“And so it begins…” Carver said under his breath.
Bellanca laughed. “Well, did you think they’dforget?”
“Think, no. Hope, yes,” he grumbled. “Look at what you’ve started.” He swept out a hand. The girls had stopped hesitating and were already picking through the knives.
She shrugged, something happy simmering inside her as she moved toward their charges for the day. Should she have hidden the blades? Maybe, but she wasn’t going to regret it now. This wasn’t the first time the girls had been there, and it wouldn’t be the last, butfinally, they were doing something Bellanca liked. Instead of that awkward dread she always felt, anticipation took its place.
She grinned at Carver. “Hopefully, I’ll have started a lifelong love of pointy objects—and the ability to defend themselves.”
Carver lifted both brows in a poor attempt at censure because she could see his own spark of excitement underneath. Happiness glowing from him was so rare it was unmissable. Her heart swooped, and she turned away, gathering things to set up an obstacle course and throwing range while the girls each picked out a knife. Atlantapol was too busy and populated to take this outside, so their living room would have to do. It was spacious, bright, and high enough from street level to muffle the screams.
Once Bellanca had a few things in place, she turned to the girls and attacked.
The shrieks were excellent—loud, constant, and filled with giggles. She wasn’t worried about Dione coming to investigate. These were happy sounds. If only her own childhood lessons had gone like this, then maybe she wouldn’t have hated everyone so much—her teachers, her parents, half her siblings. All those others had turned her, Appie, and Lystra into a team against everyone else, though, and she’d never regret that.
Missing her sisters didn’t hit her quite as hard as usual as she sent the shrimps through the obstacle course they’d set up. Carver played his role well, instructor and attacker alike. The girls learned fast, gaining reflexes with repetition and hitting targets more often than not. The day flew by, punctuated by snacks everyone wolfed down to get back to the fun. Instead of fading, the initial happiness stayed, growing along with the girls’ skills, and she and Carver didn’t argue once. One thing they both knew how to do—and mostly agreed on—was how to train soldiers. One, Two, and Three became their personal army for the day, and setting their stagnant mission aside for once did Bellanca more good than she could’ve imagined.
Better yet, the kids didn’t question anything. They knew Carver was a soldier in the king’s guard and the fact that Bellancaknew how to wield—and dodge—a blade just seemed a natural extension of that. They made itseemthat way and hoped the girls would understand they could demand the same thing one day. The strategy might not have worked with Dione’s older kids, especially the girls. Atlantis had already stuck its barnacles onto them too solidly, but the little ones took everything in stride.
Shrimp Two drew back her knife and landed a near-perfect throw in the pillow target they’d propped on a chair. Her knife hit the inner edge of the Cyclops’s eye they’d painted on it with fig juice from the fruit reject pile. Carver whooped and turned to Bellanca, his storm-gray eyes bright with unguarded joy. The huge grin on his face transformed his entire body into something she couldn’t tear her eyes from. Her breath caught in her lungs.
Carver’s grin slowly faded into a look so piercing it penetrated all the way to the magic swirling in her bones. His eyes flicked over her. Heat tingled up her spine and swept over her skin. He’d given her a thousand looks before but never this one. This one made her heart thud with something close to fear.
She turned away, her pulse racing. She felt his eyes on her back and shivered despite the warmth in the room.
Footsteps she knew like her own moved closer. Bellanca poised to walk away, but then they stopped, and she turned to find Carver crouched by the girls, his steady focus on them now. “It’ll be time for you to go home soon, so remember, girls, this is our secret.” His voice dropped low, pitching just right to mix humor with solemnity and make them all listen well. “Your mother and father wouldn’t approve, and if you want to come back here again and learn more, you’ll have to keep quiet about our adventures against the pillow Cyclopes and the herd of wooden centaurs.”
The girls all nodded, rapt in their attention and half in lovewith Carver, of course. The youngest here today was about six years old and the oldest around ten. Carver had described them as cute earlier, but Bellanca didn’t really know whatcutemeant or what purpose it served. She preferredfierceandskilled, and the girls were turning out to be those. Like Dione, they had medium-brown skin and wavy black hair. While skin tones could vary from sun-bronzed to black, almost all the islanders had dark hair. Carver fit in fine, raven-haired and naturally sun-kissed like a true Atlantian. She stuck out like a sore thumb with her fair skin and red curls.
Firebringer.She smirked.
There wouldn’t be anything pale about her when she lit up and burned the status quo to the ground.
“Again!” she barked with a sharp clap, the army general in her still alive and well. “You.” Bellanca motioned for Shrimp One to start the course again. The oldest girl immediately sprang forward, diving under Carver’s blade as he swung at half speed. She rolled, popped up, turned, and parried his strike with a short sword of her own. They exchanged several blows, Carver not putting any strength into it but placing his strikes and thrusts to show her how to protect herself and keep her opponent’s blade from getting too close. He eventually faked losing and fell to the floor with an obnoxious groan.
Bellanca surged in, a knife in her hand. Shrimp One ducked fast, whirled, and struck back. For the first time all day, Bellanca had to truly leap out of the way to keep from getting sliced across the middle. Surprise widened her eyes, then she grinned. Natural aggression sizzled under her skin, and she had to hold back the flames trying to burst forth from within. She hurled a pillow Cyclops at the girl. Shrimp One stabbed it right in the painted eye. Bellanca threw a second pillow, then a third. The pillow Cyclopes all met violent deaths, feathers floating to the floor.
“Centaur hooves! Dodge!” she swung a chair at One, narrowly missing the child’s head. She grimaced, a little jolt of fear striking her chest, but One didn’t even slow down and sprang to the side, already spinning around and ready for more. Carver popped up and swung another chair, more careful than she’d been. Shrimp One avoided those pretend hooves just as easily, lunged, and planted her short sword in another Cyclops pillow. Feathers puffed out as she drew a dagger and threw it at the pieces of beach wood they’d dragged upstairs after lunch and roped together in the approximate shape of a centaur. Her dagger hit its hind flank and stuck.
Shrimp One stared in shock, breathing hard, before screaming, “I did it!” She jumped up and down.
Bellanca lifted her brows. “It can still kill you with a dagger in its behind.” Still, she nodded her approval. No one had stuck a blade in the driftwood all day. This was the first, and the infinitely satisfying thud still echoed in her ears. The wall behind their makeshift centaur was a mess. But then, she’d always thought battle scars told interesting stories. She’d look at that wall and remember teaching three little Atlantian girls that maybe it wasn’t only their fathers or brothers or husbands who could protect them. They could protect themselves.
She looked around their lodgings. Four pillows absolutely destroyed, feathers everywhere, a pockmarked wall, an empty fruit bowl, and three happy kids. She grinned.
“Nicely done.” Carver clapped One on the shoulder without too much force. “I’m impressed.”
Smiling like she wanted to catch bugs in her teeth, One turned to Bellanca. Bellanca shrugged. “You’re improving.” Not having received much praise in her life, she wasn’t sure how to give it. Besides, one day of play training wasn’t going to change a thing unless the girls internalized thewhyof it as much asthehow. “You just need to know, in here”—she thumped a fist against her chest—“if you’re ready to protect yourselves for real. And when it counts.” She looked at each of them in turn. “It’s great when someone has your back. A gift, really”—her heart contracted almost painfully as she glanced at Carver—“but your best champion isyou. And when you already know how to defend yourself, you can help defend someone else.”
“Against who?” the youngest one asked.
Bellanca started collecting the blades. “Against whoever tries to tell you you’reless.” Anger at the current state of Atlantis boiled up, her own magic stoking the fire. “Against whoever might try to throw you over the wall of Atlantapol and tell you it’s for thegreater good.”
The girls all stared at her. One looked thoughtful. Two’s mouth gaped. Three looked scared, but Bellanca couldn’t regret a thing. By their age, she’d already been to war and back with her two oldest siblings so many times she’d lost count. Stabbed, half strangled, cut, burned, locked up, nearly drowned—shehatedswimming now. And that was nothing compared to what her parents had put her through simply by forgetting she existed most of the time. Ironically, she’d wish they’d forget her again whenever they suddenly remembered she was there. Their attention was always worse than their neglect.
Carver darted her a cautioning glance. “This was just for a bit of fun.” He started cleaning up and got the shrimps to help while Bellanca stashed away the blades. As he dumped shredded pillows and loose feathers into the basket they used for trash, he asked, “Who wants dinner?” The sun was setting, and Dione still hadn’t come back.
The shrimps were more than ready to eat again. Bellanca was, too. They’d worked up an appetite. There was no way she was cooking—and Carver couldn’t cook without shocking thesandals off the girls—so they waited until after the day’s sacrifice was done up at the temple square and then went to a taverna to eat. They traipsed back upstairs after dinner, not one of them knocking on the door below theirs.
