59. Kye
Kye
Iturned in a snap, my steps lashing against the island as I struck Aegir across the jaw like a gust of iron. A test blow, not an ending one. His bare feet swiped softly against rock and sand as he bounced away to recover.
After watching him these past few weeks, I knew I was the better fighter. Aegir showed all the tells of a new recruit who had trained back home with his friends or brothers. Good enough to have won often, sloppy enough to let his arrogance grow fat and spoiled.
He excelled, yes. In one fighting style, with a small number of competitors.
He was strong. He was quick. He was smart.
But for all the hours we’d spent on Evenstar, he hadn’t studied me quite enough.
If he had, he might have known my left hand jammed at the wrist or that I threw too much power into his blind spot.
His eyes had locked into mine, not my shoulders or chest where it would be easier to track my limbs.
Air whisked around my closed fist as I flew forward, forcing him right, then left.
His eyes darkened in a scowl that made me want to flash my teeth.
Aegir shook me off by dropping to a crouch, fingers sliding over sand and rough stone as he lurched out of my reach. His tattooed waves rippled as he arced his arm in a motion that looked more like throwing a ball than a punch.
A cloud of gray erupted across my nose. Silt and frost rained against my cheeks. My eyes slammed shut too late, grains of sand latching under my lids like dust to damp paper, blurring the world. Tearing through my natural lenses like tiny thorns.
A hiss slithered through my teeth. I spun to the side, waving the plume away, blinking to clear the brume.
A chorus of furious shouts pelted my back. The gritty taste of dirt stuck to the back of my tongue, stinging in my nose—I must have inhaled it. I turned and spat, but tiny grains of salt remained, crunching between my clenched teeth.
“An accident,” Aegir said. I could see him too clearly in my mind’s eye, holding his fucking hands up in apology. “Do you want to stop, human?”
Not do you need a minute?
Not flush your eyes and rebegin.
He held out the offer to concede so innocently. As though he were willing to let me yield and keep my dignity. “No,” I said, the word boiling in my blood before it left my tongue.
Water leaked at my lashes, the dark shapes around me swimming sickeningly. The closest one loomed like a meaty stick-figure, a child’s drawing of a man, blobby and disproportionate.
If I were to fight him, I’d have to fight him almost fucking blind.
Stomach clenching under a fistful of curses and dark wishes for Aegir’s untimely ending, I crouched, peeling my boots and stockings off and pitching them to the side. I needed earth under my toes. To feel the vibration of his movements through the soles of my feet.
Our onlookers had fallen into silence like heavy snow, hiding their outrage under the drifts. But it hung weighty in the air, like the island had taken a breath, holding their anger captive in its lungs.
My fingers curled into my palms, tendons tight against the cold. Fog dusted my lips, warm under the eclipse of Pheolix’s icy air.
Aegir moved.
I took the defensive, ducking and dodging attacks, spinning away from the sound of his feet and the heavy pull of his breath, my eyes stinging like fucking razors.
Now he was the one to lead, to push and pull me where he wanted, and my only choice was to let him.
We’d passed days on Evenstar; I’d seen the way he stacked combinations, the way he twisted and rotated as he fought.
It all felt different now. He was slippery as an eel, slick and oily like a long-spined fish darting out from the rocks.
Or maybe it was the loss of my premonition ring, the seed of future that lingered in the back of my senses, primed to tell me when danger loomed around the corner of an oncoming second.
I let him shift and shove me right and left, relearning his hazy angles, burning them into memory.
Warm skin, rough and hard, grazed my cheek.
I jolted away, parrying with a punch, the flat of my fist rocking against a shoulder.
He spun toward me, and I stepped into his side, luring him close.
Knuckles shot for my mouth, faster than I expected. I tilted, his strike landing on my nose instead. My head whirled as it knocked back, a river of hot blood spraying across my face. My teeth clacked together. The taste of copper rang across my tongue like lightning in my mouth.
“Uh oh,” someone muttered. Leal, I think, a scratch against my pride.
Rock rang against my knee, hard enough to slice fabric as I landed. An Aegir-shaped shadow leaned over me—
Too close.
Way too fucking close.
A bright flame of panic lashed through my limbs. Fist cocked, arm straight—I threw my weight through my shoulder, slamming into something very soft and fleshy.
Aegir’s airless gasp was enough for the imagination.
Had he been a true enemy, had I wanted him dead—and I still wasn’t sure that I didn’t—I’d have climbed over him then, laying blow after blow into his face until his body lay motionless and gray.
Aegir had Maren to thank that I backed away instead, ears ringing and heart pounding, watching his dim shadow roll to the side and force itself, shakily, back to his feet.
I wiped my nose, a new surge of blood leaking from the pressure. “Need a minute?”
The Videre didn’t answer right away. He hunched faintly over his feet, blowing a long gust of wind from his mouth. Sucked clean air into his nose and swallowed.
“No,” he finally groaned. “I’ll recover from a coward’s throw.”
“At least you take a punch like a human,” I drawled, my hands itching to strike him again.
If the blood poured from between my knuckles, I’d welcome the thought of Aegir making me bleed.
He climbed to his feet, sending a hard blow over my head. Hard, but slow. I ducked under it, my fist rocking into his mouth.
Aegir stumbled, and I hit him again.
Sun and stars, it felt good. The crunch of a cheek under my fist, the way a hit reverberated through my wrist and into my arm, the subtle bite of pain and promise of sore muscles tomorrow.
The King of Calder had not fathered me, but if he’d given me anything, it was a vicious hand when I needed one.
If there was one thing that made me feel safe, it was violence.
For a moment, I was almost dizzy with it, that addicting feeling of leaning into a fight.
Of winning one.
Flecks of blood landed below, stark among stone and coarse sand. And within the giddy, impulsive drive of my dislike for Aegir, a darker flame lit. A burn low and dangerous in the pit of my stomach.
This wasn’t a fight I needed to win. This was one I needed to end.
Thunder rumbled from the east. The air over my arms rose, a static twisting the salt in the air. Leal’s uh oh suddenly made a lot more sense.
I spun to meet Nori’s eyes. At least, the shape that looked most Nori-like. She didn’t even have the decency to balk under my accusatory gaze. “My orders are to inform her if you’re in danger,” she said, emotionless.
“Think she’ll spank you, Kye?” Leal asked.
“She’ll at least give him a tongue lashing,” Hadrian muttered.
Leal shook his head with a grim smile. “He’d enjoy that.”
The shadows around Aegir’s eyes narrowed.
Fingers twined in the hair at my nape. Pain exploded across my cheek. Stars flew, and I shook them away, grappling through the bending light for a neck or a nose of even a fucking braid to hit.
“Should we stop them?” Dimas asked.
“No,” Diara answered, the word flat and angry.
I flipped over, a heavy body under my knee, wrestling for freedom.
Dirt and sand and blood coated my tongue, the sting of scrapes from the rocks bright over my arms and back.
Somewhere along the line, our punches had grown mean.
My dignity had dropped off the edge like a river into a waterfall, sudden and raging and oh so fucking deep.
My forearm lay across his throat, and I leaned in, making sure he heard me. “You’re lucky,” I slurred, gravel in my voice. “You’re lucky she’s almost here. Otherwise, I might not have stopped.”
“You’re nothing,” he croaked back. “You aren’t worthy.”
I turned my cheek and spat, though more blood welled in my mouth. “You’re right. I’m not. But neither are you.” Lightning shuttered softly in the clouds overhead, almost to Evenstar. I moved in closer, whispering in the Naiad’s ear before I shoved myself off him.
“Cross the line with my wife and she’ll probably kill you herself. But if she doesn’t, I fucking will.”