Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
Morgan
The blade’s edge bites deep into the pole, carving away a chunk of wood that skitters across the mat.
My pulse pounds in my ears and I inhale sharply, reeling in the pause.
Kieran’s words repeat to me no matter how many times I tear at my hair and use the pain to clear my head.
You either find your tribe here, find people who feel the way you do, or you die. Only this time? You’ll take me with you. And it’s the price I’ll have to pay.
It’s for my mother’s sake. For my sister’s. For the people he cut down on that field like they were nothing and no one would be able to stop him.
Maybe I’m insane but the consequences don’t really matter to me anymore. My situation gets worse every day, like the universe itself is pressing into me and refusing to let me up for air.
“I can’t give up everything for you, Kieran,” I say.
It will hurt too badly when it fails. And then I’ll have compromised for nothing. I bend to retrieve the dagger and my fingers brush the mat. Thoughts race away from me until a muscle at the base of my jaw begins to tick.
It’s a feather light fluttering but my split lip throbs anyway.
Too many times I’ve found myself back in this gym, which also belongs to him. Like I’m something for him to own and if he’d come out of the argument victorious today, he would.
I’d fall in line like the proper lady I might have been if circumstances were different. He probably pictured me down on my knees in front of him, to thank him for his benevolent interference. I scowl and yell, thrusting toward the post and landing a hit at the approximate height of his neck.
I’d nick an artery if my opponent were flesh and blood. And paralyzed.
Sweat beads down my hairline. My wounds from earlier scream in protest at being forced through these offensive maneuvers and I silence the protests with a growl.
I’d let myself panic and look where it got me.
Truthfully, it’s getting harder and harder to fight off the lure of Kieran’s promise. Even with the sweat slicking my skin and my pounding heart, there is something about his offer coaxing me to give in no matter the danger.
Hasn’t the general taken enough already? Now he wants to take me. Or if not my body, then my loyalty, my sanity.
Still, the promise of the real training beckons like smoke curling around my resolve, threatening to choke out my resistance. Power, real power, and a way to wield it for vengeance. I’d be much more capable of it as a graduate.
Unless I learn to stifle those voices, I’ll never be able to get my freedom with any kind of effectiveness. And I’m not sure what I’m going to do when they finally catch up to me.
I’ve already been banished to the mines once. Can they banish me again?
I don’t bother keeping a low profile. I yell and lunge for the wood, forcing my exhausted arm into a series of quick maneuvers that would jam the blade into shoulder, navel, thigh, on a human.
“I hate you.” I sneer up at the pole. “I hate you and your high-handed maneuvering. I hate the way you look at me and I hate the way you smell.”
The gym smells like him. Now that I’ve been up close and personal, touching Kieran’s skin to mine, I recognize the scent in the room. He is everywhere, inside of me and in the air I suck into starving lungs.
I’ve never been good at playing along when people tell me what to do, though. The sooner he learns it…
Mother bemoaned it when I was younger. Often, she’d task the nursemaids to take me to bed but I ran circles around them, only getting angry when they caught me before I’d finished doing whatever my imagination told me to do.
Kieran has the ability to wrangle me much faster than anyone ever could.
I glance at the door, unnerved. My trembling fingers lose their grip on the dagger and it tumbles to my feet and skitters along the mat. A pointed pain travels from my tailbone through my hips and along the back of my knees.
“Void take it all. I don’t need anyone else to fix my problems for me. I’ll be able to find a way out of this, even if I feel lost right now.”
The opportunity doesn’t matter.
“Don’t be an idiot and give in to him. He’ll end up destroying you.”
My snarl reverberates off the coffered ceiling and returns in a discordant and reverberating parody. Shrugging, I switch the dagger to my non-dominant hand and start my routine again.
Sooner or later, castle security or one of the professors will arrive. Someone will surely check this room in their quest for me and I’ll spend the rest of the night in chains. Nothing puts an end to freedom faster than iron and a wish.
Guiding the dagger in a familiar pattern, I cut the air. Might as well rage before they get here.
I let out a heavy breath and grimace. “He’s insufferable. Your temper might get you in trouble but he’s not rational, either. He’s not strategic in any way if he thinks he can use you.”
Sometimes it helps me figure things out to speak to myself in the third person. But the response bubbling up isn’t kind and I bite down on my tongue to stem the overwhelming anger.
Giving in at this point is a betrayal to the people who raised me. I only know I feel strongly enough about it to stand tall.
To stop giving in to hesitation.
There’s screaming inside my head as I attack the post again. I’m not sure of the source of the screaming. Is it me? Is it the memory of what happened during the last battle? Is it the desperate wish to hear those keening cries come from Kieran’s throat?
I imagine life dying in his eyes, the spark of mischief disappearing forever, but my stomach flips and I falter at the last minute.
Stupid.
I stop and straighten, pushing long hair out of my face. Cracked skin from my fight with Evie splits open with my new movements. My palms are rough and calloused from weeks of hard labor and my fingers will never be the same.
Grinding my teeth, I kick off the thin flat slippers and send them flying, working my toes on the mat. The grip is better this way.
Ladies don’t climb trees the way you do, like some kind of basilisk. You are never going to be a proper lady if you keep engaging in this kind of behavior, Morgan.
Mother’s voice is in my head now too, tangible and real enough to get my tears flowing again.
She bemoaned the wildness of my childhood, bemoaned the state of my dress and the twigs in my hair, the way I used to take to the fields to test my speed against the unicorn herd. I kept pace with the newborns, then. Before adolescence took hold of me and changed my shape.
I lost my speed but maintained the feral desire for more. The anger has always been there, a hand around my throat, squeezing but never enough to choke me until now.
Fury has been the single constant in my life and I stopped asking why a long time ago.
I roll, grunting over the pain in my spine, and come up on the side of the pole to swipe the blade over part of the curved wood.
Another glance at the door shows it in the same position as I left it with hardly a crack to show the hallway beyond. Is no one coming to get me?
Do they have a clue where I am yet?
Why would they? Unless Kieran gave you away…
Far be it from me to think highly of him.
One moment of weakness, one second where I allow my guard to slip around him, and I may very well attribute him with more kindness than he deserves.
Again, my mind corrects.
I’ve already let my guard down in his presence and look what happened.
He caged me to the wall, using his body like a steel gate and just as immovable. I keep training, keep moving, even when I start to slow. Maybe I should face my death like a woman of honor and turn myself in.
There is no way I’m going to allow myself to be corralled into an education here where I’ll be expected to make my prayers for the King’s safety. The same king who is ignoring the cries of his starving people in favor of a mad general who wants to turn the kingdom to scorched earth.
Perhaps running like a coward is the best option.
Living to fight again.
I find myself going in circles as I twist to the opposite side of the wooden post. There are just as many scars on this side of the wood as the other.
Kieran has done his diligence, the same way he moves through the rest of his life. He sees everything and leaves no detail unattended. He’d work the same way in a fight.
To be trained by him…
To learn how to fight the way he did on the battlefield that day… would I have made a difference if I’d mounted a defense against him?
Probably not.
The door remains closed. Night falls outside the windows and the glint of the moon I’d read by for the last week and a half has not made an appearance yet. The blanket of night rolls across the sky and turns everything to shades of black and gray.
Like life. Like my options. There is no clear way forward that doesn’t involve some kind of sacrifice. Do I value honor more than my life? It seems that way, considering the choice I’ve made to refuse Kieran’s offer.
There is no sound to announce the appearance of the newcomer, at least, none I hear above the great gusting of my own breath. The gym is empty of life outside of mine and then it’s suddenly not.
Astrid stands in front of the door, her arms purposely hanging loose at her sides. Her eyes are agitated, dark, promising violence with the first misstep.
I jerk back but tighten my grip on the knife.
Silently, she stalks forward, making no sound. Her gaze dips and her lips tighten.
It takes me precious seconds to realize she’s looking at not only my bloody hands—still mostly Evie’s blood from earlier—but at Kieran’s blade.
I swallow my pride rather than speaking first and take another deep breath to figure out some way out of this. Apologizing isn’t going to get me anywhere and the words cling to the inside of my throat anyway.
This is the demon they’ve sent to collect me.
I’d have had better luck and perhaps a chance at escape if I’d been up against one of the professors or a security detail. They’d be people I do not know, or have only glimpsed around. Astrid strikes a chord of something unnamable inside of me. It’s not fear, but it is apprehension.
“Look,” I start off slowly. “I know you are such great buddies, but I don’t regret giving Evie the thrashing she deserved. And I don’t regret trying to do the same to Kieran.”
I flip the dagger.
Astrid arches an eyebrow at me and her glance cuts down to the bone.
“This? I stole it right off his belt without him noticing. Your pal has a real attitude problem.”
If I expect an answer out of her, I’ll be waiting a long time.
“He’s arrogant and entitled,” I clarify. “He thinks he can own anything and anyone.”
A hundred more insults for Kieran spring to mind. Astrid merely smiles sweetly, which is more terrifying than anything. I sway uncomfortably on my feet and will my fingers to clench the dagger that, with a little more effort, I might be able to use against her. Or at least hold my own.
Astrid doesn’t react as she stops directly in front of me.
I’m not going to make it out of this. She won’t let me past her.