Has she been holding back all this time? Maybe she’s gotten a bunch of intensive tutoring in the past few weeks?
She looks totally confident in her moves, like she’s been doing this for years. It doesn’t make any sense.
Irritation starts to itch beneath my skin. It’d be just perfect if the Devine princess leveled up her combat marks, wouldn’t it? My grades in that area are one of the few factors keeping me in the top three.
Lord knows both of my families already hassle me enough about failing to nab the very top spot in the rankings. About letting a pampered princess like her get in my way.
Kwong stops to praise her form a couple of times, looking a bit surprised himself. Seeing that only sets my jaw more on edge.
I swing hard and accidentally clock Mia all the way onto her back with her hands clutched around her head.
She scrambles up before Kwong reaches us but wobbles on her feet.
“You need to see a nurse, Somerset?” he asks her without any sign of concern. About fifty percent of the student health center’s job is to deal with sparring injuries.
“No, no, I’m good,” she mumbles.
His gaze slides to me, sharpening. He doesn’t care how much we batter and bruise each other, but he’s a big believer in matching your strength to the needs of the fight. “Control as well as power, Cosgrave. No point in overworking yourself.”
“I know,” I growl.
“Then show it.” He claps his hands. “Let’s switch up.”
I get to scrap with Heath for a little while, a somewhat more interesting challenge. Not enough of one that my gaze doesn’t keep twitching back to Elodie every couple of minutes, though.
Seriously, where the fuck did she learn to throw a fist like that?
Heath tries to take advantage of one of my moments of distraction to go for a headlock. I whip away from him, baring my teeth. Time to teach this prick a lesson, with enough power and control that Kwong can’t complain.
I throw myself into the fight harder, faster. My muscles fill with the heady burn of exertion.
I catch Heath’s arm, wrench it behind his back, and jerk my hold with just enough force for the crack of a snapping bone to carry through the room.
Heath crumples to his knees, swearing under his breath. Kwong glances over and nods. “Get yourself to the health center, Ridley.”
Maybe our professor has noticed my interest in a particular classmate, because when he switches us around again, he sends “Miss Devine” over to me.
Taking down Heath left me energized. I smack my gloved hands together. “Ready to be pummeled, donnicciola?”
Elodie cocks her head with a swish of her ponytail. Her tone is as snotty as always. “I should ask you the same thing.”
Oh, this bitch is looking to get flattened, all right. And itisgoing to be fun.
I laugh and lunge at her without further warning, swinging fast and furious. I’mfantasticwhen I can pull the ephemera around me into the fray, but I’m blazing good even without magic. I’ve won every sparring match I’ve entered in the past five years.
So I should crush her in an instant. It’s not like she’s giving back as hard as she’s getting. But somehow…
Somehow she stays on her feet, deflecting and dodging my strikes, breathing hard but not breaking.
I throw out a different sort of jab. “I didn’t take you for a cheat. How much magic are you throwing into the fight, huh, málóid?”
At home, I save my Irish insults for my Italian relatives and my Italian for the Irish. Because if they’re never going to let me forget I don’t really belong on either side, then I can sure as helllean into their fuckery. Also, it irritates them more if they don’t know what I’m calling them.
At school, I see no reason to limit myself. None of the teachers understand either language.
Elodie’s focused expression doesn’t so much as twitch. “I didn’t take you for a drab. Unless you’ve gone void-headed, you know I haven’t drawn anything.”
The cat’s showing her claws today. She’s right, annoying as it is. Because I’mnota drab, I’d be able to sense if any magical energy was flowing into her.
