Chapter Thirty-Four
THIRTY-FOUR
‘Here, take it.’ He extends the dagger toward me, breaking the silence.
‘See how it feels.’
My grey eyes clash against his, searching them for deception.
For some sort of test. He must be playing me, because why is he handing me a malachite dagger?
I haven’t earned this. When he told me he’d find me another one, I assumed he’d meant a second training dagger.
Plain, boring, but effective. Not … this.
For a moment I debate refusing it, but something inside of me pushes my hand toward it.
I reach out, and his fingertips brush mine ever so gently as I take the hilt in my hand.
That small connection sends a jolt of electricity up my arm.
He sits back, watching as I turn the dagger over with cautious movements.
Carefully, I trail a finger along the flat edge, where a strip of malachite runs down the centre of the blade, caught between the edges of silver steel.
Splitting the blade down the middle with swirls of deep green.
‘Stars, this is …’ Words fail me. I look up, unable to quell the emotions I feel swimming in my eyes – it takes us both off guard.
I see the moment he tries to look elsewhere, as if he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
But ultimately, his gaze falls back to mine.
We’ve been at this push -and -pull game for a while now.
I don’t know how to navigate this next part.
He’s never … given me something before. Do I thank him?
Do I nod and get to my feet, and act like this didn’t just throw me completely off balance?
‘Where did you get this?’ I finally ask. ‘I heard they have them forged only a few times a year.’
He swallows thickly before replying. ‘From my room. It’s one of mine.’
‘How did you earn it?’ I find myself wanting to know more, to learn the story behind the blade. Stars, it’s beautiful. A smile curls my lips as I weigh it up and down, testing out the heaviness of it.
‘Doesn’t matter, it’s yours now.’ He juts his chin toward the door. ‘Go on, give it try.’
I don’t waste a second, I leap to my feet and charge to the back of the room. He rises as well, coming to stand beside me with his arms crossed. His expression morphs into the calm assessing gaze he sports when I’m inside the ring.
‘It’s lighter than the one you’ve been practising with,’ he says, ‘So it’ll be easier to control and handle.’
I nod, lifting the dagger into position, and steady my feet.
Sebastian shifts beside me and before I can ask what he’s doing, I feel him walk behind me and curl his hand around mine holding the hilt.
The sharp intake of my breath is loud; it fills the room.
From the corner of my eye, I catch him smirk.
‘You won’t need as much strength when you throw. It’ll leave your hand faster and fly at a higher velocity than Nicks’s daggers,’ he informs me, adjusting my grip on the hilt before stepping back.
I swallow before I speak. Hoping that when words do come out, they’re not squeaky or giving away the emotional turmoil running rampant through my body. ‘So, a lighter dagger is better than a heavier one?’
‘Depends on what you’re going for,’ he answers. ‘They’re quicker, sure. And they won’t tire you out as fast. You’ll be more agile if fighting hand to hand, but they do lose momentum faster, so the further you are from your target, the less penetration power it has.’
‘So, for argument’s sake, if I were to throw this and someone were to open my door …’
‘Hilarious, Nocthare,’ he deadpans, but there’s mirth behind his tone. ‘All right, now show me what you’ve been subjecting your door to.’
My spine straightens. My attention shifts from him to the door and in one fluid motion, as if from all the hours I’ve spent practising this one move, from this one particular spot, the dagger flies from my fingers with a whoosh.
It cuts through the air with swift precision and sticks into the second inner ring of my makeshift target.
‘Not bad, but it could be better,’ he states. It’s not cold, but a little detached maybe, as if the combat leader can’t help but seep out of him.
My head snaps around, and annoyance flickers in the set of my jaw as I pad to the door and pluck the dagger from it.
‘All right, Mr I’m Good at Everything, your turn.’ I walk toward him and extend the dagger between us. ‘Hit the target,’ I challenge.
One of his dark brows cock s. ‘You sure you want to do this, acolyte?’ He snatches the dagger from me then proceeds to flip it in his hand, catching it by the blade with two of his fingers.
‘Show off,’ I mutter. ‘I thought arrogance gets you killed.’
‘So does a lack of skill. Now, do you still have that chalk?’
‘Yes. Why?’ My eyes narrow.
‘Go grab it,’ is all he says, lining himself up with the target.
I watch him for a moment; unable to figure out where this is leading. Finally, I huff a sigh and step around him. I rummage through the shelf in the corner and return to him with the chalk sticking up between the fingers of my closed fist. Flipping him off with it.
‘Here it is.’ I smile. It really is the little things in life that keep us going.
‘Cute.’ His eyes roll. ‘Draw a circle anywhere on that door,’ he points toward it. ‘And I’ll bet you that I can hit it.’
‘Really?’ I ask. ‘Anywhere?’
He nods, his chin lifting in confidence.
I walk to the door and take a moment to assess where I’ll place the circle, trying to think of the most difficult spot.
I don’t want to make this easy for him. So, I decide to stretch up onto the tips of my toes and draw a circle, about the size of a coin, at the very top of the door, thinking the upward angle would be harder to nail down than one at eye level.
Not to mention the small size of the target.
‘Let’s see you try and hit that,’ I say smugly, whirling around to see his reaction. But his eyes aren’t on the circle I drew, they’re fixed on my bare legs.
I work through a swallow as I shift on my feet, feeling my skin prickle under his heavy gaze. With a blink, Sebastian’s eyes flick up to mine as if he’s just realised that he was staring. Then they lift higher to search for the target. It takes him a moment but when he finds it, he gives me a look.
‘You said to put it anywhere and you didn’t say how big,’ I explain, a little out of breath. What is happening here? What exactly are we doing? We’re not civil, we don’t play games, and we certainly don’t stare at each other like that.
‘I’d suggest that you move.’ He lifts the dagger, and I slide out of the way, standing next to my dresser to watch.
It happens quickly. The dagger is in his hand one moment, and then flipping through the air in a blur and thudding into the wood the next. My jaw drops in disbelief as I pad toward the door and find the dagger dead centre of my little circle.
‘How’d you do that?’ I gasp, reaching up to yank the dagger out of the wood with a huff. ‘That circle was tiny.’
‘I like a challenge.’
‘Or you were lucky.’
That makes him laugh. ‘Luck had nothing to do with it. I practised dagger throwing for years before I even started at ValAc.’
My fingers tap along the edge of the blade, and curiosity gets the better of me because I find myself asking, ‘How old were you when you started?’
He stuffs his hands into his front pockets as his lips purse in thought. ‘I think I was around fourteen.’
My brows hitch. ‘Fourteen?’ Stars, even Lukas wasn’t allowed to hold a weapon until he was sixteen. ‘What fourteen-year-old thinks of learning to throw daggers at that age?’
I say it rhetorically, not thinking he’ll actually reply, because this might be the longest conversation we’ve had since before Lukas died.
So, colour me surprised when he shrugs and says, ‘I had to entertain myself somehow. Big house, no one around. Lots of weapons hanging from the walls begging to be touched.’
I have a sudden flashback of Sebastian and I sitting out in my backyard while we waited for Lukas to come outside.
I asked him where he lived and what his parents did.
It was my attempt at not only digging for information about my brother’s new friend, but also an attempt at making one of my own.
Sebastian told me his parents weren’t alive anymore.
They both died when he was nine, so he lived in his grandfather’s house alone.
I remember feeling appalled when he explained it was like that from the age of twelve and that his grandfather popped in to visit every few weeks, but the older he became, the less frequent the visits were.
There was a cleaner that came once a week, and his tutor that came five days a week.
Other than that, Sebastian grew up in that house alone.
It broke my heart at the time, and made me long to make our home, his.
I avert my gaze.
‘I have something else for you,’ he says after a long moment of silence. He moves quietly, his boots barely making a sound on the hard floor as he lowers to his bag once more and holds up the leather belt contraption he pulled out earlier.
His thumb caresses the black stitching woven into the leather edges. ‘It’s a sheath,’ he explains, filling in for my silence.
A sheath? ‘What for?’ I ask. And why is he giving it to me?
‘Because your training pants don’t have pockets big enough for daggers,’ he answers as if it’s obvious.
He ignores the scowl I shoot in his direction and gets up to walk across the room toward me, sheath dangling from two fingers.
I barely move, barely fucking breathe as he lowers to his knees right in front of my feet and orders, ‘Lift up your leg.’
I let out a sharp breath, steady but guarded. Unsure of what the hell is happening. But nonetheless, my foot rises off the floor. I don’t dare look at him, my eyes stay entirely focused on the leather sheath, too afraid of what I might see if I do. Or too afraid of what he will see.