Chapter 9 #4
Grateful, I obeyed. The shade felt like mercy. I drank deeply, then sank onto one of the benches nearby, sweat cooling on my skin. My muscles ached pleasantly from the work.
Thanor was still at the training poles. Before I could stop myself, I followed the line of his back as it tapered lower into his—
“You’d do well not to stare.”
I flinched, straightening on the bench.
Lucina stood beside me, arms crossed, her long pale hair catching the light, almost aggressively bright. Her expression carried a hard edge of possession. Her eyes slid past me again, resting openly on Thanor.
“First days have a way of filling heads with nonsense. Don’t let yours wander where it doesn’t belong.”
“I’m not the wandering type.”
Her smile thinned, satisfaction and warning braided together. “Good. Some things aren’t as unclaimed as they appear.”
She moved on without waiting for a response. She stopped near a large man training close to Thanor. Her hand landed on his arm with possessive familiarity, her body leaning into him as he halted his movements.
That had to be Sevrak Thane. He acknowledged her with a predatory grin.
Deep scars crossed his face in the shape of an X, pulling slightly at the skin whenever he smiled.
I frowned. How...? At the Aedile’s gathering, I’d watched Thanor’s wound close before my eyes.
Saber Warriors weren’t supposed to scar.
One side of his head was shorn to the skin, while the other was left long and wild, giving him a lopsided, unbalanced look.
His expression was all teeth and hunger, something manic in it that made my skin crawl.
He leaned into her touch like a man who mistook ownership for affection and violence for charm.
The Ludaryn codex surfaced in my thoughts, fragments from the hefty tome returning to me. None of it aligned with what I was seeing. Lucina and Sevrak didn’t appear to hold themselves to the rules. Their lingering touches and exchanged looks were far too intimate for a formal partnership.
The sun dipped low as I returned to Cassius, his presence steadying the space around him in a way that faintly reminded me of Elion.
“You handled Kharos well today,” he said. “You should be proud.”
“Thank you.” I wiped my hands on a cloth. My pulse was still elevated, though I wasn’t sure whether it came from working with Kharos or from watching Thanor.
Cassius rested a hand on the gate. “He noticed your skill today.”
I blinked. “Kharos?”
“No—well, yes. Him too. But I meant Vayren.”
Before I could ask what he meant, footsteps approached across the sand.
Thanor stopped a short distance away, his axes hanging loosely at his side. Sweat traced slow paths down his torso. At first he didn’t look at me—his attention went to Kharos, who lifted his head at his presence. He studied him briefly, then spoke without turning.
“He seems well prepared.”
“Yes,” Cassius replied. “Kharos responded well to Valentina. I have never seen anything like it. He accepted her on the first attempt.”
Thanor shifted to me and a frown touched his brow.
My piercing pulsed in response. Embarrassment followed as the memory of my earlier outburst surfaced, though his behavior had drawn it from me in the first place.
With it came the echo of my nightmare—the way he had handled me there, claiming me as his.
I forced the memory down, resentful of how easily my body remembered what my mind wanted to forget.
“Tell me,” he said in a low voice, “was that instinct—or skill?”
My chin lifted as I met his stare. A small smile curved my mouth.
“Instinct is just skill you’ve survived long enough to trust.”
The corner of his mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but something close.
“Survival,” he said, stepping close enough to make me aware of the difference in our height, “has a habit of breeding arrogance.”
“Then you should be used to it. It looks like you’ve survived plenty.”
His eyes darkened as they held mine, a flash of something feral passing through them. The look of a hunter gauging resistance, as if calculating how much pressure it would take to make me yield.
Cassius cleared his throat, his eyes flickering between us uncertainly.
“That will be all, Valentina. I will see you tomorrow.”
Thanor didn’t respond. He walked away, and I watched him go, aware of the weight he left behind.
I hadn’t yielded to him, hadn’t bent simply because everyone else did.
Whatever he’d been measuring in me, he had found resistance instead—and that felt like a small victory.
He didn’t have to like me. But in time, I would make him respect me.
Cassius’s voice broke through my thoughts. “Tomorrow will take a lot out of you. Kharos and Vayren are fighting the champion of Aurexium. You should rest.”
I thanked him for today. As the courtyard emptied around me, I stayed where I was, the growls of the sabers offering little comfort.
Tomorrow I would enter the Maw for the first time.
Elion had spent my entire life ensuring I never witnessed its violence before I came of age.
Now there was no one left to shield me from it.