Chapter 35 #3
“You keep waiting for someone else to prove you belong here.” That stopped me.
She saw it. Then went for the wound. “You tear through Sanctum wards and everyone starts whispering Starborn, so suddenly you’re supposed to matter.
Kieran teaches you a few tricks and you walk around like you earned them. ”
My jaw tightened. “You don’t know anything about what I’ve earned.”
“No?”
Her eyes dragged over me. “Then show me.” She attacked.
Shadow struck from both sides. I met the first with Light.
The second curled around my upper arm before I could block it.
It pulled. I slammed onto one knee. A sharp tear ripped across my shoulder.
Heat followed. I looked down. One of Neseryn’s shadow blades had cut through leather and skin beneath it.
Blood darkened my sleeve. The instructor shouted a warning, but his words blurred beneath the rush of blood in my ears.
Neseryn heard him. Her gaze dropped to the blood. Her Shadow changed. It should have withdrawn after the strike. Instead, the darkness around my arm stilled, then eased closer. It slid along my skin with unsettling care, curling toward the wound as though the scent of my blood had drawn it in.
Neseryn’s face went blank. My own Shadow answered. The rune at my hip burned. I sucked in a breath.
No.
Not here. I forced it down. Neseryn’s eyes snapped to mine.
She had felt it. I knew she had. Her Shadow remained against my arm.
The darkness beneath my skin clawed toward hers so violently that my vision blurred.
It was the courtyard all over again. Her shoulder brushing mine. My magic surging after her.
Only worse.
Much worse.
“What did you do?” Neseryn asked. The question was quiet.
“I didn’t do anything.”
Her gaze dropped to the darkness touching my blood.
For the first time since I’d met her, Neseryn looked unsettled.
She didn’t look afraid. If anything, she looked offended by it, as though her own magic had moved without her command.
She yanked her Shadow away. The sudden release pulled a gasp from me.
My own Shadow surged after it. A thin black streak escaped my fingers, barely there before I caught it. But Neseryn saw. Her pupils widened.
Shit.
She looked at my hand. Then at me. Everything around us seemed to disappear from her attention. “You—”
I hit her.
Hard.
Light caught her directly in the chest and threw her across the court.
It was reckless. I knew that as soon as I did it.
Neseryn struck the stone and rolled. The ward pillar nearest her flashed gold.
The instructor shouted her name. She got up anyway.
Slowly. There was blood at the corner of her mouth now, more than before.
One side of her face had already begun to swell.
She looked furious.
Good.
Fury I understood. What I’d seen before it, I didn’t. Neseryn spat blood onto the stone. “Again.”
The instructor stepped toward the ward. “No. The next breach ends the match.” Neseryn ignored him.
Her eyes flicked once toward the watching candidates before returning to me.
When she spoke, her voice dropped low enough that I almost missed it.
“So that’s what you’ve been hiding.” My stomach dropped.
Whispers had already started around the court, but they couldn’t have seen that sliver clearly.
Could they? “What are you talking about?” I asked just as quietly.
Neseryn laughed softly. “You are a terrible liar.” Then she moved.
This time I saw the blade form. A narrow length of Shadow hardened along her forearm and flashed toward me.
I blocked. It cut through the edge of my Light shield and caught my cheek.
The sting came first. Then warmth sliding toward my jaw.
I lunged before she could recover. My fist caught her mouth. Skin split beneath my knuckles. She grabbed a fistful of my hair.
I caught hers.
We hit the ground together. There was nothing elegant about it anymore.
No division techniques. No carefully formed magic.
Neseryn drove her elbow into my ribs. I struck her across the face.
She rolled over me, pinning my wrist against stone.
I brought my knee up hard enough to knock her sideways.
Her nails—or perhaps a Shadow edge; I couldn’t tell—ripped across the skin near my collarbone.
I tasted blood where I’d bitten my own tongue. Someone outside the court swore. The ward pillars pulsed again. Neseryn’s knee landed against my stomach and I folded. She caught the back of my neck and forced me down. My cheek hit stone.
“Yield.” Her breath was harsh near my ear.
“Fuck you.” I twisted beneath her. She tightened her grip. I reached for Light, but I couldn’t get enough of it between us from this angle. My breath was wrong, my arm pinned too awkwardly beneath her.
My hidden Shadow was right there, waiting. It would be easy. One pull. One thought and Neseryn would be off me.
No.
I wasn’t giving Halos another reason to come asking questions.
I shoved my palm against the ground and forced Light into the stone instead.
Gold exploded between us. Neseryn was thrown sideways.
I rolled onto my back, gasping. The court had gone silent.
Neseryn lay several feet away. Neither of us moved. Blood ran from my cheek into my hair.
My shoulder throbbed and I could already feel bruises forming beneath my ribs. Neseryn pushed herself onto one elbow. Her lip was split badly now. Blood covered her chin and had splashed down the front of her black training shirt. For a few seconds, we only looked at each other.
Then she laughed. Not because anything was funny. The sound came low and breathless, carrying an edge that made the hair rise along my arms. “You finally learned how to hit back.”
I wiped at the blood running toward my jaw. “You sound disappointed.”
“I’m deciding.” She got to her feet before the instructor could reach her.
“Neseryn.” She ignored him. So did I. Every sane part of me knew the match should have ended there. The wards had already warned us twice. My shoulder was bleeding through my sleeve, my cheek was open, and every breath pulled against whatever she had done to my ribs.
But Neseryn looked at me the same way she had during our first match. Like she was waiting to see whether I would fold. I hated that look so I got up.
The instructor stepped between the ward pillars. “I said the next breach ends it.”
Neseryn wiped her mouth with the heel of her hand. “We heard you.”
“Then act like it.” Her gaze never left mine. I should have backed down.
Instead, I said, “We’re still standing.”
The instructor looked from me to Neseryn as if reconsidering every choice that had led him here. “Thirty seconds. You cross the ward limit again, I put both of you on the ground myself.”
Neseryn’s mouth curved around the blood. The instructor backed away. Thirty seconds. No room for cleverness. Neseryn knew it too.
The ward brightened once and she came straight at me.
I expected Shadow. She didn’t use it. Her fist caught the side of my face before I could get my guard up completely.
My head snapped sideways. I answered with my elbow, caught her beneath the jaw and felt the impact all the way to my shoulder.
She grabbed my vest. I caught her wrist.
We slammed together hard enough that her forehead struck mine. For one disorienting second, everything narrowed to breath, blood and the grind of boots against stone. Then her hand closed over the cut on my shoulder.
Pain flashed white. “Bitch.”
“Pay attention.”
I drove my knee into her thigh. She twisted with it, used my momentum and nearly put me on my back again.
I caught myself against her instead. Our hands tangled.
Her palm was slick. So was mine. More blood.
I couldn’t tell whose. The instant our skin met, a violent pull caught beneath my ribs. Not Shadow rising.
Not the rune burning the way it did when I lost control.
This was lower. Stranger.
A hard, internal lurch that stole the breath from my lungs. Neseryn froze, her fingers clenching around mine. For one impossible second, I knew the sensation had caught her too. I couldn’t have explained how I knew it. Nothing else betrayed her, but the sudden pressure of her hand told me enough.
The noise outside the court dulled. My Shadow stirred under my skin, frantic but contained, pressing toward the place where our palms touched. Neseryn’s pupils widened. “What—” The word never finished. She tore her hand from mine and whatever it was snapped.
Pain went through me so sharply I staggered.
Neseryn did too. No magic showed between us.
To anyone watching, we’d simply lost our footing at the same time.
Neseryn knew better. Confusion crossed her face for barely a heartbeat before fury swallowed it.
She hit me harder than she had all afternoon.
Her fist split the inside of my lip against my teeth.
I tasted blood. I grabbed her by the front of her leathers and drove her backward. Her shoulder hit the wall. She snarled and caught me across the cheek with the back of her hand. The cut opened wider. Warmth ran down my neck.
“Enough!” the instructor shouted.
Neither of us stopped. Neseryn shoved me.
I went at her again. There was nothing remotely instructional left in it.
She drove an elbow into my ribs. I punched her in the mouth.
She caught my hair and pulled hard enough to bring tears to my eyes, so I grabbed a fistful of hers and yanked her down with me. We hit stone.