They circled each other. Mud squelched beneath their boots as the rain pounded down. Grant’s hair was plastered over his eyes. It was an advantage, but he didn’t need it. He’d faced men twice Grant’s size as a teenager, and he’d always come out on top.
Grant lunged.
Zane caught the blunted blade with his own. Grant pressed, andsteel screeched against steel. With a flick of his wrist, Zane sent him reeling. Grant stumbled back and dropped into guard.
He’d learned to dance as a lovestruck teenager, but he’d always been best at the dance of blades. The constant flurry of movement kept him on his toes, watching in anticipation, reacting out of instinct rather than thought.
Parry. Grant was lunging again.
Riposte. Steel clanged as Grant batted his blade aside.
With the scrape of blades and crackling thunder as their music, the dance went on. Sweat dripped down Zane’s face as Grant’s attacks got more aggressive. He was all brute force. Little technique.
Fall back, parry?—
Grant’s blade was under his nose.
Zane blinked.
As Grant grinned, Zane scowled. He’d been bested by a feint, of all things. Apparently, Grant had more technique than he’d let on. Zane dropped his saber in surrender, letting out a pent-up breath as Grant retreated.
“Three-time champion, huh? I’d say you’re rusty.”
Zane scowled. “It’s been a long six cycles.”
“It’s been three for me. Maybe try a new excuse?” Grant trudged to the shed and picked up a battered thermos. “I’m guessing you already know who I am.”
Zane wiped rain from his eyes. “Yeah. Guess I should introduce myself. I’m Zane?—”
“Wells, I know.”
Grant drained half the bottle and tossed it to Zane. He caught the damp bottle midair, took a swig, and swished it around his mouth.
“I remember your mother.”
Zane froze with the bottle to his lips. He forced himself to swallow. “I think you’re mixed up with someone else. We left Dali twenty cycles ago, and she never made it back.”
“The Commander, right? Commander Wells?”
Zane’s eyes narrowed. Lightning struck a distant mountain, and a crack of thunder boomed through the grounds. His teeth clenched ashe looked towards Hannover’s palace. The drumbeat ofwar-war-warthumped in his head.
“That’s right.”
Grant fiddled with a thread dangling from his sleeve. “I was in the Dalian battalion that served on Oppalli. She was our liaison officer.”
“Then you were at the compound.” Zane ducked his head. Pellets of rain pummeled his skull.When she died, he meant to add, but the words stuck in his throat.
“Yeah. I’d been posted there for five months. The Commander was a remarkable woman.”
Lightning carved through the sky, flashing like an explosion. Thunder crashed like roaring cannons, wind raged like shrieking missiles, rain struck like falling debris, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
“She said you served too, right?”
“Five cycles,” Zane muttered, and he was back there, on that war-torn hellholeof a planet. Charred earth. Broken corpses.Mom’scorpse, buried in the ruins. Any day, this lush green field could be another smoking crater, and Hannover was too stupid to see that.
He snatched his saber. “Another round?”
“It’s pouring down rain.”
