Chapter 19 Rhea #3
Yet she barely registers his final sentences. Her brain is stuck on other words. I am not the one who made his decisions for him; he made his own choices and was forced to face the consequences of them.
She sees red. Absolute, undiluted, fully-saturated red.
Her fingers curl around the hilts of the sheathed daggers strapped around both her thighs, and she yanks them free, sending each one soaring toward Finlay—one at his heart and the other at the space directly between his eyes.
He deflects the dagger soaring toward his face with the blade of his sword and the other with a thick sheet of ice he forms over his heart.
“You are like an insufferable child throwing a tantrum,” he hisses. “Grow up.”
Rhea barks a bitter, cold laugh. “Rich coming from you.” Then she charges at him, drawing two more daggers from their holders and positioning them in her palms to strike.
She spins on the ball of her foot and attempts to plunge one dagger into his jugular while thrusting the other into his side.
Finlay catches her wrist nearest his throat and spins out, avoiding the dagger racing for his side.
“Stop this,” he hisses. “We do not need to act like uncivilized barbarians who resort to simply killing each other because of their anger.” His chest is pressed against her back, her outstretched arm locked in his hands.
She tilts her chin up just enough to glance back at him. “Whatever do you mean, Captain? I am only completing the training hours with you, just as instructed.” Her saccharine words drip with honeyed poison.
His grip on her arm tightens. “Rhea…” He almost says her name like a plea.
She isn’t sure if he wants to say more. Before she can find out, she uses the dagger in her free hand to make Finlay let go of her, plunging it into the crook of his elbow. As expected, before the blade can actually pierce skin, he drops her and pulls away.
“Why aren’t you fighting back, Frosty? Afraid you’ll lose to me?”
Finlay doesn’t take the bait. “The only thing I’m frightened by is having such an unstable brat at Bathara.”
“Stop speaking to me as though I’m still the child you guys left behind at Tylderon. I’m not.” Rhea charges at him once more, attempting to engage him in combat.
“Then stop acting like you are,” he counters, evading the strikes of her daggers with too much ease.
With gritted teeth, Rhea tosses her daggers to the side. She wants his blood on her knuckles instead of the tip of her blades anyways. Finlay huffs. Without peeling his eyes from her, he chucks his sword beside him, lifting his hand and beckoning her forward with two fingers.
“Alright, Rhea. You want a fight? Fine. Let’s fight.”
She doesn’t miss a beat, charging him and throwing a combination of strikes at him that would have made her combat tutor beam with pride.
Though he tries to make it look effortless, the dip of his brow and thinning of his lips show Rhea he is struggling to keep track of all her movements.
So she puts even more pressure on him, trying to force him to go on the offensive.
Yet he doesn’t. He isn’t striking back.
Rhea can only chalk that up to him thinking he doesn’t need to strike back—that she isn’t worth the effort in his eyes.
She will make him pay for his arrogance in blood.
She feints, throwing out an arm, and when he brings both his forearms up to defend against the blow, she spins fluidly on the ball of her foot, bringing up her heel and planting it right into the side of his face.
He rears back from the kick, clutching at his nose with his hand.
When he pulls his fingers away, blood dribbles from his nostrils, running toward his upper lip in a beautiful stream of crimson.
Slowly, he drags the back of his hand across the red stain blemishing his perfect skin, wiping it away as his weighted stare remains locked on her.
“Fight. Back,” she bites out.
“This is training. Not an actual battle.” He spits blood onto the ground. “I have nothing to prove to you by showing you I can hit you with my fists. It isn’t worth it to me—even if Tynan secured you the best training around. I am the Fjolla Heir, not some lowblooded scum.”
Anger sends her scattered thoughts ejecting from her lips before she can think better of it. “Stop acting like you’re better than me, Finlay. That I’m some charity case Tynan allowed to happen, making me so privileged to even be in your blessed presence.”
He draws his brows together, a wrinkle forming between them. “What? That wasn’t the point of what I—”
“Wasn’t it?” Her anger and insecurities run away from her. “You spew your nonsense about highborns and lowborns—who deserves what because of their birthright. Well fuck you, and fuck birthrights.”
Finlay studies her, his brows remaining pinched together. “Birthright establishes political stability. Maintains social order. Creates a hierarchical system that is predictable and upholds responsibility. Without it, the Three Kingdoms would be plunged into chaos.”
She scoffs, shaking her head. “Spoken like a true brainwashed noble himself.”
“You were raised in House Dalmar,” he points out.
“Sure, you’re only half-blooded, but you were raised in the ways of nobility all the same.
Draven, who you claim to love so much, is a noble.
Kiran is a noble.” He strides toward her, but Rhea doesn’t give him a single inch.
Instead, she stands her ground and lifts her chin.
“You spit on and reject the system which raised you only when it is convenient for you. That is your problem, Rhea.”
She curls her fingers so tightly into her palms, her nails pierce her skin.
“Kiran and Draven don’t buy into the senseless bullshit like you do.
Even if you weren’t responsible for the death of my father and sister, I would still hate you for the way you cling to your foolish ideals and preach them like a gospel given from the gods themselves. ”
“Kiran and Draven don’t bear the weight of their father’s expectations like I do,” he argues, his voice rising. “They aren’t forced to believe in those ideals as I am.” Yet he stiffens suddenly, catching his mistake.
Rhea huffs, her upper lip curling while she looks at him.
“You’re so right,” she mocks, her low voice sewn from pure disdain.
“Draven knows nothing of carrying the weight of his father’s expectations.
Knows not a single thing about being pressured into believing in nobility’s self-righteous creed.
” She takes a step toward him, resulting in Finlay tilting his chin down to fully meet her eyes now that they are no more than a finger’s length apart.
“You want to know the difference between you and Draven, Frosty? He isn’t a coward.
He doesn’t just blindly follow the expectations of a man who never deigned to truly care for him.
Instead, he finds every way he can to stand against him.
To fight back and rebel. To put the people who matter above the man who doesn’t.
But you?” Her eyes slowly rake over the entirety of his body, not holding back an inch of the disgust she feels for him.
“You are the exact opposite. And that is what makes you a coward. That is what makes you weak.”
Finlay flexes his jaw, but says nothing as he holds her scornful glare. Eventually, he flicks his eyes toward the window, where the moon has peaked in the charcoal sky. He slides his gaze back to her, where it lingers a heartbeat longer before he turns away from her.
“Training is over. You are dismissed.”
Rhea wanders down a green and red lined corridor, begrudgingly shuffling her feet across the scarlet carpet lining the floors, replaying her and Finlay’s argument over and over as she imagines all the other words she could have said.
She makes her way deeper into the Elefet wing, burly looking men staring at her unabashedly, watching her with the sort of hungry glint in their eye that makes her skin prick.
She glimpses women with seductive eyes and sneered lips watching her curiously as well, their displayed figures cut straight from the male gaze.
Rhea hears their hissing whispers when she passes them.
No wonder Draven doesn’t like to spend a lot of time in his own damn wing.
She wouldn’t want to spend time around these people either.
But Tynan insists Draven only Select the most ruthless wielders who pass the exams, not wanting to show a glimmer of any weakness within House Dalmar or its heir.
No—Draven Dalmar is only allowed to select the strongest. The most barbaric.
The most willing to do what needs to be done to achieve their mission.
Which is all the more reason for Rhea to fulfill her end of the bargain she made with Tynan.
She rounds a corner and stops short when she finds her brother with a scowl on his face, a woman with a plunging neckline and cropped shirt leaning against him as she attempts to show him her wielder’s mark.
Oh, this ought to be good.
Rhea leans her shoulder against the wall she’s peering around, folding her arms and crossing her ankles to enjoy the show.
“See, Captain Dalmar?” The girl purrs with a pitchy voice Rhea knows is grinding Draven down to his bones. “I swear it’s grown longer from last year. I plan to show Master Cahlmon after my Advanced Wielding Techniques class today, but I just wanted your thoughts before I did.”
Conveniently for this student—whoever she is—her wielder’s mark consists of a small triangle resting at the base of her throat, a line cutting through the upper quadrant of it while ornamental lines punctuated by small dots encase the shape, descending down to a point just above her nearly exposed breasts.
Draven doesn’t even glance near it, his simmering stare instead locked on her doe-eyed expression. “I have no thoughts.” He takes a retreating step from the busty girl.
“You didn’t even look,” she pouts.