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I yielded my sabre, refocusing my attention on my fifty-four-year-old coach. “Shit, my bad.”
“Nyasgem.” He punctuated his curse with a disgusted grunt. “Next time your eyes wander from my sabre, I will stab you with it.”
Focus, Farrow.
Before he makes a sieve out of you.
We’d switched it up today, using sabres to work on my leg speed. I’d gone for a long stretch of time without any training, courtesy of my new sixty-hour work weeks.
But thanks to my devil in shining armor, this would soon change. Working for Zach freed up more time for fencing.
I grinned behind my mask. “Don’t blink.”
Without mercy, I advanced, taking advantage of our size difference.
My turn.
I aimed for Andras’ head when he parried, directing a thrust at my shoulder. But I was faster than a bullet.
I shifted, catching his masked face with the point of my sword. The buzzer rang across the room, adding a tally to my half of the scoreboard.
I didn’t need the electric wires to tell me I’d earned the point.
Behind the sword, you justknew.
Andras tore the mask from his face and dumped it at his feet, shaking his gloved fist at me. “Where were you the entire match? You came to life twenty seconds before we finished.”
I pulled my mask off and shrugged. “Twenty seconds is all I need to win.”
I’d lost any right to be arrogant after The Incident, but with Andras, I could.
He never judged anything outside of technique and effort. Never made me feel like a lesser person for makingthatmistake.
I set my mask on a bench outside the piste lines, listening to his bitching. I deserved every single insult thrown my way.
Luckily, most of them were in Hungarian, so I couldn’t understand.
Andras had graciously agreed to rework his schedule to fit mine. He trained me at six in the morning, three times a week.
He deserved one-hundred percent of me.
Andras followed me as I padded to the orange cooler. “You look like a novice who watchedThe Parent Trapand decided to take on fencing. An embarrassing amateur.”
I hovered my lips an inch shy of the tap, gulping ice water. “Won’t happen again.”
He tailed me as I headed toward the locker room. “Of course, it will not. If you show up in this condition on Thursday, I am suspending you as an instructor.”
That stopped me in my tracks.
I whirled around in the middleof the hallway. Two amateur fencers bumped into me but apologized quick, even though it was my fault.
I shook my head. “You can’t do that.”
Andras planted his fists on his waist.
It used to creep me out when his light-blue, almost translucent eyes bored into mine. Now, I found comfort in them.
With Dad gone, no one else cared enough to stare at me like this.
