Chapter 6
Arla’s mood had been darkening in the hours that had passed since the fight on the bridge this morning, and it chased her down the perfect hallways of Claret Hall, too, until she was sure there must be a rain cloud attached to her by the time she finally entered the dining room.
Dinner passed uneventfully, and when it came time to leave the dining room, she thought Hark might disappear into the mountains again and return just before she woke to push herself to the limits of what her body could handle.
As it happened, before she could save her icy little heart from splintering and leave the room first, he caught her elbow.
‘Somewhere to be, Reinhart?’ She didn’t think she’d ever get used to the low smokiness of his voice. How it felt like a blessing and a curse all at once because her mouth was suddenly dry.
‘Always. Unless you had another idea?’
She took half a step forwards and looked up at him through her lashes. A cruel smirk wound its way onto her face, and she revelled in the way his eyes darkened.
‘Don’t do that,’ he groaned, reaching out to tuck a stray strand of gold behind her ear.
‘Why? Am I too tempting?’
She watched the beginning of his unravelling. The way he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply before running a hand through that dark, dark hair.
‘You tempt me even when I hear you nearly killed a man this morning.’
‘Haven’t I always?’ she said sweetly.
‘Fuck, Arla,’ he said, pulling her closer to him so that their chests brushed for every breath. ‘As much as I would have no complaints about spending the rest of the evening under that delightful glass roof in your bedroom, I was going to ask if you wanted to train with me?’
‘Train with you?’
‘Seb said you’ve been duelling the soldiers each morning, and he hasn’t had time to train with you. I’m not doing anything tonight, so I thought—’
‘You thought what better way to spend your evening than getting your ass handed to you by a literal assassin?’
He smirked, the expression so teasing she could feel herself coming apart right there.
‘Come on then, let’s see what you’ve got.’
She laughed, hooking an arm through his as they headed in the direction of the training rooms. ‘As long as you promise not to dislocate my shoulder again.’
Hark coughed, elbowing her lightly. ‘After watching you relocate it, I can promise that won’t be a move I’ll ever be trying again.’
‘Good, even easier to beat you then.’
She had missed this.
The challenge presented by a worthy opponent and the skill she had to dig deep to remember.
It had been too long since she had duelled with someone as skilled as Hark – perhaps she never had.
His skill with a sword had always been whispered about at Castle Grey, but she had only ever experienced it during the short stay at Larkire Palace – his father’s palace – before she had found out about the magics.
He had shocked her then – had got the better of her too. But she had learned what it meant to underestimate her opponent, and she’d be damned if she ever did it again.
She met the arc of his sword with a strength that sent a clang echoing through the training rooms. Hark didn’t relent for a minute.
He fought her as though he wanted her dead, and despite the sweat already carving tracks down her back and sticking to the silk of her dress, she couldn’t help the grin that blossomed across her face.
She met every swing of his sword just as he met hers.
She ignored the tugging in her side; the scar of her sword wound would have to get used to this. This is what she had been born to do.
Her blood sang in her veins, and the whip of silk around her ankles was a welcome challenge against a man equally matched to her in skill. They danced that deadly routine for almost an hour, until they were panting, and Arla finally struck his sword hard enough that Hark dropped it.
‘Nice to see you haven’t lost the stamina,’ he said between breaths.
She sucked in deep lungfuls of air. The fitness had been coming back quicker than she thought it would, and the muscles that had begun to lose their definition in the weeks she had been resting and exploring the city were becoming lean and strong again.
‘Nice to see you haven’t lost the ambition to kill me, Stappen.’
He shot her a smirk that set thousands of butterflies off in her stomach before his face sobered, and he looked at her with enough wariness that she was glad she still held the sword.
‘You’re not happy with me.’
She hadn’t expected it to come so abruptly. She’d thought they would dance around it like they had done with everything else in their lives. Her stomach flipped. She didn’t know if her heart could handle the confrontation with him – it hurt too much. And that was concerning.
She sheathed the blade at her side and bent to relace her boots. He was the one person with whom she could afford to let her guard down.
‘I’m glad you noticed.’
‘Arla—’
‘I’m angry because you disappear whenever I want to see you. I’m angry because you’ve changed my entire life and spend most of your time in the mountains. I’m angry because these people need a leader, and you won’t be one.’
A thunderous silence stretched between them until she finally stood again and looked at him. Hark was staring at her as if she were something exotic and unruly. His lips parted slightly, a crease marring his forehead in a way that made him look so much older than the twenty-two years he carried.
‘So that’s why you were fighting today,’ he said, his tone bitter and filled with something he had never once directed at her. ‘To get my attention? You let Lovell sit in our dungeons with nothing to eat or drink because you felt left out?’
Arrogant, selfish, prick—
‘I don’t know what you expected when I told you I was saving these people, Arla, but for once in your gods-damned life take a step back and realise not everything is about you.
This world, this kingdom, is not your playground.
You are not the single most important thing here, and it’s about time you started to realise it. ’
Blow after blow after blow. She bit her lip to stop it trembling.
It shouldn’t hurt the way it did, not when he had called her far worse in the past – not when he had told her explicitly that no one would ever love her.
But she had thought things had changed.
She steeled herself, rolling back her shoulders and slipping on the mask of King’s Assassin.
Hark had the common sense to balk as she took a step towards him and said in a lethally soft voice, ‘I don’t expect to be the single most important thing in this place you call a kingdom,’ she seethed.
‘But you know what, Stappen? I thought I might be the single most important thing to you.’
Her voice cracked on the word and she shoved his chest with a strength she didn’t know she had, enjoying the flicker of surprise that spread across his face.
She turned towards the door, biting her lip against the sting of tears.
‘Dragonhart?’
‘Don’t come crawling to me when this place burns to ash.’