“I can do this all day, witch,” I call out when she slips in the mud.
Chest rising, she glares in my direction for a brief second darting back and flicking mud from her braid with her hand. More still is smeared across her face, coating her fighting leathers. “Easy enough when all you have to do isstand there.”
True enough, although my erevas is not limitless. Snickers echo from behind me. We’ve drawn additional attention from others passing, a handful leaning over the fence to watch. Valcor is amongst them, his face pinched and arms folded.
And beside him—
Fuck.
Eres glowers at me, his knuckles tightening where he grips the fence. My distraction costs me, some curses ringing out when I twist to see Lyra take down a second Void.
Damn it.
If I’m to leave the youths with any sense of possibility. I need to end this. Her foot slips in a particularly deep patch of mud, and my taunt turns to ash in my mouth at the sound she makes. The small, choked sound bites off abruptly, as if she’s been taught to hide her pain at any cost. My voice hardens. “Yield.”
Lyra shakes her head, pushing herself upright. “Make me, wielder.”
I can feel Eres’s glare against my neck even as my temper rises. “Don’t be a fool, witch.”
There’s a cut against her cheek beneath the mud. I made sure the Void’s weapons were blunt enough to strike without severe injury, so it must have happened when she fell. Her blood glints in the midday light, a golden trail trickling down her face. My anger ignites.
If she’s stupid enough not to see when she’s defeated, then I’ll teach her.
Two more Voids stand between us, the third closing in behind her. Instead of using the gap between them, I launch myselfforwardthroughthe shadow, a dagger to match the two she carries on the verge of forming in my hand.
This, she didn’t expect. I slam into Lyra with full force as I emerge through the Void, my arms wrapping around her as we fall and twisting to take the brunt of the hit. My right shoulder hits the ground first, the witch colliding with me in a tangle of limbs and hair and the Voids vanishing between one breath and the next as I wipe them away with less than a thought.
Our noses are almost touching, breath mingling. And my erevas dagger kisses the golden skin of her throat, just above the leather. It’s a killing blow.
“Yield,” I snarl up at her. My other hand presses against her back, holding her in place.
Her breath falls in short, sharp blows. This close, I could count the faint cluster of brown freckles that dot her upper cheeks and nose. The warm, solid weight of her presses into me. “Youyield.”
Her plump lower lip twists, and I pull my attention away from staring at it. “What?”
“For the love of Erevan,” Eldritch bellows behind me, and we both start. “Oneof you yield, or get out of my training ring!”
Suspicion unfurls in my stomach when she wriggles. “What—,”
Something pushes into my stomach. Something hard, and sharp—almost as sharp as the flash of a smile she gives me.
Her dagger digs in deeper, and my head thumps back into the mud. “A draw, then.”
She smells like the training grounds. Both of us are coated in filth and sweat. Lifting my hand, I brush dirt away from the cut in her cheek, inspecting it. “Eres will look at this. And your stomach.”
“That’s not necessary.” She climbs off me, and I roll to my feet.
I don’t know where the words come from. “You’ll attend dinner tonight in the main hall.
She’s brushing herself off, but her shoulders tighten, tension filling her frame. “Why?”
Because I don’t want her to eat alone in her cell.
I’m not sure that I want her in a cell at all, not anymore. It feels… wrong. A punishment for a crime that I find myself struggling to define. And she’s Bound now, tied to Eres at the risk of her own life.
Vaelion’s daughter. Lightbringer. Lyra.
Eres sweeps past me. His hand brushes mine before he turns to Lyra, his eyes running over her and softening. “I’ll need to check your stomach. You shouldn’t have been in the ring at all.”
