I need her.
“Submit,” she whispers right against my ear. “I’m not going to repeat myself.”
Exactly like her mother.
I’m tossing my head back before I process what I’m doing. The back of my skull smashes against her head, and as her grip loosens, I flip on my back and kick her off of me.
The princess growls, still on the ground as I stand. Then, pain bursts through my kneecaps as someone slams the back of my knees with a staff. I’m falling, but all I can think about is whether I made her bleed.
“That’s not fair,” Suyai screams, closer than before. She’s at my side in seconds. The guard who once looked so confident is now standing paralyzed with wide eyes, not making a single move to stop her.
Incompetent.
“She knew the rules,” the tutor says from behind me. She taps what I assume is the staff that hit me on the ground like a threat. “She knew to submit to our Princess–”
Her word ends in a gasp and a thud.
Suyai’s hand curls around mine. I’m still staring at the grass, hands beneath my shoulders, and reeling from the adrenaline in my system. I take a shaky breath in and look up.
Suyai is to my left, kneeling and rubbing circles on the top of my hand. Her eyes flit from me to whatever is happening at my back. When her mouth drops open, I finally turn to look.
The princess is behind her tutor, twisting her arm behind her back and forcing her to kneel. With both of us on our knees, I am almost eye to eye with her.
“You hurt my champion,” the princess says, her bored inflection gone and replaced by something sharp.
“My Princess…” The tutor tries to speak but stops with a sharp intake of breath. Other than holding her arm back, the princess isn’t physically touching her. I take in the princess’s hand perpendicular and flat, like a blade, near the tutor’s throat. Where her hand forms a shadow, the tutor’s neck begins to bleed.
“You hurt my champion, so the only words that should be coming out of your mouth right now are an apology.”
“But Princess, I–” the tutor chokes on her words. She’s crying. A single tear mixes with a drop of blood on her collarbone.
The princess hums.
“She doesn’t like to repeat herself,” I say with a smile.
Suyai squeezes my hand in warning, but she doesn’t see what I’m seeing.Myprincess, the one who healed me the day of the Guardians’ Ceremony, is here, not the dead girl walking.
The tutor mumbles out an apology and falls face-first to the ground once the princess lets go.
But she’s not done.
The princess aims her pointed hand in my direction, and it’s like being struck by lightning. Her attention alone could set me on fire. Her mimicry burns.
“And you, I should kill you,” she says.
Yet I can’t wipe the smile off my face, no matter how much Suyai’s breath speeds up or how tight she holds my hand.
“You won’t,” I say, sure like I am of everything. Suyai may not know, even the princess herself may not realize it, but at this moment, I know the princess is on my side, whether it’s her choice or not.
I’m going to fulfill my destiny with her at my side. For our reputation. For our glory.
“Please forgive us, Princess,” Suyai says. “We submit to your rule. We–”
The princess narrows her eyes at Suyai’s words and then, like a band snapping, she drops her hand and holds it to her chest. Her eyes widen, and she suddenly refuses to look at either of us. She’s off-balance for just one second before she straightens up and shakes out her hands.
“I’m done here,” she says.
Suyai’s sputtering doesn’t get her to stop. I wonder if my voice would, but I don’t test it. I’m still smiling, taking in the way she moves as she walks past the training ground gates. Suyai lifts me and slaps the dirt off my clothes. She insists I should still train. I indulge her. The tutor and princess are gone. The guard doesn’t even open his mouth to chide us for insubordination. It feels like always, Suyai and I, sparring in the dirt.
