He strikes too fast for me to trace, but I move on pure instinct and slide back.
“That’s it.” A lopsided grin curls his lips and rinses me with rapture. It’s the one that breaks across his face whenever he’s semi-proud of me, and Ilivefor it.
He strikes again, but I arc to the side, and his sword breezes past my ribs. His next move is swift—a brutal shot for my neck—but I manage to defy gravity and swerve the attack, ducking low before I shift all my weight onto one foot and kick the other out ... straight at his feet.
He goes down hard, his splash so boisterous I’m sure every selkie in the pond heard it.
My smile is smug, sword swaying through the air as I stare down at the churning water. After a few seconds, he breaks the surface, eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them.
Embracing the log with one long arm, he reaches his other out to me. “Quick, before they eat me.”
I roll my eyes and extend my hand, then realize hisownis empty ...
“Wait, where’s your sword?”
His mouth pops open, then he’s launching up, snatching my hand,yanking—
I fly through the air.
The cold water is just as unmerciful the second time round. Just as daunting—rife with the threat of pin-like teeth that latch onto your vulnerable bits andshake.
I break the surface, gasping, both hands empty.
“Youfool.” My gaze snags on what appears to be a pale rock breaking the surface not too far away, wearing a wig of brown waterweed.
It’s deadly still ... at least until its large, inky eyes blink open.
“Now we have to swim to the edge,” I hiss, watching the slitted nostrils on the selkie’s flat nose flare.
“And fast,” Baze mutters, luring me to glance in the direction he’s looking—seeing six, eight,twelvemore heads break the water’s surface and cast their gloomy eyes on us. “Seems they’re attracted to the scent of blood ...”
“But what about our swor—” My heart leaps into my throat, clogging my spill of words as they dunk below the surface in unison.
Selkies ... they attack frombeneath.
“Forget the fucking swords,” Baze grates out. “Our toes are more important.”
He churns toward the reeds, leaving me choking on the wake of his double standards.
If it were justmysword, he’d have me underwater, hunting through three feet of muck while fending off the swarm with my bare hands. Big commitment for a sword I’m not particularly fond of.
I take off after him, all too happy for it to stay down there and rot. Fingers crossed the next pair Baze pulls out of his ass is made of a softer, less strident wood ...
A girl can hope.
Ilower the heavy lid on the wooden chest and clank the deadlock into place, feeling Greywin’s nervous assessment, hot like the heat spilling from his kiln. I taste his tempered excitement in the dense, smoky air.
Despite the sweltering atmosphere, I’ve always liked this space. The smell of grit and determination has seeped into the stone walls and the wooden tables nesting about. You can see it in the worn utensils and the battered anvil—in the old, weather-beaten man who has a cot set up deeper in the cave so he never has to leave.
Greywin’s looking at me over the top of his cluttered workstation, a bushy mantle of silver brows shadowing his eyes. The forge is blazing behind him, casting the cavern chamber in a red glow.
Okay?he signs with fingers knotted from old age.
His entire family was slaughtered in a Vruk raid over forty years ago, after which he gouged his own eardrums with a stick as self-punishment for not being there.
This is all he has left. His craft.
I make a fist and nod it, pushing to a stand, stamping my thumb to the flat of my palm then twisting both hands in opposite directions to signal how impressed I am.
