“Who are you?” I said. If the male did not recognize the lethal softness of my voice, more the pity him.
The mace was in his hand now, the cast iron tips that covered its round head swallowing the gray light around us. “My name is Barkke.” He tossed the mace into the air, caught it in one sweeping movement, gaze still holding mine. Challenge issued. “I am a friend of Arran’s.”
Accepted.
I drew my dagger—just one. That’s all I would need.
Lyrena hissed.
I blocked it out. Shuttered every impulse, every shred of guilt, every queenly instinct, as I launched myself into battle.
He tried to sidestep my dive, but I put all of my weight and speed behind it. I knocked one knee out from under him. By the time he shoved himself back up, I was on the other side of the courtyard, back to the wall.
I didn’t give him time to rest. I scuttled along the wall, not caring how ridiculous I looked. My movements were fluid, strong, but unpredictable. If he’d been watching me spar with Lyrena for the last two hours, then that was the only way to best him.
“Come and play, Majesty,” he crooned, fingering the leather-wrapped handle of that mace.
I sprung before the last word finished falling from his lips. But he got the mace up, catching my arm against the thick wooden handle. I pressed up, using my feet as leverage, my powerful legs bracing.
“I did not see you at my feast last night,” I said into the inches between us. The bastard was not even winded. He hadn’t been sparring all afternoon.
Barkke had the audacity to smile. “Your feast?”
I pushed in, up, then spun away just as quickly before he could nick me with one of the iron spikes. “A feast to welcome me. My feast.” I considered pulling my other dagger to use as a distraction. Decided against it.
Barkke charged, no chance to catch my breath. Using it against me. But this was nothing. The cold air burning blue flames down my throat? I welcomed them. A lifetime of torture had its benefits. Pain focused me.
I threw him off easily.
“So?” I smirked.
He took the pause I offered, his gaze reassessing. “I was seeing to a matter in the Spine.”
“How mysterious.” I shrugged. He could try to figure me out; good luck to him.
“When I heard you’d come to Eilean Gayl, I hoped you would have brought pretty Guinevere along.”Hell. I’d judged this Barkke as one of those males who liked the sound of his own voice a bit too much. But it seemed he was a male with a death wish as well.
“I assume you have never met her. Because if you’d called herpretty Guinevereto her face, she would have skewered you with her sword. Or just shifted into her dark lioness and eaten you for her evening snack.”
Amusement or ire, he used it to drive me back. Knock me down. Flat on my back, the terrestrial approaching with mace in hand. I felt the burst of flame from Lyrena’s fingers. A warning for now.
“Fire wielders,” Barkke paused, “Am I meant to be intimidated?”
“They are as effective at burning flesh as they are wood,” I said in the same breath as I launched myself up to stand from flat on my back. A move I’d learned frompretty Guinevere.
Our weapons clashed, then our bodies.
“Where’s Excalibur?”
I gnashed my teeth. “I only bring it out for special opponents.”
“You wound me.”
“You had better speed up, or I actually will.”
He threw back his head and laughed—leaving his throat exposed. Fool.
I lunged. He brought his arm up to block, exactly as I’d known he would. I sliced down his arm, long and brutal, right through the wool of his tunic and into the skin and muscle beneath.
