Chapter 13
Thirteen
Kieran
Iblock the attack on instinct, lifting both forearms in front of my face and knocking the jab of the wooden staff aside before it takes out an eye. Astrid doesn’t miss—she aims to maim.
A flash of wicked smile flickers across her features before she schools them back into neutrality.
“You’re too slow,” she reminds me.
I toss my head to fling the sweaty hair off my forehead. “Isn’t there a saying about slow and steady being the winning combination?”
“Sounds to me like a man trying to justify his loss.” Astrid smirks. “Get back into position.”
“Have mercy on me!”
“There is no mercy. There’s only me and the weak excuse you call muscles.”
I groan. “You are the harshest taskmaster I’ve ever had.”
She twirls the staff in front of her with expert ease before leveling it with my gut. “Which is why you love me.”
A grin splits my face. “You know I do.”
I move against her, and Astrid slips out of the way at the last second, knocking the staff against my Achilles tendon. I go down on my backside, the jarring hit spreading up through my tailbone. She steps over me, her legs on either side of my hips, and points the staff between my eyes.
“Please. This is pathetic, Kieran.” She adjusts the staff to lean her weight against it. “You’re embarrassing me.”
I’m embarrassing myself. A badly hidden snicker sounds from the left as I scramble to my feet. One warning look levels the other freshman student sharing our mat and he turns back to his partner.
The gymnasium is filled with sparring partners. I usually pair off with Astrid. No one else has the capacity to handle her brutal strength, and too many of the other students refuse to even attempt it.
Which doesn’t bode well for their tenure at DragonSpear.
She holds out a hand for me to accept, like it’s some kind of peace offering, and I slap her away.
“Reset. Okay?”
She silently takes her place opposite me, waiting until I have my bearings before striking. In a normal fight, Astrid wouldn’t wait. She’d go in for the kill before her enemy knew she moved.
It’s a miracle my father hasn’t snapped her up, and one of the only things working in my favor. If Roman Ryson knew about Astrid’s skills, he’d have her replace Tristan as his right hand. I’m sure of it.
I lunge for her midsection and Astrid sidesteps. But I pivot with her, anticipating her direction, and wrap my arms around her before she uses the staff.
I have a sneaking suspicion she escaped his notice not because of her skin tone, but because of her mount. Zicua is a basilisk. They are useful grunts and beneath my father’s esteem. They are not as powerful as dragons.
Any land mount is lumped into the same category. Handy to a point. A means to an end.
I squeeze Astrid until an explosive exhale marks the breath from her lungs and swipe at her legs to knock her down.
We move around each other, neither one winning. I hold my own but she isn’t going down and she’s still got the staff in her hands.
But she’s sweating, so I’ll count it as a win.
Her silver braids are tucked into a tight bun at the top of her head, her leather bracers laced against brown skin. She moves with a fluidity like air and her slender build disguises a ruthless, bloodthirsty soul.
She was nasty on the battlefield the one and only time I brought her out with me, my father absent from the fight. The square offs in sparring class only hone her abilities.
“Watch it,” I say offhandedly when she sends me back a step. “I’m not going to be of much use to anyone if I’m half blind. Stop going for my face.”
“You’re already half blind. I’d only be ensuring your outside matches your inside.” Astrid pauses, leaning on her staff for a moment before hurling it into the air in front of her and catching it deftly, swinging it at my crotch.
I drop low and shift my stance, forcing her swing to go wide. “I hope you’re not expecting me to thank you.”
She whips into motion before I have a chance to consider the direction of my next attack.
It’s what makes Astrid so deadly when she’s on the field.
There’s no way of anticipating where she’ll go or what her next move will be.
She’s a visionary and I’m lucky she’s on my side and not my enemy’s. She’s relentless; she’ll never stop. If I have half the amount of stubbornness she does, then it’s a great day for me.
She ducks low and brings the staff up against the small of my spine. I skid to a stop and pivot. Dragon dung, there goes my balance. Again.
Sparring without a weapon forces me to expand my awareness of the situation and consider the bigger picture, not just the easy death at the tip of a blade. Or my dragon’s teeth.
Which is why these classes are so important.
I have to be strong and fast. I have to make those split second decisions that mark the difference between life and death.
The mat beneath our feet absorbs the sounds of our footsteps and the rest of the large gymnasium fills with grunts and cries from other similar pairings. None of them have half of Astrid’s grit.
And I highly doubt they have as much to lose as I do.
Astrid comes up with her eyes glowing and buries the tip of the staff in my kidney this time. “You’re not paying attention, Kieran.”
She digs in extra hard like a reprimand.
“How do you expect me to help you when your thoughts are miles away?”
I grin wider because it pisses her off. “You’re all I think about, Astrid. Truly devastating for my concentration.”
She scoffs like the thought churns her stomach. “Please. You’re disgusting.”
And for extra measure, she pulls back to whack the wood to the underside of my chin. My teeth clack together hard.
I swallow over the flinch and push the pain aside. No apologies.
Instead, I grab the staff out of her hand and yank. She’s too strong to let go but the move brings her closer and I kick out with my left leg and hit her knee.
Astrid buckles with hardly a yelp of surprise then spins on her knees to rise.
She’s aiming low when someone yells for me.
“Kieran Ryson.”
Headmistress Yasmine Harbi hardly needs to yell.
Her presence sends the rest of the room into frigid silence, the pairs around us stilling mid maneuver to watch her. Harbi floats on unseen feet and says nothing else. It takes a crook of a finger in my direction to get me to move.
She grips her own staff in her left hand, a feature she’s rarely seen without, carved from ash with a tower of onyx crystal at the tip.
“Blast, you’re in trouble,” Astrid mutters under her breath.
“I just wish I knew what I did,” I whisper.
Despite Harbi’s years at the helm of the academy, her hair is still the black of a raven’s wing and the lines fanning out from her eyes speak of knowledge and wisdom gained rather than old age.
Hard eyes glitter and seem to ask what’s taking you so long?
My stomach goes hot and tight and the ache in my kidneys and chin is forgotten. Whatever this is, it’s nothing good.
Mozi rumbles in my head, aware but quiet. Listening.
Headmistress Harbi waits from her perch near the door until I’m close enough to see the glimmer of something unnamable in her ocean-blue eyes. Her lips thin as she looks at me and she turns on her heels, the fabric of her gown fluttering in her wake.
I throw back my shoulders and follow. She’s quiet but clearly upset about something.
Harbi is rumored to have been quite the warrior in her day. What does she see when she looks out at the next generation of fighters? Weaklings, likely. Students who won’t make it to graduation without a stern and severe guiding hand.
I trail her through the halls away from the gym and into a small parlor off the main corridor. It’s not her office. Why?
Why here? She stops beside the open door and flicks her head toward the room.
Bodies fill the meeting room and Tristan takes up the most oxygen with his big head. He glances in my direction before scoffing and giving me the cold shoulder. Several other professors linger around the periphery of the parlor, on their feet, snapping to attention at Harbi’s arrival.
“Well,” Harbi begins, drawing the door shut behind her. “Now we’re all here.”
Annoyance flashes in Tristan’s eyes. “Was there any particular reason to pull him out of class?”
Harbi holds her own and despite the vast differences in their height, she somehow manages to stare at Tristan like he’s the short one. “The General insists that debriefing sessions be included as part of your education. Yes, his son needs to be present.”
“You’re to listen, and not speak,” Tristan finishes.
It takes me a costly second to realize he’s talking to me although his attention remains pinned on Harbi.
My retort is right there and ready to be flung out. No doubt it will land accurately and infuriate my cousin exactly the way I want it to. He’s easy enough to rile.
It will be a waste to let it simply die without speaking it out loud. But Harbi’s insistent scowl silences me before I make a complete fool of myself and I fall into line beside Tristan. I clasp my hands behind my back, our shoulders touching.
Despite the warm late summer weather outside, Harbi has a fire crackling merrily in the hearth at my back and the flames burrow into my skin. Sweat slicks in places where it has no business slicking and if I’m not careful, I’ll get overheated and puke.
Not exactly the image I need to present.
My first debriefing and half of me figures Tristan did it to take me by surprise. Pulling me out of sparring class? What’s Harbi’s angle?
It shows Tristan is not truly in control of these sessions.
And I don’t want any more surprises like what happened in Professor Clark’s class.
We wait until Harbi adjusts herself, the only one of us sitting, with her palms up and open on her knees. Her staff rests against the arm of the wingback chair.
“My obligation is to the school and its students and mounts,” she reminds Tristan. “Whatever you have to say, make it brief. My professors only have a short measure of time before they’re needed back in class.”