Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Two weeks had passed since her conversation with Kalen, and reliving it kept Verna awake longer than she cared to admit.
The estate had absorbed her new champion seamlessly.
Kalen ate with the guards, slept in the west wing, and only spoke when necessary, which was rarely.
She had learned the layout of the estate within the first three days, as Verna had known she would, and twice she had found the woman on the outer wall at dawn, standing at the cliff's edge and looking eastward across the sea as if she could see all the way home.
She hadn’t tried to leave.
What she had done, from the very first morning, was train.
It was Dara who mentioned it to Verna on the fourth day, in the careful tone she used when reporting something she thought she should know. "Your champion is working the guards hard, lady. The younger ones came in last night looking like they'd been through a campaign."
"Good," Verna had said, and meant it.
She had been telling herself for ten days that she would go and observe, that it was a practical necessity to understand what Kalen was capable of before the Trials. She hadn’t gone, though she hadn’t examined why.
This morning, she ran out of reasons to stay away.
The training ground sat on the second terrace, set into the hillside below the main house.
It was a small amphitheatre, a circle of tiered stone steps that looked down into a sand-floored arena perhaps forty paces across.
One section contained covered boxes for dignitaries.
It had been built by her great-grandmother for reasons that had become lost to family history.
Verna thought the woman was the most interesting of her ancestors.
Verna came down from the upper walkway in the early morning before the heat arrived.
She heard them before she saw them. The sounds rose up the stone steps: feet on sand, the percussive slap of contact, and the panting of the fighters. Underneath, she felt a steady rhythmic intensity that made the air feel different, charged in the way it was before a storm.
She touched her ring that had been passed down to her; acutely aware something had awakened in it since Kalen’s arrival. Its power was stirring, subtly, but it was there. Why now she had no idea, for she’d never felt it before, and as far as she knew, neither had her mother.
Pushing the puzzle aside for the moment, she walked across the top tier of the amphitheatre and looked down.
There were seven women in the arena: six guards, all experienced soldiers who had trained together for years, and Kalen.
The northern woman wasn’t difficult to pick out.
Taller than the soldiers, she wore a short fighting breastplate in dark leather that left her midriff and arms bare, and short training breeches well above the knee.
Her dark hair was bound back from her face and she was moving against two guards simultaneously.
Verna had once seen a large desert cat stalk its prey like that, both dangerous and graceful.
The first guard came in low. Kalen sidestepped without appearing to hurry, then caught the woman's arm, and used the momentum of her own rush against her to deposit her neatly onto the sand.
When the second came from the right, Kalen turned into her, crouched low, and took her across the hip in a throw that sent her down hard enough to raise a small cloud of dust. She stepped back and waited.
Both guards climbed to their feet and came at her again.
Verna leaned her forearms on the top of the stone wall, fascinated.
To get a better view, she walked down the next level to the covered area where she could watch unobserved.
Kalen’s bruises from the auction hall had faded over the two weeks, but from her vantage point, Verna was able to make out the marks on her wrist, which were pale against her tanned skin.
When the guards rushed at her, Kalen spun like a dancer.
Verna had never seen such an artful display of sheer strength and deadly accuracy.
If this had been a real encounter, the guards would have been dead within minutes.
And these were the feared fighters from Abrensia.
Kalen had beaten them, barely raising a sweat.
When a third guard attempted to flank her, Kalen redirected the woman's momentum with no more apparent effort, sending her flying onto the ground. The guard sat up and laughed despite herself, shaking her head in reluctant admiration.
Kalen gestured for a halt to give the women time to catch their breaths. Her gaze travelled up the stone steps in a long sweep, and landed on Verna in the amphitheatre.
As she looked up with a steady appraisal, Verna didn’t move from her position, but simply stared back down at her.
Then Kalen turned and said something to the guards in a low voice that Verna couldn't hear.
Whatever it was, it drew a laugh from them.
The northern woman who had been surly at the interview table two weeks ago, it seemed, had found something here that suited her.
A fighter in her element was a different creature from a fighter in chains.
Verna stayed longer than she'd intended and it was nearly noon when she turned to go.
She didn’t allow herself to look back, though she would have liked to see if Kalen stopped to watch her leave.
Verna went back the next day.
She told herself it was because she needed to assess Kalen's strengths and weaknesses before the Trials.
She returned the day after that as well.
And the next.
By the fourth morning, she stopped making up excuses and after breakfast, simply walked the long way around the upper terrace so that her route brought her past the amphitheatre steps. As always, she watched Kalen work from the covered tier where the shadow of the overhang kept her hidden.
Each day brought something new to observe.
On the second morning it was weapons: a short sword and a long knife, with a technique that bore no resemblance to anything Verna had seen in the Imperial fighting schools.
While the Empire's soldiers were trained in an orderly style, Kalen’s movements were fluid as a dancer.
On the third day, it was archery, and Verna watched every arrow find its mark, never once considering leaving early.
On the fourth, Kalen ran the perimeter of the estate in full training armour and came back looking like she had taken a light stroll.
On the fifth, she sparred again, this time with a wooden sword against six guards at once.
The noise carried up the cliff face, so loud that Verna flinched.
Kalen was so focused in all those days, that not once did she look up into the stands to see if she was watching.
Though Verna was relieved, she was inexplicably disappointed.
On the sixth morning she woke before dawn, restless, and lay in the dark listening to the whisperers until the sky began to lighten. After a quick breakfast, she went down to the amphitheatre and told herself firmly that she was going because it was practical.
The arena was quiet when she arrived. She went down to the covered tier and looked down into the sand.
Kalen was there, but alone; no guards, no weapons and no sparring partners.
She stood at the centre of the arena, her face turned up to the sky, remaining still as if she were listening to something that only she could hear.
Verna swallowed. Kalen was dressed in nothing but a skimpy wrap at her hips.
Her bare breasts were firm, with pointed dark nipples surrounded by brown areolae.
Verna watched mesmerized as she began to move.
Her first step was fluid, almost effortless, her weight shifting forward with a dancer’s balance. Her fists lifted, elbows close, and she began to circle an invisible opponent. There was nothing hurried about it. Each motion flowed into the next with immense control.
She jabbed with her fist, then returned to her guard like a bird darting through the air.
Her hips turned as she launched another hit, not with brute force but by the alignment of her body. The strike cut through the air, remaining suspended in perfect balance before she drew it back.
She pivoted.
Her leg rose in a smooth arc, knee lifting first, then extending into a roundhouse kick. The movement carried a kind of elegance, the foot slicing through the air before settling lightly back to the ground. There was power in it, but it was contained.
She continued the routine without pause.
Step, pivot, jab.
Slip left, hook, step back.
The sequence unfolded like choreography.
Sweat began to gather along the line of her neck, catching the light as she moved, but her breathing remained steady.
When she spun into a back kick, the motion was beautiful— the twist of her waist, the long extension of her leg, the brief moment where her body seemed suspended in space before the foot drove straight back and returned.
Verna should have announced herself, or left, but she did neither. She stood at the top of the covered tier and looked down, and what rose in her was something she had no name for, a feeling like the first heat of wine on an empty stomach. It spread downwards, lodging between her legs.
Kalen was magnificent.
Her body was all lean muscle, her shoulders broad, the line of her back a long curve that tapered at the waist above the narrow wrap. Verna could see a constellation of scars across her body, but they didn’t distract from her appeal, only enhanced it.
For a moment she held the final stance, balanced and still, chest rising slowly with each breath. The tension left her shoulders. She lowered her hands, the quiet focus fading from her expression as she stepped out of the routine.
Then she turned, crossed the arena floor and disappeared through the low arch that led to the bathing rooms beneath the terrace.
Verna let out a slow breath. She straightened from the wall, turned, and found herself looking directly at Kalen.
"You've been coming here every morning," Kalen said in an amused voice.
Verna cleared her throat. "I’m observing your training."
She took a step forward. "You stay all morning."
Heat rose in Verna’s cheeks. "I have a great deal invested in the outcome of the Trials."
"Mm." The look in those dark eyes made Verna’s face feel on fire now. "Is that what you were thinking about just now? The Trials?"
Verna took the safe option and kept silent.
Kalen took another step, close enough that Verna could see the fine sheen on her skin, and smell the salty sweat. Strangely, the odour was more intoxicating than offensive.
"You’ve enjoyed watching me," Kalen said. Her voice was conversational, but there was an edge of arrogance in it, the absolute certainty of a woman who knew she was desired. "This morning especially."
"Kalen—"
"I liked that you watched," she said, then feathered the tip of one finger from Verna’s cheekbone to her chin.
The touch was light, but it burned like a brand.
"I am your employer," Verna said. Her voice came out steadier than she had any right to expect. "And you are under my protection. This is not—"
"Appropriate?" Kalen’s word came out on the edge of a smile. Her hand dropped, but she didn’t step back.
The closeness of her was overwhelming in a way that Verna had no framework for.
"Probably not," Kalen continued, her eyes moving over Verna's face with an unsettling intensity.
"But you've been watching me every morning for a week, Lady Verna.
And this morning you stayed rather longer than professional interest."
"You are arrogant," Verna said.
"Yes," Kalen agreed, without the slightest hint of apology. "I am also very accurate."
Verna felt the ground tilt slightly in a way it hadn’t done in twenty years, and she did what any sensible woman in her position would do.
She left.
She slipped around Kalen, then walked quickly to the upper tier and headed toward the house, keeping her back straight.
She didn’t stop until she reached her own rooms, and when she closed the door behind her, she pressed against the wall, one hand flat against her sternum as though she could quiet whatever was happening beneath it by simple pressure.
The ring on her finger was warm, pulsing against her skin like a heartbeat.
Verna stared at it for a long time.
Then she went to the window, looked out at the sea, and told herself very firmly that this could never happen again.