“I’m assuming, because of your age, you must have won your position with skill rather than experience,” I continued, ignoring the barb in an effort to continue my interrogation of the man beside me. “So you must be quite a formidable warrior.”
“Worried about who’s going to save your ass once we find the girl?” Roman asked, a corner of his mouth lifting into a cruel grin.
I frowned, clenching my fists on the reins to keep my composure.
“More concerned about what happens if we’re ambushed in the desert on our way,” I muttered through gritted teeth.
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Roman answered easily. “Kseniaand Phantom will have likely torn them to shreds before we even reach the fight and, if not, well, I’ve never had any trouble with your precious squadrons before.”
He patted the blade at his side and my gaze snapped to it. I couldn’t help but wonder how many lives he'd taken with it already. The man was hardly into his twenties and yet, somehow, that confident swagger of his already seemed well-earned rather than the arrogant bluster of the recruits I'd heard back inPavos. I could see the evidence of those hard-won battles on the Captain’s face. A scar running from his left temple to directly under the same eye, a burn mark on his wrist that ran up under his sleeve farther than I could see, a chunk of flesh missing just beneath his chin. So perhaps he meant it when he said we had nothing to worry about. Still, there were only three of us, four if you counted theZverand, if Adrian was as important to theGeistas the humans seemed to believe, I didn’t like our odds.
So that night, when we found a cool place to rest in the shade of a rocky outcropping halfway through a valley we'd begun to traverse around midday, I asked the Captain to spar. He raised a brow in challenge even asKsenia’slips spread into a wide grin. But I didn’t back down so he set his bowl of stew on a nearby rock and rose, drawing his blade as he tossed me my own.
I'd trained quite thoroughly in my limited time inPavoswith some of the best warriors in the city.Valinwas legendary and Castor, as his chosen second, harbored some fame of his own. They'd both claimed I had the potential to make a good third. And yet, Roman knocked me to the ground in two moves.
Kseniabarked out a laugh from where she sat, tossing scraps of meat from some desert creature she and Phantom had hunted earlier to her beast who snapped them out of the air easily.
I just rose to my feet, narrowed my gaze in new appreciation of my opponent, and beckoned him forward again.
It wasn’t like sparring withValinor Castor. Roman didn't offer me suggestions or bark out instructions as we moved. The Captain didn’t care if I improved. He didn’t care if I learned from the fight or simply lost it. He moved against me as a true opponent would, only pulling punches if they would have proved lethal.
I hissed every time he turned his blade at the last minute so that the flat of it met my flesh rather than the sharpened edge. He grinned at every blow he landed, but I just raised my weapon once more and we began again. I tried not to think about all the bruises I would have tomorrow, how difficult it would be to sit on a horse in so much pain, and focused instead on the Captain’s movements, on learning what I could of the human fighting style he employed.
He wasn’t graceful. His movements didn't flow into one another asValinand Castor’s did. Instead, they were short and choppy and less predictable as they didn't lead seamlessly from one to the other. He would cut left only to feint right and cut again in such quick succession the blow could hardly be avoided. It wasn’t pretty but, I had to admit, it was effective. Besides, what use was grace when one was fighting for their lives?
“Who taught you how to stand?”Kseniainquired from her spot curled up against Phantom.
Roman pulled back from plunging his sword into my chest at the last moment to stare down at my legs at the mention of my stance. I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.
“What’s wrong with it?” I snapped, irritated and sore from all the blows I'd already taken.
“You aren’t dancing, Dante,”Kseniahuffed, blowing a loose strand of dark hair from her eyes as she rose. Phantom shifted slightly in her absence, snorting with displeasure at the suddenlack of her near him, but settled back a moment later and was snoring by the time she approached me. “You don’t have to balance so much on your toes.”
“It allows for quicker movement,” I argued.
“It makes you imbalanced,” she replied easily and, reaching out with one arm, pushed against my chest and sent me toppling backward.
A rare smirk curved against Roman’s lips asKseniacrossed her arms and raised a brow.
“Anchor yourself,” she advised. “Plant your feet firmly on the ground. It helps against opponents who are bigger than you, stronger.”
I ran an appraising eye overKsenia’sslight form and nodded. If anyone would know how to fight against a larger enemy, it would be the woman who stood barely over five feet tall.
So I restructured my stance according to her instruction. Roman waited patiently, glowering at us asKseniapersonally readjusted the positioning of my legs and feet against the sand below. Then she backed away, strolling back to Phantom, and watched as Roman and I went to blows once more.
He still landed every shot he took but I didn’t flail around as much as I had before. And, at the end of the match, he even gave a grunt that was the closest thing to approval I’d ever seen from Roman, before striding back to his sleeping roll and stretching out on the other side of Phantom.
I fell asleep under the stars that night, body sore and aching but feeling a sense of true, real accomplishment for something I'd chosen to accomplish myself, for the first time in a very long time.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Adrian
“It is not blasphemy to question the will of the Geist when the only source for that will are the mouths of the Upper Ringers claiming it.”
— As Spoken by Wisteria Sallow, Leader of the Origin of Divine Cult
Our pace had increased. Despite Gryfon’s proclamation to Rainier that we would make it to Archí when we made it, he seemed to be driving us on quicker than he had before. Whether that was an order from the three rarely seen leaders of the procession or Gryfon himself, it was unclear. But he'd become gruffer with his own men and more impatient with the caravan as we moved through the hot sands.
