What is he remembering?
“You learn it’s better to be weak. Better to be a fool.” Dax looked to the blade in his hand as if coming out of the memory now. He set down the sword.
“And when they see through your deliberate scheming?” Roa challenged. “What happens then?”
He came toward her, unarmed. “Why is this so important to you?”
Roa raised the blade, pressing it just below the key hanging from a cord against his chest. Dax took another step. He stood so close now, she could feel his breath on her cheek.
“You saved my life today, when my guards weren’t there to protect me.” She lowered her gaze, so he couldn’t see the lie inher eyes. “One day, your guards might not be there to protect you.”
His fingers slid over hers. “And why is that?”
She swallowed as his fingers moved between hers, taking the sword from her.
“Where else would my guards be, Roa?”
Her gaze shot to his, her grip tightening, but it was too late. He had the hilt in his hand, had the blade to her throat. Roa tilted her chin, baring the warm skin of her neck to the cold steel.
“How do I know you haven’t come here to find out all my weaknesses, in order to use them against me?”
Roa kept silent, holding his gaze. Because of course that was what she’d come here to do.
“I have an idea,” he said softly. “You like deals. How about every time I give you something you want, you give me something I want. For example, a kiss.”
Roa remembered the way he’d kissed her in the library and sudden heat flared through her.
She tamped down on it. Didn’t he have enough girls to kiss? “You get a kissevery timeyou do something I teach you—like proper grip? Or stance? Or thrust?”
He gave a single, solemn nod.
She made a face. But if this was what it took to find out the truth, Roa would do it. “That’s not incentive,” she said, playing this game with him now. “That’s coddling. If you’re rewarded for every little thing, it’ll take you years to learn.”
And we have only three days until I offer up your soul in exchange for my sister’s.
Dax opened his mouth to interrupt, but Roa wasn’t finished.
“How about this,” she said. “You get a kiss for every time youbeatme.”
With the steel still at her throat, his gaze darted back and forth between her eyes.
“Beat you?” he said, applying pressure. “You mean likethis?”
Roa smiled a slow smile.Oh, Dax.
The steel flashed as she brought her knee up—just like he’d done to her, only harder. He grunted, loosing his hold, and Roa ducked out from under the blade. Her elbow met his ribs and the air whooshed out of him. Before he could recover, Roa grabbed his blade from the floor and now held both swords—one in each hand—crisscrossed over his chest. She pushed, and he stumbled back, wincing.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said, his hands on his knees, recovering from her blow. “Maybe I had the wrong teachers.”
Roa flipped the sword, catching the steel, and handed it back to him hilt first.
Dax studied it for a long moment, as if studying a piece on the gods and monsters board, contemplating the consequences of taking it.
Finally, he reached out, wrapped his fingers around the hilt, and raised it against her.
“All right,” he said. “I agree to your terms.”
Roa smiled.
