Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Training Ground, Blood Kingdom
Daire
I bounce on the balls of my feet on the hard-packed earth. I glance around the empty training ground outside the barracks, which lies next to Sheut’s mudbrick city walls.
It is shadowed in night. But I can still do this.
After all, Lanlin thinks that I was an ordinary soldier in the featherglass. He won’t expect a challenge from me.
My nose wrinkles at the smell of dust, sweat, and oil from the weapons. I explore the training ground, feeling how it is broken up by wooden dummies fixed in the ground for practicing strikes and formations.
Sharp moonlight lights up a stone area to the side. Smoke from a campfire stings my eyes.
I hum, twirling down the long table, feeling along it with my fingers, surprised by the laundry that hangs haphazardly over it.
Caligo, our instructor from the Shadow Military Academy, would have had a fit over this type of disorderliness. I am learning, however, that the Eternals under Lanlin have a different type of military discipline to the dragons.
One that is based on how ferocious they are in battle.
I try not to show how excited I am to be back as neither courtesan nor assassin but as a soldier again who is about to spar.
Amongst the featherglass, this was one of my favorite things, apart from drinking, dancing, and rutting.
We would gather around in a glade, and I would train my elite featherglass. I would lose myself in the moves that I learned to survive and to make sure that my child army, who I saved from the destroyed Winter Court, wouldn’t be annihilated by the dragons or vampires.
Except, for those hours, it didn’t need to be about pain or death. It could be about the beauty of fighting, along with the bond between my brothers and sisters in the featherglass.
When I was locked in the dungeons with nothing to do but stroke Five and plot, this is what I would dream Aurelius would do with me: To offer to train with me as an equal warrior.
Finally allowing Freya and me to enter the buggering Shadow Military Academy, where my back was whipped to ribbons, wasn’t the same thing.
I sniff.
Lanlin may be silent, but he gives himself away by his intoxicating scent of incense.
I always know where he is.
I swagger toward him, crouching down next to him.
Lanlin is wearing an all-black outfit, as if he likes to feel he’s flying in the night sky. He is hunkered to the side of the training ground.
When I hear low squeaking, I stiffen.
Rats.
Lanlin leans closer over the rats, whispering to them.
He reaches to pet one.
How can he be gentle with such deadly iron claws?
I shudder, remembering the feel of rats like those in Bael clambering up my legs and biting my ankles, as well as the squeaking and hissing of a million furious rats, accompanied by the screams of the people of Bael writhing beneath them.
Still, as an assassin, I must admit that animals would be brilliant allies on a mission.
A spider’s bite? Wasp’s sting?
So many creative ways to kill, which your marks would never see coming.
Is it worse to kill someone off a battlefield than on it? Is it worse to kill one person to end the slaughter of a thousand innocents?
Let the Shadow Devils condemn me and not anyone who hasn’t fought and bled to protect their world from descending into hell.
The true monsters are those who watch and do nothing, while pretending to be good.
I’m not good.
I warned Aurelius from the start that I was the villain.
Why did he never believe me?
I adjust the simple, white kilt that Lanlin laid out for me in the early evening. My chest and legs are bare.
“So that you can move better,” Lanlin told me. “You can’t fight wearing those pretty robes. I don’t want to hurt you…too badly.”
I smirked. “In your dreams, Bat King.”
Suddenly, the hairs rise on the back of my neck.
My gaze shoots toward the barracks.
I fight not to laugh.
The Eternals must be stealthily peering through at Lanlin and me like children trying to watch the grownups.
I can’t blame them for wanting to watch the first fight between their King and his fae mate.
They probably want to see Lanlin kick my arse.
I clench my jar.
To hell with that.
“We have an audience.” I attempt to hide the laughter in my voice.
Instead of taking any notice of his own soldiers at the windows, which I’m certain he can already sense, Lanlin turns his piercing gaze over his shoulder.
I know that it will be fixed on Freya.
When we entered the training ground, I left Freya standing, leaning on the training ground’s dusty mudbrick wall, dressed in that simple ivory dress that clings to her curves in a way that makes me bloody hard.
I don’t need to see her to be able to sense her. I trace over the snowflake, shivering at her answering touch.
Lanlin has a way of always looking for Freya first, when he enters a room, then appearing to keep his full attention on her.
I understand that type of devotion, but maybe not obsession.
I am already bonded with Freya. It sparked the moment that we touched. It settled deeply into our souls like it had always been there. I don’t need to reassure myself of anything because I know that we can be apart, but we’re never separated.
Yet Lanlin has known about his Golden fated Omega for years, been tortured through his fangs for her, which are as special for a vampire as wings are for a fae, and seems to believe that she will vanish.
He seeks her out like he is touching, ravishing, devouring her by his gaze alone.
“Shall we see who impresses our Omega best?” Lanlin’s voice is rich and smooth.
I don’t, however, miss the steel beneath it.
He pushes himself to his feet, and I copy him.
We are standing close together, as if Lanlin wants to keep this conversation private from Freya.
Idiot.
I have secrets from our Omega, but we’re united co-conspirators when it comes to anything about both Aurelius and Lanlin.
I firmly press on the snowflake.
Instantly, I sense Freya’s concern through our bond.
Lanlin still hasn’t looked away from Freya.
So, he wants to beat my arse in front of Freya to score points with her. He is possessive. It just shows that he has no idea what impresses our Omega.
I’m not letting the Alpha in on that.
Instead, I push my curls out of my eyes, making a show of stretching casually. “Oh, a wager. You don’t know me, bat, but I always win.”
“We’ll see.” A shadow of a smile flits behind his eyes.
I firmly press on the snowflake bond mark again, and without hesitating, Freya answers my call.
I hear her footfalls, as she crosses the training ground.
“What are my Alphas whispering about?” She asks. “I can’t wait to see you train together.”
Lanlin’s expression falls for a moment. His lips curl back into a snarl.
Then he controls himself, blanking his expression.
He turns to Freya. “I was merely suggesting a wager on our first sparring session, dearheart.”
“What are you betting?” Freya sounds strained but then she adds, teasingly, “I’m going to be the Queen. So, shouldn’t I offer the winner a kiss?”
Lanlin and I stiffen at the same time.
“I am bloody winning this,” I growl.
Lanlin’s eyes flash a deeper red. “If you believe that, then you have no idea how competitive a Shadow Vampire is when it comes to love.” He spins around, and I hear the clink of wood and metal.
He sounds like he is sorting through the shields and weapons at the side of the training ground.
“I had these made for you, when I scented…when I smelled your nectar sweet blood on the letter and realized that a fae would be part of the peace deal. Most fight with two bronze daggers, hmm?”
I automatically take the two daggers that have been thrust at me, turning them over and wondering how it’s possible that they feel like they have always fitted in my hands.
They are bronze with feathered hilts.
My throat feels choked with sudden tears.
Don’t think of my own daggers lost on the floor of Rune Forest…
The ash. Fallen Kingdom. Death.
Don’t think of…
“Thanks,” I rasp. “They’re bloody beautiful.”
“You said no severed heads for courting gifts,” Lanlin replies like he’s still disappointed by that, “or knots of your enemies. But daggers are a good way to thank a fellow warrior for gifting me his blood and service, right?”
I nod.
He has no idea how much.
I test the weight of the daggers in my hands, twirling them around.
Then I grin.
Lanlin is standing, relaxed.
He has no idea that he has just armed his enemy.
Aurelius didn’t trust me with more than a butter knife, and I still tried to assassinate him with it, or at least, pretended to.
“Where’s my weapon?” Freya demands.
“You would wish for one?” Lanlin sounds confused. “Are you a fighter as well?”
I chuckle. “Watch out, or you’re about to be kneed me in the balls, bat. Freya was a cadet in the Shadow Military Academy. If you want her to be safe, then she should also be trained. I mean, I love macho posturing as much as the next idiot, but she has a right to be able to protect herself.”
“And have that right faesplained,” Freya mutters.
Whoops, there go my balls.
“What would you like as a courting gift?” Lanlin asks, earnestly. “Anything, and it is yours.”
Dangerous.
“Something stabby,” Freya says like she’s surprised that he agreed.
I’m not.
Lanlin nods. “On my heart, you shall have every wish you desire. Simply ask me, and I will tear apart my world to provide it for you. I cherish you in a way that I don’t think you understand. But you will. Now, back away to the wall. Watch us fight to win the honor of a kiss. Watch me win.”
I hear Freya move away, then shiver at the press of her lips to the snowflake.
It’s her good luck to me.
I straighten my shoulders. “How are you going to win when you don’t even have a weapon?”
Lanlin slowly circles me like a cat who is already enjoying toying with his prey. “I don’t need one. Have you forgotten who I am?”
My mouth dries. “No magic. Keep it fair.”
Lightning fast, Lanlin rushes me, driving me back into a wooden dummy.