Chapter 33 #2
And he does. His feet settle in to a rhythm, not yielding space anymore, as his foil flicks like a silver slash of lightning.
Parry, parry, riposte, parry. Every move driving Moroslav back.
Aggressive, unrelenting, precise. He lunges.
And the blade buries itself in Moroslav’s chest guard with satisfying force.
Bzzzt.
“Touch left,” says the official. “Point Caliburn.”
This time the crowd doesn’t wait for the end of the match.
They roar with approval, stamping on the bleachers and clapping and hooting.
I feel the energy inside me, like a heartbeat, like a pulse.
But I’m too nervous to clap, clutching my arms to my chest, just intent on not missing a single blow of the action when it resumes.
“Swordsmen, to your places,” says the official. “En garde. Ready—allez!”
Moroslav’s angry. I can tell. Not the type to shrug off a loss of the first point. He doubles down, hard, fast, and a little wilder, the tip of his blade arcing everywhere that Kingston is, but just a microsecond too slowly to touch him.
Kingston’s on the defensive, ducking, dodging. Bolting backwards, the crowd gasps— oh! —as Moroslav lunges, and Kingston launches himself backwards, curling his body to the back to avoid the touch, and landing in a crouch, blade up, like Spider-Man.
Moroslav glances at the scoring table.
“No touch,” the officials report.
He makes some half-hearted expression of dismay when Kingston roars back. And, drives his blade forward, right into the stomach .
Bzzzt.
“Touch left.”
The noise is deafening, pounding like it’s coming from inside my skull. Loud as a fire alarm or a tornado siren.
You wouldn’t know it looking at Kingston, though.
He simply resumes his place, walking a small circle, shaking out his limbs.
Somehow, somehow , he’s kept the world at bay.
Locked it all outside of his head until he can get the job done.
He could have every eye in the world on him and never trip.
He’s trained for it. And that’s incredible.
“Swordsman, take your places. En garde. Ready? Allez?—”
Moroslav barely waits. He attacks. Attacks like he wants to hurt Kingston and cut him down more than just score a point.
“Waste of energy,” Callahan says, on my left. “He’s gonna spiral out.”
“I don’t know,” Lanz murmurs. “Maybe it’s a tactic. Some kind of berserker mode thing?”
Kingston keeps pace. Parry, riposte. But there’s something different now.
Like Moroslav is a machine. No strategy, simply forward motion.
He slices inches from Kingston’s head as he ducks, then brings the foil back around, uneven, his blade landing with awkward force as he thrusts. Kingston parries, hard, and?—
Crack.
Something hits the ground. The tip of Kingston’s foil, sheared off entirely.
“Halt,” calls one of the referees. “Broken blade. Fencer will replace equipment.”
Kingston freezes, hands at his side.
But Moroslav doesn’t. He lunges, hard, and not at Kingston’s chest guard—at his calf.
“Halt!” roars the official again.
Another gasp from the crowd, this one rippling with concern.
“Kingston!” I hear someone cry .
Me.
Two hands hold me down—Callahan’s on my left, and Lanz on my right. I didn’t even realize I was trying to stand.
On Lanz’s other side, Kai gets to his feet.
“That conniving bastard,” he says. “That dirty, cheating, vodka-swilling motherfucking fuck?—”
The officials have pulled the two fencers apart. Kingston keeps his mask on, so I can’t see anything. Can’t discern whether he’s hurt or not, but from the slow nods on the official’s part, it seems like he’s okay, like he’ll continue fighting.
“It’s a low blow,” Lanz is explaining to me. “Literally. You don’t strike at the legs in foil.”
The official talking to Moroslav, meanwhile, has twin patches of red flaring on his cheeks, the sides of his neck corded with tension.
Moroslav has taken off his mask, arguing back something in some rapid-fire stream of words that don’t sound English, but I can’t make out from here.
At last, the official holds up a red card, and the crowd gasps again, like this is some kind of fireworks display.
“What’s that mean?” I hiss to Callahan.
“Same as soccer,” he says.
“Which is?” I ask.
“You’re out of the game,” Kai answers for him. “Bad boys don’t fence.”
“Swordsman will reset,” the official announces. “St. Ignaty will provide an alternate or forfeit the bout.”
Kingston strides off the piste to pick up his blade as the alternate for St. Ignaty, whoever he is, takes the strip, bouncing gently from foot to foot. Meanwhile, Moroslav, face still lit with anger, storms to the opposite bench.
Lanz looks at me. “Looks like you’re up, equipment manager.”
He smiles, but it doesn’t do much to melt the worry in his eyes. I scramble into action, darting around for Kingston’s equipment bag and producing a replacement foil as he jogs over to the bench. This time, though, he does take his mask off.
“Here,” I hold out a hand, ready to take the broken weapon.
He cedes it to me, and our fingers brush over the hand grip.
“Thank you,” he says, taking its replacement from my other hand.
His hair hangs over his forehead a little, dark with sweat, and the strange impulse to throw my arms around his neck surges through me, but thankfully is held in a chokehold by my sense of social propriety.
“Are you all right?” I can’t resist asking in a low murmur.
“I’m fine,” Kingston replies, his tone so neutral I can’t tell if he’s being honest or just being polite. Then he looks at me, fixes me with those eyes.
“Why do you ask?”
That tiny, tiny flicker of a smile again. But it’s like someone turned on the sun for the first time in a dark, cold universe.
“I just…can’t believe you do this for fun,” I say.
“I don’t,” Kingston replies. Pauses. “But maybe I should.”
With that, he slides his mask back on, gives the blade a flick in the air for balance, nods, and takes his leave for the piste.
This time, it’s like watching a whole new sport. Kingston is still precise, still quick, but more fluid, relaxed. Almost like I’m watching Kai or Callahan up there. Someone who’s less locked in his head and more flowing in his own body.
It’s easy. Playful, almost. The way he bats away hits. Darts out of the way, only to advance.
Bzzzt .
Kingston’s blade flexes against his opponent’s shoulder.
“Touch left. Point Caliburn.”
Cheers. They barely have time to die down before they take their place again, and this time Kingston doesn’t wait. Two steps, a parry, and …
Bzzzt.
“Point Caliburn.”
It’s like everything’s on double speed. The remaining points fly by. Kingston dancing across the piste and tapping out his points. One, two, three, until final point, the official calls.
“Caliburn wins, 3-0 in bouts.”
The space explodes. Sound rings and bounces and careens from every surface, out of every source.
Morgan leaps to her feet, hands smack on both sides of her face, astonished.
Kai gives a whoop of victory and hooks an elbow around Lanz’s neck, ruffling his hair, while Callahan just beams a big, broad smile and folds his arms, satisfied like I’ve never seen him.
And I am overcome, overwhelmed, thrilled, happy, normal.
It’s so good to feel this good , I think.
And for a moment, there isn’t a dark past or a dark secret or vows and rules and complications and Latin puzzles and accidental kisses. There’s just them. These four boys, four men, in exquisite victory, having disposed of their rivals with talent and sureness.
Kingston is still on the piste, his mask off and under his arm, finally caving and waving to the crowd, which only gets louder and more boisterous in response.
But he’s soon overcome by the other three, jumping to his side, mussing his hair, throwing good-natured punches at his shoulders and stomach, and he laughs. He actually laughs.
And it seizes me all over again, how much I love being around them, all four of them.
“So it is you. Their little whore.”
The voice is cold as poison and dark as an abyss. I almost jump out of my skin. He’s right next to me.
Moroslav.
“You,” I say. “What?—”
“The famous little choir boys of Caliburn,” he says, running a hand through his dark curls, cocking his head. “The prim and proper chosen ones, always so pure. So they claim. Because they have you helping them out, eh? They have?—”
He doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence because Kai’s fist plows into the side of his head.
“Hey!” Kingston yells, throwing an arm across Kai’s chest, looking not at Moroslav sprawled on the ground but at me. “Watch it,” he says to Kai. To me, he says, “Gwenna, are you okay? Did he?—”
“I’m fine,” I say quickly. “Totally fine. He just?—”
My hands are shaking, I realize. I tuck them under my arms, step back once, twice, putting as much distance as I can between me and the fallen fighter. From the floor he glowers up at me, suddenly wreathed by the legs of his teammates who throw me equally dark glares.
“Bitch,” I hear him mutter and he spits blood onto the floor.
Kingston snaps his gaze to Lanz.
“Get her out of here.”
Lanz nods. “We’ll see you at the house.”
Something claws at the back of my throat—a cry, a sob, I’m not sure what, just pure unadulterated angst at having the perfect moment cut short, but when I catch Kingston’s gaze, it’s like he isn’t having any of it.
Go , he mouths.
And I do.