“You hesitate,” he said, voice like a blade drawn slowly from its sheath. “You die.”
There was something beneath the warning—darker, slower. Dangerous in a different way.
I glared up at him, chin lifted despite the blade at my throat. “Are you always this dramatic,” I said lightly, “or are you flirting with me?”
That grin again. Wicked. Familiar. “Is it working?”
I smiled, breathless but unbothered. “Maybe.”
His eyes widened just enough to betray surprise. Then I moved.
With a twist of my hips and a brutal shove to his thigh, I threw him off balance. He stumbled back—just enough for me to roll, snatch the fallen dagger, and spring to my feet.
This time, it was my blade at his chest.
Only then did he step closer—slow, deliberate. Close enough that I could feel the heat of him, the scent of salt and smoke and that darker edge beneath it.
Something surged in me—hot, wild, electric. Not just pride, though that was part of it.
Power.
Not borrowed.
Not stumbled into. Chosen.
“You hesitate,” I teased, chest heaving. “You die.”
His laugh was low, dark—and maybe a little impressed. “Good.”
We kept sparring.
Strike after strike.
Parry.
Duck.
Lunge.
Again. And again.
My muscles burned with each pass, sweat sliding down my spine as the sky began to pale toward dawn. Alaric was relentless—never cruel, never coddling. Every correction was deliberate. Every mistake punished with another round.
“You freeze like that,” he warned after I hesitated a second too long, “and someone’s going to gut you before you can blink.”
At some point, Garen joined us, stepping in with a two-handed sword that made mine look like a child’s toy. He didn’t speak much—he didn’t need to. His movements were measured, deliberate. He tested me with heavy strikes that forced me to dodge, react, and think.
Where Alaric was quicksilver, Garen was iron. Both of them pressing from different sides.
Exposing every weakness.
By the end of the lesson, I was drenched in sweat, arms trembling, legs aching so badly I wasn’t sure I’d stay upright. My palms blistered, fingers raw from gripping the hilt too tightly. Salt stung every scrape and bruise.
I stayed standing.Barely.
Collapsing to sit against a crate, I let the blade fall beside me. My breath came in shallow bursts, but I didn’t regret a single one. I’d learned more in one brutal night than I had in days of half-lessons and survival aboard this ship—or centuries in Thalassia.
I still have a long way to go.
