Chapter 14
Combat class welcomes me with the smell of cut grass and sweat.
The training fields stretch out behind the academy, flat and green and hemmed by oaks, the sky a flat white heat overhead.
I'm paired with a wolf-shifter named Beau who is approximately the size of a refrigerator and has been apologizing before every drill for twenty minutes. I appreciate it. He’s way more capable than I am and a little rusty after two weeks without class.
Plus, I don’t even want to think about who I’d be sparring with if…
Except I do think about it, because the body remembers what the mind won't.
Two staffs. A boy crossing the mat with one held out to me on the second day, easy, like it cost him nothing, like partnering the witch nobody would touch wasn't the bravest thing anyone had done for mes.
Emric would be somewhere on this field right now.
Stretching. Cracking that grin. Getting told off by Midus for talking through the warm-up.
He'd be here, and he isn't.
I hate that.
I clear my throat and squeeze my fingers around the staff in my hand.
We're doing staff drills—paired sparring, wooden staves, the kind of thing that's supposed to teach you to fight without leaning on what you are.
No magic. That's the rule. Midus prowls the line, barking corrections, riding the slow ones—a drill instructor who treats every dropped guard like a personal insult and every flinch like blood in the water.
I'm trying not to think about Kage.
It's going great. I've only clocked his position across the field six times, updated every forty-five seconds without meaning to, and noted that he hasn't looked at me once since class started—which is itself a kind of looking.
I haven’t heard from him since the night he broke-in to the underground cold store I was held in and haven’t seen him for three days since the tribunal.
The little connection I felt grow between us after I drank his blood feels more and more distant–a fading I didn’t expect after how close it felt like we were when we last spoke.
Maybe it’s all in my head.
Yeah… it is. And I have bigger fish to fry so get it the fuck together Calypso!
Beau swings. I catch it on my staff, the crack of wood on wood jarring up through my wrists, and shove back. He's stronger than me by an order of magnitude and we both know it, so when he leans into the push, expecting to move me, I cheat.
I drop my staff low and hook his ankle out from under him.
Beau stumbles sideways and catches himself before he hits the grass. Rounds on me, ears gone red.
"That's not the drill," he snaps. "Figures the witch fights dirty."
There it is. Twenty minutes of apologizing and all it took was one cheap shot to find what he actually thinks of me.
"You're twice my size, Beau." I roll my shoulder, settle my grip on the staff. "Dirty's the only lane I've got against someone like you."
"Dellaby." Midus doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't have to. The whole field goes quiet anyway. "Since you've decided the rules are optional, let's see how that works against someone who doesn't need them."
He jerks his chin at Kage.
"Front and center. You're sparring my instructor."
Everything in me drops half an inch.
Kage crosses the field slow, staff loose in one hand. The smirk is up, but his eyes aren't in it. Up close, they're saying one thing, clear as anything: don't.
Don’t what? Do what I’m told?
Sorry Kage, I don’t really have a choice right now…
I grip the staff harder, sweat beading down my spine. I didn’t stand a chance sparring with Beau–against Kage? I’m dead.
"Whenever you're ready," Midus says, and folds his arms.
Kage moves first, because he has to. But he moves at half speed—a lazy overhead swing I actually manage to catch, a follow-up that lands soft, footwork that keeps giving me room. He's carrying the whole thing. Fighting Midus's order and me at the same time and making it look like a fair match.
Midus sees what he’s doing in about four seconds.
"Is this a spar or a dance?" A pause. Then, flat, precise, a leash yanked: "Kage. Disarm her. Now."
Something violent crosses Kage's face.
I get my staff up in time to catch the first strike. Barely. The impact rings down both arms and I give ground, boots skidding in the grass, and swing back on instinct—a wild, graceless shot Kage doesn't even bother to block because it was never going to land.
I try again. He steps it, patient, waiting for the opening he's been ordered to take.
Then he takes it.
He pivots inside my guard, sweeps my staff wide, and drives his shoulder into my chest. It's not his full strength—I'd be a smear in the grass if it were—but his juiced up vamp strength does the trick.
The air goes out of me in one punched, airless heave.
My feet leave the ground. I land flat on my back hard enough to bounce, staff snapping clean in two under me, both halves spinning out of my hands.
For a second there's nothing. No breath, no sound, a bright white shock spreading through my ribs and skull. My lungs won't fill. My body's forgotten the mechanism entirely, and the panic of it—the specific animal panic of not being able to breathe—whites out everything else.
Then it comes back in a rush that burns, and the field rushes back with it.
Somewhere to my left, Beau laughs. A couple of others join in. The witch on her back in the grass. Great show.
Kage stands over me, hand not offered, jaw tight, the smirk nowhere. Through the bond, under the ringing in my skull, I feel it—that made him sick.
"On your feet," Midus says, already bored. He toes one half of my broken staff. "And since you can't be trusted with a weapon or the rules—the two of you, shed, get her another. Try not to break this one, Dellaby."
He turns back to the class.
Kage's eyes find mine. Two seconds of something real—I'm sorry, I had no choice—and then it's gone, and he's already walking toward the tree line like none of it happened.
I push up off the grass, collect both halves of my staff, and follow.
The shed door swings shut behind us and the field noise cuts to nothing. Dim and close. Two high windows, leather and iron smell, a workbench along the back wall, staves racked upright in the corner.
Kage doesn't go for the rack.
He turns the second the door's shut, hands coming up to my face, my shoulders. He’s shaking, just slightly, and the smirk is nowhere.
"How hard did I hit you?" Not a question. He's already checking my ribs. "Breathe for me. All the way in."
"I'm fine."
"Breathe."
I breathe. It catches once and then goes all the way down. His hands stop moving but they don't come off me.
"I had a second to choose," he says. Low. "I picked the one that ended fastest."
His jaw works.
"I’m sorry."
"Kage."
His jaw clenches, the scar across his face pulling. His stormy features look so tortured for a quick second that I can’t help the urge to console him.
"You knocked me over. I've had worse from a bad mattress." I reach up and close my hand around one of his wrists. "I'm okay. Look at me. I'm good."
He looks at me. Really looks—the way he didn't get to on the field, with an audience and a leash on him. Some of the shaking goes out of his hands.
"Where have you been, Kage?"
His face closes. Just like that—the openness from ten seconds ago gone behind something flatter. "Working."
"That's not an answer. It's been over a week. I get nothing, and then you turn up when it's convenient—"
"I turn up when I can." There's an edge on it now, low and irritated. "You think I'm off enjoying myself? I go where I'm sent. I do what I'm told. I don't get to check a schedule with you first." He shakes his head, jaw tight. "I'm not yours to keep tabs on."
That lands somewhere I wasn't braced for. Like a punch to the gut.
"Fine." I step back and pull myself out of reach. "Noted."
His hand shoots out and catches my wrist before I've fully turned—not rough, but fast, faster than I can track, and his thumb lands over my pulse like he did it without deciding to. He goes still. Head tilted, like he's listening to something under my skin.
His brow creases. "Huh."
"What?"
"Nothing. You feel..." His thumb moves along the vein, chasing it, the irritation draining out of his face into something more careful. "Off. Louder than usual. Like there's two of something where there should be one." He shakes his head. "Bond's probably just cranky."
Then he goes very still, and his nostrils flare, and whatever was on his face a second ago curdles.
"You reek of him."
"What?"
"Vassard." The name comes out like something he wants to spit.
He leans in, takes a slow breath he clearly hates taking.
"His scent's worked into you deep. Skin, hair, all of it.
That's not an accident—it's a claim. He wants every vampire who gets near you to know whose hands have been on you.
" His grip tightens. "Like a collar. Buckled tight. "
He drops my wrist like it's suddenly hot. Files it.
"There's talk all over the yard." Flat. "That Vassard's claimed his witch for the year. That he's got you in his bed and isn't bothering to hide it."
"That's not—" Heat climbs my neck, fury and something worse. "I'm not bedding him. He hasn't laid a finger on me that wasn't for show. Whatever people are saying, it's a story he's letting them tell."
Kage watches me a beat. Something in his shoulders eases, just slightly.
"Good," he says. "I'd hoped so." Then his jaw sets. "Doesn't change what he's doing. He wants the whole school believing it—wants you marked as his, on paper and in every rumor going. I’ve stayed on him." A beat. "You want to know what I found?"
"You found things?"