“In blood, really?” I groused, but signed my name anyway, smudging the stone.
“You’re all set! Thank you for your donation to the Followers of Virtue. Your gift is tax deductible and you will receive confirmation in the post.”
The red-robed figure popped out of space and time with a cheery wave.
I stared at Noth. “You sure you’re okay with that?”
“It’s time to move on,” Noth assured me.
“How did he get into the palace?” I worried my braid between my fingers. The Council had gotten bolder and bolder since Noth’s return. It had made us more and more paranoid, even if we never spoke directly about it.
“I will find out. Go to Yaya. You will be safe.”
Great, relegated to “need to know” status again. Noth shoved me into a portal and I fell out into the training room before I even had time to answer. Yaya stood in the center of the mat with a slice of her cake.
“Are you okay? The alarm makes this place an echo chamber.”
“Just the usual weirdness. He dumped me into your care in case things got any weirder.”
I really needed some cake after my rude dismissal, but she slapped my hand when I went to grab it. “For after theworkout.”
My head hung to my chest. “We’re still going to work out?”
I don’t know what magic that cake possessed, but I was hooked. I went feral every time I saw a slice, and consequently, Yaya used it as a carrot to get me to train. She used an actual stick during training. I thought learning my meditation forms from Rue was hard. Yaya turned out to be twice as demanding. If Noth had learned how to fight from her, I would be a killing machine in no time. Too bad I didn’t feel any desire whatsoever to try it on Noth. The closest I came these days was the craving to have him roll around with me on the floor to see what I’d learned. Which, of course, led to more sex.
That was about all we got to before we had to go to sleep and the day started again. We didn’t talk politics, or what he had been up to with the territory. Brad made me realize I didn’t want the throne. I wanted into Noth’s life.
“Pick your weapon.” Yaya’s sharp command snapped me out of my roiling thoughts.
I picked up a wooden dagger and a wooden short sword. She hadn’t graduated me to anything sharper.
“First form.”
I stepped onto the mat and raised my dagger over my head. “Please give me a second-”
Yaya dead-legged me with her own practice sword and I gritted my teeth to stay upright. I wasn’t supposed to ask. I just had to do it.
“Sorry,” I said.
She swiped at me again, right in the same spot so it would hurt even more and I blocked. I kept control of my temper because the one time I let loose, she made me attack her until my muscles failed and I fell into a jelly heap.
“Use all that breathwork you learned," she ordered.
I exhaled as we went through a few forms. Yaya said I would be able to graduate to improvisation when I mastered the basics and how to deploy them. Magic would come last since, according to her, I was an overpowered baby. Just as likely to destroy everything as to help. It wasn't an easy truth to swallow, making a surly to start to the session.
“Wrist aligned. I know you can feel it flopping around up there.”
“Why aren’t you married?” I blurted out.
Yaya paused in surprise. I didn’t press my advantage because I actually wanted to know the answer.
The Elf stepped off the mat to toss me another, heavier wooden sword. “One hundred lifts.”
My mouth quivered to contain my groan. That only got me two hundred of the hated wrist exercises that lifted the wooden sword into the correct stance until my bones ached. It wouldn’t do to think Yaya was letting us talk instead of train, when she watched every repetition of the exercise like she was grading me. Which she was.
“Who could ever settle down with just one?” she started. “Elves don’t have mates like NightmareWalkers do. More’s the pity sometimes. Maybe we would have more children.”
Yaya kept time as her practice sword hit the mat in the rhythm I had to maintain.
