“About your ... training camp?”
There’s an edge to his voice that wasn’t there before.
Balancing on it feels dangerous.Deadlyeven.
“Yes.” I pivot slowly, sword perched at the ready. “And just so you know, Baze said you wouldn’t like me learning to fight. I was the one who begged him to let me do it.”
Rhordyn’s eyebrow pops up, but I keep talking. Keep attempting to climb out of this deep, gloomy hole I dug for Baze and me.
“He was just following my orders. I swear.”
Ish. I swear-ish.There was certainly no begging involved, but the last thing I want is to drag Baze under. Only one of us needs to take the fall, and I’d rather it be me.
“Interesting tactic ...” Rhordyn muses. “Though not nearly as interesting as the fact that it worked.”
What?
My overstimulated mind churns, trying to unscramble his riddled words. “I ... I don’t get it. You’re not angry?”
“I am, but not for the reasons you might expect. And you can save the martyr bullshit.” He crosses through a slice of light, the morning sun glinting off his eyes as if they’re hard, polished surfaces. “The training was never your idea. It wasmine.”
My mouth pops open.
Baze, the bastard, is going to die.
Rhordyn launches, his wooden blade flaying the air so fast it sings.
I block his strike with the swift twist of my upper body and a delicate flick of my wrist, but the hit ishard—clanging through the air.
Throughme.
Somehow, I resist the urge to clamp my hands over my ears and scream.
Perhaps the Petrified Pine is finally growing on me.
Face to face, weapons locked, we hold our ground. From my vantage point, I can see beneath the weave of Rhordyn’s hair to brows kicked high on his forehead.
“Sharp refle—”
I shift, ducking and wheeling around until my chest is flush with his back, the sharp part of my sword kissing his throat with dispassionate vigor. “Apparently I’m a natural,” I spit, not wanting to hand him credit for something he barely lifted a finger for.
“You’recocky,” he answers in a razor voice that makes me picture an arrow being notched. “And high functioning.”
What?
He spins out of my hold like smoke on the wind.
I’m still swallowing my shock, blinking at the feline smile pretending to soften his features, when heunloads.
In three swift strikes, he has me disarmed and stretched on the ground, wrists pinned to the stone with one powerful hand, my sword lying discarded somewhere behind me.
I gasp as the sharp edge of his weapon comes to rest across my throat.
Though his eyes are half-hidden behind the flop of his hair, I still feel the chill of his invasive gaze, his breath a frost on my face.
“What the fu—”
“Pathetic,” he growls, sword digging in. “Perhaps I finally understand.”
