The corner of his mouth lifted. “Is that what you want?”
No. I wanted to work for it. To sweat. To bleed. To beat him. I matched his smile. “Hell no.”
He inclined his head and stepped back, sweeping an arm toward the fighting arena. “After you.”
I arched a brow. “I know better than to leave my back exposed.”
He let out a bark of laughter. “Very well. Together then.”
He matched my stride into the center of the fighting space, and we faced each other, he with his impressive sword and me with my twin axes.
Part of me demanded to know what the hell I was doing going up against a djinn god. He’d just taken down three warriors singlehandedly, but there was another voice in my head, calm, assured, and confident, that whispered to trust my instincts. My body. My strength.
“First blood?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
We circled one another, and a serenity settled over me, the conviction that I’d done this before. And I had. I’d fought him as Araz, but there was a deeper knowing, one that I had no time to analyze before he attacked.
I reacted on instinct, evading and spinning back to face him.
He grinned and canted his head to one side, pacing back and forth like a graceful predator before attacking once more.
Once again, I evaded. He was testing me. Teasing me. Did he think I couldn’t take him? Is that what he believed?
Heat climbed up my chest to hug my neck. “Stop playing and attack properly. You want first blood. Come take it.”
His eyes narrowed. “There she is.”
And then he whirled away from me, momentarily confusing me before spinning back, his sword sweeping toward me, parallel to the ground. I reacted fast, blocking the stroke withmy blades and dodging. But he didn’t stop. He pushed into me over and over. Strike after strike, and I met each one with my blades. Block. Deflect. Spin away. Drop and evade. My body had a mind of its own, knowing how to move. Knowing when to push back into him. A ball of heat swelled in my chest, a cocktail of euphoric emotions writhing and expanding to fill my torso.
Images flickered in my mind. An arena like this one. Dust clouds in the air. A blindfolded figure attacking me with twin short swords, his golden body a vision to behold as he spun and sliced at the air, meeting my blows easily, even with the disadvantage.
I blinked to focus on the now. Onthisfight. Onthisscene. But my mind dragged me back to the dusty arena. To a crowd, cheering a name over and over.
“Vayelle! Vayelle! Vayelle.”
Fire sliced across my bicep, and the vision dropped away, leaving me back in the present. I glanced down at the blood on my arm.
“Dammit!”
A cacophony of sound erupted around us, but I had eyes only for Iblees as he approached me, his brows pinched in a frown.
“What happened? You weren’t all there just now.”
I shook my head. “You won. That’s all that matters.” No way was I going to make excuses about it.
He pinched my chin and forced my head up. “What happened, Leela?”
A shadow fell over us. “Stop fussing, old man,” Craven said. “She fought well. The wound will heal soon enough.”
A woman with silver and blue hair trailed behind him, along with two male djinn with closely cropped chestnut hair.
Iblees released me and turned to Craven. “I have no doubt that my twin flame can hold her own in battle.” He reached downand wiped the blood from my arm, revealing unmarred skin beneath.
I stared at the spot where he’d cut me. “Did you just heal me?”
He shrugged and offered me a lopsided smile that was so Araz it made my chest ache with longing.
