foolish brain was tempted to fill it with wild possibilities. But when he spoke, his words were even and practical. “You’ll need to speak the spell out loud until you’re used to it. But eventually you can say it in your head.”
I nodded, then opened my eyes and strode towards a rack of spears, determined to ignore the odd direction my thoughts had taken. “So what now? You teach me to fight?”
I forced a smile and looked back at him, only to find him studying me with an intense expression.
His words might have been practical, but that look was anything but, and I had the half-mad thought that something burned beneath Kallen’s skin.
Like a slow-smoldering bog fire, one of those rare blazes that burned along hidden paths when the peat caught after a lightning strike.
Those buried flames were undetectable—until the heat grew too overwhelming to be contained, and the tinder at the surface came alight.
A moment later the look was gone, and he was back to being the same cold, contained Kallen I was used to.
Maybe I had imagined it.
Except a rising hysteria in my breast was whispering that maybe I hadn’t.
“Yes, we can spar. Though not with that,” he said when I wrapped my hand around the haft of a spear. “You’ll need to work up to holding something that big.”
I jerked my hand away, then cursed my addled brain for placing innuendo where none had been intended. Truly, I was a disaster tonight. “Then show me what I should start with,” I said, voice too sharp. “Not the dagger, I presume, unless you feel like being sucked dry.”
My face flushed hot. Shards, why did I say it like that?
Kallen paced closer, an assessing gleam in his eyes. “Why don’t you show me what you can do first? Try to hit me.”
I wasn’t sure I should get anywhere close to touching him in this state, but I’d agreed to this, and pride would never let me back down.
I pulled Caedo away from my neck, looking at the thick silver circlet and trying to decide where it would be least likely to hurt Kallen.
I’d been feeding the dagger animal blood every night—courtesy of the ever-helpful kitchens in both Earth and Blood House—but it always craved more.
“No drinking,” I told the dagger before bending to place it around my ankle instead. “Even if he accidentally touches you.”
Fine , Caedo said sulkily.
“I appreciate that.” Kallen held out a hand, beckoning me forward. “Now come on. Hit me, Princess.”
I lunged, swinging my right fist, but he dodged before I made contact. I stumbled past him before spinning, skirts swishing at my ankles.
He tossed the hair out of his eyes before gesturing for me to come at him. “Again.”
I tried a series of punches this time, high and then low, but he moved so fast nothing landed.
I tried to kick his knee, but he evaded that, too, shifting like liquid.
He wasn’t even holding his hands in a defensive position: they rested loose at his sides, as if it would be a waste of energy to raise them.
He wasn’t even trying .
Humiliation mixed with anger at being made a fool of. “At least pretend I stand a chance,” I snapped.
He smirked. “Only if you can do better than that.”
I made an outraged noise, then charged him, feinting like I was going to punch him in the throat before ducking to ram my shoulder into his gut. A soft noise rushed out of him at the hit, and triumph filled me.
The triumph was short-lived, though, because he wrapped his arms around me and twisted, using my momentum to sweep me off my feet and down to the ground.
My back hit the padded floor hard enough to startle a gasp out of me, and he followed me down, a hand on my throat and his knees squeezing my hips.
“A surprise attack is always good,” he said as he hovered over me. “But do you know what you did wrong?”
My pulse fluttered against his fingers at the vulnerability of the position.
His hand was firm around my neck, not rough but not entirely gentle, either, and I was excruciatingly aware of how easy it would be for him to crush my throat.
I swallowed, knowing he could feel the ripple against his palm. “No.”
His hair tumbled around his jaw, black and tousled, and his eyes seemed darker than normal.
“You practically gave yourself to me,” he said, a rough edge to his voice.
“I’m larger than you, and you’re untrained.
That means you do not want to give me an opportunity to use brute strength.
Once you’re on the ground, it’s hard to get back up. ”
A reckless exhilaration was ripping through me, some potent combination of fear and animal instinct. I shifted under his grip, then brought my knees up sharply to try to hit the backs of his legs. It didn’t work, but while he was smirking down at me, I hammered a fist into his ribs.
He let out a soft grunt. “Good,” he said. “If you do get pinned, try to get out of it as quickly as possible. There are some grappling techniques I can teach you. But the point of this lesson is that you let anger get the best of you. Your pride was wounded, so you did something risky.”
I bared my teeth at him.
For some reason, that made him smile. “You can still be angry,” he said. “Just not reckless. Not if you don’t have to be.” He shifted his grip, letting go of my throat to grab my wrists and pin them above my head. “What now, Kenna?” he asked, devilry glittering in his eyes.
I jerked my head up, snapping my teeth in the direction of his arm. I didn’t make contact, but he let out a startled laugh. Then I bucked my hips up hard.
He grunted and lurched forward, letting go of my wrists to catch his weight on his palms.
Maybe it wasn’t honorable, but I took the opportunity to reach around and smack my fist into his testicles from behind. Not too hard, but hard enough to make a point: I could have made this hurt much worse.
Kallen let out a strangled sound and released me, rolling away. I followed, straddling his hips and wrapping my hand around his throat this time. “At this point,” I said, leaning in until a loose curl slid over my shoulder to brush his lips, “I would stab you.”
“And I would deserve it,” he said, wheezing slightly. His breath made the strands of my hair flutter. “But you should have gotten up and escaped after breaking my hold.”
“This is more satisfying, though,” I said, squeezing his throat.
“I won’t argue that.”
Wait, what did that mean?
Suddenly aware that our pelvises were almost in contact and his hands were hovering an inch above my hips, I scrambled upright and backed away.
He followed more slowly, wincing. “You’ve got a good grasp on the first skill you’ll need. Fighting dirty.”
“Too bad I apparently don’t have a grasp on any of the other skills.” Embarrassment still heated my skin, and it was hard to look at him without reliving the feel of him on top of me.
“You’re just starting. And there’s a lot to like about what you did.” My eyes flew to his face, and his lips quirked. “You’re fast, for one. That’s going to be one of your greatest assets. You have good instincts, and you’re both agile and aggressive. The technique can be taught.”
Now I felt hot for different reasons. I wasn’t used to being praised. “So where do I start on the technique?” I asked, rubbing a hand over my neck. My hair was falling from its pins, as it always did, and my nape was damp with sweat. “Are you going to show me how to grapple?”
If he did, would I survive the attempt? This sparring session was setting me off-kilter in ways I didn’t want to think about.
“No, I’m going to start by teaching you how to punch. Show me again.”
He had no idea how many fistfights I’d won in the Tumbledown schoolyard. “I know how to—”
“Humor me, Kenna.”
I sighed, then tried to hit him again.
This time he stopped my fist with his hand. “I saw that coming. You pulled your elbow back, and you swung wide instead of punching straight. When you move your arm in an arc, your hits will be slower. You’re going to be best served by fast, direct strikes.”
He demonstrated, lashing his fist out to the side of me. The movement was so quick I jumped. If he’d actually been aiming for me, he would have knocked me to the ground.
“Let me show you again, slower this time.”
He walked me through each component. The precise angle to hold my fist at, how the power should come from my legs and hips rather than the shoulder, and how it should explode out of me like a snake striking.
He showed me how to break a nose with the heel of my palm—something I had done before, thank you very much, and telling him so earned a grunt of approval—then taught me elbow strikes and a way of swinging my fist like a hammer that worked best against collarbones and other bony areas.
There was more padding at the base of my fist than on my knuckles, he said, so it was a safer strike when aiming for some parts of the body.
A fractured hand would heal quickly now that I was Fae, but even a second of hesitation could mean death when facing someone with more experience. Which was almost everyone in Mistei.
“The next thing you’ll need to learn is anatomy,” Kallen said after an hour of running me through strikes, both against him and the bag dangling from the ceiling.
“For the Nasties in particular—they don’t all have the same vulnerabilities we do.
I can send over some books, but I imagine the Blood House library has plenty. ”
“I imagine so.” Blood had been a house of healers, not just warriors, and both types had needed to know how other people were built.
My knuckles were sore from hitting the bag over and over, though the redness was quickly fading.
I blotted my sweaty face on my sleeve. Even with my new Fae endurance, that had been a lot of exercise, and the neck, armpits, and back of my dress were damp.
Kallen looked much more composed, of course, though his cheeks were lightly flushed from the exertion and his eyes were bright. He seemed to have truly enjoyed this.
I had, too, I realized. It was nice to get out of my head for an hour.
Nice to learn something new. I’d been a disaster, but though Kallen had been blunt with his critiques, he’d also commented on what I was doing right.
Hopefully I wouldn’t need to use these lessons often—Caedo was still the first and best line of defense—but anything that made me stronger could only be a good thing.
“Thank you,” I said, grinning at Kallen. “I liked that.”
At my words, he smiled slightly. “Good. Same time tomorrow?”
I nibbled my lip, wondering if it was wise to make a frequent habit of this. It felt risky somehow, like an addiction waiting to happen.
Kallen’s eyes briefly dropped to where my teeth dug into my lower lip.
Risky or not, all power was good power, and there was only one answer I was ever going to give. “Yes.”