Chapter VII #2
The floor in front of her fell away to a gaping chasm.
Beneath her—forty, fifty feet into the ground—lay a sunken circle lined with arched doorways, reminding Vic of the Colosseum, of ancient fighting pits and forced combat.
She half expected gladiators to emerge from the narrow gaps in the stone wall, like she’d been swept backward in time to a place more vicious, more primitive.
After a few calming breaths, Vic noticed the stone seating running along the walls of the chasm, and the elevated platform set closest to the edge.
It was an amphitheater, hidden under the ground.
Fifteen or so witches lingered near the pit’s perimeter, chatting idly and uninterested in their surroundings.
Sarah led her to a staircase near the door, and Vic had to pull her eyes from the drop as she climbed down. The stairs had no railing.
Once they reached the base, they stood unnoticed on a platform slightly off the pit floor, which was earthen. Heavy, compacted soil lent the room the heady smell of wild nature.
The witches gathered at the edge of the pit broke apart as a man strode forward.
Vic recognized him immediately.
“Too many of you rely on magic when you could easily do without, and you seem to have forgotten the basics of physical fighting,” the man from the night before announced as he turned to face the witches.
The energy of the room rearranged as Vic watched him, his hands behind his back and his broad chest forward.
“The time may come when you have to fight men, not Orcans, and you need to be prepared.”
The crowd grumbled a complaint, and the behemoth pointed a stern finger at them.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. This is supposed to be the easy part. You’ve gotten lazy.”
Vic couldn’t drag her eyes from him. He wore an ensemble of black, which Vic would have guessed was a uniform if the others weren’t wearing different outfits. Shoulder-length brown hair was tied back from his face, though more than a few strands hung loose around his ears.
She felt a jolt of vindication that she hadn’t exaggerated his size in her memory.
But she hadn’t expected his appeal. Without all the shit on his face, he was breathtaking.
She wanted to call him handsome, though the word didn’t quite fit.
If he were a sculpture, Vic decided, he would have been carved quickly, harsh lines cut from stone in a fit of rage.
Everything about him projected strength—hard brow, thick nose, heavy jaw, muscles bulging at his chest, his shoulders, his thighs.
Vic leaned toward Sarah and hissed, “Who is that?”
“Alexandros Galanis,” Sarah replied in a masculine bass. “Xan, the Chief Sentinel. He’s training Squads One and Two.”
So this was the famous Chief Sentinel, who had completed training in record time and who had caught Vic snooping last night. Not an anal-retentive old man but a thirtysomething weapon of war. And Sarah had brought her here to piss him off on purpose.
Vic was in so much trouble.
“Matthews,” Xan called. “You and I will start.”
A young man with a blond buzz cut stepped out of the group. Vic eyed the breadth of Xan’s shoulders with a flash of sympathy for the newcomer, alongside a furious curiosity. She wanted to watch Xan fight, wanted to see if he was as powerful as he looked.
Vic leaned forward.
“We’re going to run this quickly, as an exercise,” Xan explained.
Now, this made Vic more comfortable than anything else in the castle had.
Sparring Vic could work with. The push and pull of flesh across muscle and bone cut the refined edges away from modern society and left only the human drive behind—survive, keep fighting, try harder.
As Vic watched the men brace themselves, the rows of stone seating and arching windows fell away.
These were not witches, this was not a castle, Vic was in no more trouble than usual.
She was here to learn, to watch people practicing something she knew better than the inside of her own mind.
One second they stood paces away from each other, arms cocked in fighting stance.
The next, the smaller man threw himself forward.
Vic heard the smack of flesh as they collided.
She cringed when Matthews’s fist crashed against Xan’s jaw.
Hits to the face were rare in disciplined fights.
Xan rocked to the side, narrowly avoiding another impact, keeping his hands in a protective posture and swaying to avoid the other man’s attacks.
Matthews went for his side in an attempt to get Xan to pull his arms away from his body.
Vic would have suggested waiting for Xan to take the offensive, maybe draw him out with more restrained attacks, because there was no way he would fall for such an obvious maneuver.
Sure enough, Xan swung an elbow up when Matthews came too close, and Matthews barely pulled his face out of its path.
He stumbled, and Xan swayed to the side to knock Matthews further off balance.
In an instant, Xan had the smaller man on the ground, one forearm pressed tight across Matthews’s chest. Thick cords of muscle, visible through his clothing, tensed in Xan’s back and thighs, and Vic’s mouth went dry.
She marveled at the physicality of it, trying to pretend her interest was purely academic.
He was an excellent fighter, the best she’d ever seen.
Xan moved faster than he should have been able to, given his size, and each movement demonstrated a complete control of his body.
That was why she felt a pit of intrigue in her stomach, Vic told herself. Pure professional awe.
Though he had size on his side, Xan hadn’t used it.
He hadn’t needed to. Vic knew he’d worked incredibly hard to master his craft, and she found herself wishing she could fight him, just once, to see what it would be like.
To tangle with someone that skilled, that strong, would be like kissing lightning.
Vic would lose, obviously, but it would be fantastic fun.
“Are you okay?” Sarah whispered beside her. “You’re flushed.”
“What? Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh,” Sarah said, watching Vic with curious suspicion.
Vic shook her head to clear the spell and looked to the other man on the floor.
Matthews smiled good-naturedly as Xan pulled him up, but there was wounded pride on his face, too. Vic knew that look; she’d worn it a thousand times.
“We’ll run it again,” Xan said. He wasn’t even out of breath. “Lin!”
Another witch stepped forward, this time a striking woman with hair so black it was almost blue.
She slunk from the crowd with all the grace of a jungle cat about to devour something.
Her long ponytail swung back and forth as she walked to the front of the practice area—the cat’s tail whipping as it waited to pounce.
“May Lin,” Sarah whispered, while her gaze tracked the woman’s approach. “Second leader for Squad One.”
“Lin will take my place this time,” Xan announced. “I want you all to watch how defensive moves change with the size of your opponent.”
May Lin faced Matthews with an anticipatory smile. The man winced, which confused Vic. Matthews was considerably larger than May. Though she was tall, she was svelte and couldn’t muster as much force as a two-hundred-pound man. Size never guaranteed the advantage, but it made things easier.
“Remember: We’re working the basics today,” Xan said. “No magic.”
Matthews relaxed. He must have been frightened of May’s magic, then. Vic wanted to know why. She leaned in closer, gripping the railing.
Again, the fight began without fanfare, though Matthews chose the defensive posture this time, and May leaped forward to meet him.
They sparred for longer than Matthews had with Xan, neither of them breaking the protective barrier of arm’s length for longer than it took to land a single swift blow.
May got Matthews in the ribs once, and they met in the middle, finally close enough for things to get interesting.
May swung at his face, but he darted out of the way, and she lost her balance.
Then Matthews had his hand across May’s shoulders.
He pinned her to the earth the same way Xan had pinned him, and cheers broke out.
Xan approached as Matthews pulled May to her feet.
“Now, what did Lin do wrong?” Xan asked the group.
No one answered for a second, then two, then Vic couldn’t help herself.
“She tried to counter his momentum, instead of working with it,” Vic called. “He’s got fifty pounds on her—she doesn’t have the power. When he went forward, she should have swung to the side, used his weight against him.”
Every head in the room swiveled toward Vic. Xan turned, and his ice-blue eyes locked on to hers. Vic felt her face heat. No one said a word, and Vic worried they could hear her heart racing in the cavernous space.
When no one responded, Vic filled the silence.
“Matthews had thrown his weight forward. If she’d shifted to the side, she could have used his own force to push him down.
” Vic mimed the movements with her body as she spoke, aware that everyone was watching her and no one was speaking.
Vic’s voice fell away when she noticed the giant approaching them.
Xan crossed the room at an unhurried pace, his eyes pinned on Vic.
The silence, broken only by footfalls on dirt, grew heavy, and Vic fought the urge to keep talking.
To fill it somehow. Thirty feet crossed in a few seconds, and Xan was at the edge of the pit in front of Vic and Sarah.
Vic stared down at him in horror as he wrapped a massive hand around the railing.
He couldn’t possibly plan to come up here. They were five feet off the ground.
Vic took a step back as he did, indeed, pull himself up to the platform with unnerving ease. He crowded the space as he stared down at her, and her skin prickled with awareness.