Alf snorted a laugh.
Selene gave her ex-jailer a thorough once-over. “Don’t you have a cat to chase, Alf?”
The thin, wide-eyed boy’s mouth thinned. “Brave talk without your friend here to hold your hand.”
The roar of battle dimmed to a gentle hum.
Petrina.
Alf grinned. “Shame about her head.”
Fuck. Him.
Selene took one step?—
A man cleared his throat nearby.
Oskar stood a few feet away, arms folded. Calm. Watchful. As if they were back in the training arena. He offered her nothing but patience. Quiet confidence.
“Who’s this?” Finn asked, scowling at the Master Blade.
To be fair, Oskar looked like every other pirate here, ragged and blood-streaked.
“He’s here in case I need a stool,” Selene said, winking at her mentor.
Oskar’s eyes glinted. “No need, I’m certain.”
Alf loosed an unnecessarily loud sigh. “Can we get on with it?”
Selene spun her knives. “Ready when you are.”
She lunged.
Finn met her blade with a savage parry. Alf darted in from the side. His fist cracked into her ribs, and the air shot from her lungs. Before she could recover, Finn’s boot swept her ankles.
Selene hit the ground hard, breath knocked clean out.
Above her, Oskar’s voice rose over the din. “Not your fight.”
She rolled, narrowly missing a boot to the face.
“She needs?—”
“Nothing and no one,” Oskar told Roman.
The assassin held Roman back with an open palm against his chest.
The Drynopian’s fury was written in every tense muscle.
The next voice she heard wasn’t Roman’s.
It was Petrina. Because if she were here, she’d have one thing to say. “You didn’t survive everything else just to fall to these two idiots.”
No. She didn’t.
Selene flipped her knives. Cracked her neck. Rolled her shoulders. “Let’s try that again.”
The burning village vanished. In her mind, she stood on a training mat. On a log above rushing water. On the deck of Cassia’s ship. She inhaled the salt-drenched air. Met Finn’s next attack with a swipe and feint.
