I tumbled forward and rolled, coming up on his left side, unleashing a quick series of strikes, making him step back as he twisted and blocked each one. He gave no smirk this time, no wittycomment. Just the quick, efficient movement of his blades as he matched blow for blow, pouring cunning into every swing.
“Have you discovered much?” I grunted while slashing and dodging the attack he suddenly hosted on me. “You mentioned doing research.”
“Information can take years to unveil, correct?”
“Almost thirteen years. I’m sorry you haven’t learned it all.”
He sighed.
“I think your mother might’ve slept with your father’s advisor, who was your equivalent of Lorant.” I kept my voice steady despite our blades blurring between us. The ring of steel filled the room like a song neither of us wanted to end. “She suggested you might not be the king’s son but the advisor’s instead.”
“You've been busy.”
“That's me, always digging my fingers into everyone else's soil.”
“My mother is sorely misguided. She… Her guilt consumes her, though there’s clearly no cause.” Our blades clashed together overhead.
“In her heart, there is. She must feel she cheated.”
“She does. I love my mother, but even I’ll agree she doesn’t have much of a heart. Not recently, anyway.”
“She has enough heart to embrace you.”
“So far,” he said. “I’ve tried to ease her dismay as much as I could, but we, of course, cannot discuss the more intimate details.”
“Because you’re prevented from stating that when she slept with the advisor, she was actually with your father.”
“I am my father’s son. There’s no doubt about that.”
I could only bark out a pained laugh and slash upward with my left blade to block his series of furious blows. “She thinks if you die without an heir, she’ll be able to snatch the crown off my head and place it on her own.”
He jerked to the side, though I sliced off the tip of his tunic,leaving a patch of his smooth skin on his left flank exposed. “Irony can twist through every generation.”
One after another, each dying much too young.
Finding out why might lead me to a way to break the curse.
My movements slowed. While I enjoyed sparring, particularly with Merrick, a feeling of doom hung over everything we said, and that in itself was exhausting.
However, I couldn’t avoid speaking of this any longer. “Your thirtieth birthday will be here soon.”
He faltered but for only a second before his chin lifted and he met my gaze. “Five weeks and one day.”
“That’s not enough time.”
“We’d better make sure each moment counts.” His eyes sharpened, and he lunged, the edge of his right weapon flashing toward me.
I blocked, driving my left blade upward and angling my body away from the second strike I knew was coming. “Yes, no more games.”
It didn’t help that sparring with him always felt layered with everything else—unspoken words, unresolved emotions. Each strike we exchanged felt heavier than it should have, the clash of steel ringing louder, sharper, in my ears.
But at my words, his rhythm broke. I noticed it when his right blade dipped too far to the side. For a heartbeat, I told myself it was a natural slip, that Merrick was shaken by all of this. By me, by what we’d learned together, by the mess of secrets I’d exposed.
To my complete shock, he dropped one of his blades. It clattered on the floor beside us.
While I froze, processing the sound, his other blade followed. Silence stretched long and thin after, shrill enough to cut.
“What are you doing?” I breathed, my grip tightening aroundmy own blades as my body instinctively adjusted for what must be a trick.
