Chapter 10
Talarin dances back, his blade extended, the point glowing with blue-black energy. His eyes are hard, his aura harder, as he looks for the weak points in my defenses, the fractions of milliseconds where he can gain an edge. He has been looking for them for over six hundred years.
He flicks his wrist, and I give ground, his blade searing my white robe, nearly grazing flesh. I counter low, my blade reaching for his calf, and he lifts his front foot, balancing on his back foot as he brings his blade down to meet mine.
Triad against triad, there is a weak point to rush, an edge to exploit.
In an uneven fight, one man needs to gamble and the other needs to deny him the chance.
Talarin is my equal, and blade play means waiting for that tiny, flickering moment when you can press an edge.
Instinct alone tells you whether it is a ruse, a weakness planted to entice you, or your only chance to end the circling dance.
I sense Arrek approach through the Bond, under my awareness, a detail below the only thing that exists. He crosses his arms, his eyes following the movements of the blades.
Talarin’s blade splits the sun, and I duck under it, twisting, my blade snapping out and filling the space where he just was as we pivot, changing positions, each locked in on the other.
The sun climbs, and sweat runs into my eyes.
Our white robes are seared and marked, the smell of burning fabric and sweat filling our nostrils.
It could be a second passing or a day when he flicks his point toward my chest, and I turn it aside.
I counter low, reaching for his calf, the same cut I made when we began.
His front foot rises. His weight settles onto his back leg, and this time I drive upwards, willing my blade to dull. The blue-black energy dissipates an instant before the edge touches his inner thigh, over the femoral artery, and I score the kill.
It’s done, and reality surrounds me once more, but so much less real.
Only in these moments am I truly alive, and this is only a shadow of the real thing, a shadow of the taste of blood against my teeth, the stench of burning flesh, that agonizing scream that precedes the silence of forever.
I felt that shadow last night, as the sims drew the best projections possible of the Aelor-dravir.
And beneath it, the fear that sharpened me. If I faced one now, I do not know if I would die. If I would end my triad’s bloodline in the Rift. If the world-eaters split reality and pulled through now above our home, I do not know if it would be them who died or me.
And until I met Nell, I didn’t truly care.
I need to become the thing that can hunt them down. Every one of them, until the Rift is silent once more.
“We need to ask her,” Arrek says.
I turn to him, drawing a long breath, sweat running down my neck and beneath the ruined collar of my robe. Talarin lowers his blade, and the energy fades between us.
I know what he means, but he surprises me. I did not think that he wished to ask, but to tell.
“To stay,” he says. “Beyond the hundred days.”
We begin to walk, letting our breathing slow. My mouth is dry, my throat aching for water, but neither Talarin nor I reaches for any. Sometimes a battle is six hours of slogging war without a moment to drink. There is no reason to torture yourself in training without a purpose.
But if I am up against men, I wish them to have trained only in peak conditions, well fed, watered, and rested. The ones who train half dead are the ones who have that final reserve, that last moment when they look defeated and make their last stand to snatch your life away.
Talarin shakes his head. “She is individual yet. She would not agree to extend the hundred days.”
“To be our Mate,” snarls Arrek. “To throw out the fucking contract. Every day I test the limits of my control. Every day I taste her scent and know it is only a shadow of the way she tastes when this damned ring is off my finger.”
“She fears the Bond more than anything,” says Talarin.
“Why?” I ask, as we curve around the garden, passing rows of aloe and tomato plants heavy with fruit. Rosemary and sage fill the air. I sniff, testing whether she is within earshot, but there is no scent of her. She is somewhere deeper in the estate, and I let her have her freedom.
For now.
She is healthy now, and it is time for her to get what she needs.
“Because now she wants freedom, and she is terrified of a moment when she no longer does,” says Talarin.
It is good counsel. “It is premature.”
Arrek snarls. “She’s close. She’s becoming the perfect, obedient little bitch. And all she needs is a push. Today I give it to her.” He stops, and we stop together, in the sun, looking at each other. “I will break her. And when I’m done with her, she will want nothing more than to be our toy.”
I look to our home. She is in there, somewhere. And she is counting down the days.
But she is our Mate.
There is no other future for us.
And no other for her. I know that when I finally drive myself into her and feel her Bonded to my mind, when her aura blooms into my psyche and completes me, that it will only turn me more monstrous.
We need more monsters.
To face what is coming for us, we need men willing to dive into the abyss against an enemy we have never defeated, an enemy that has taken souls from us.
An enemy we have, for the first time, scarred.
“She still yearns to be free,” Talarin says. “She still yearns for the stars and the forest and for the wind on her skin. It is not breaking her down that is the answer. It is making her understand that only through us can she truly get what she needs.”
“There is the matter of Ruttelle.” My triad goes silent. “He says he has information. Information that could change things about her. I do not know if he speaks truth, but until we have spoken to him, we say nothing to her. Let it lie under her mind. Let her start to consider it on her own.”
I have thought I smelled a Mate before. It has always come to nothing. I’ve driven myself into virgins and had their scent sour against my nostrils; nothing remaining but bodies and friction against each other.
This time is different.
As if I can will it all myself, as if by sheer tyranny, I can Bind her to me, because she is the only thing that is as real as war.