Page 27 of Legacy Elite

I could kiss him.

Not literally. I have enough problems.

But every single person I have spoken to since April has looked at me like a question they're not sure they're allowed to ask, and this man has looked at me for one and a half seconds and told me my guard is bad.

It's the best thing that's happened to me in four months.

"Second year," Voss says, when the doors close. "Last year I taught you how not to die."

He lets that sit for exactly as long as it needs to.

"This year we're going to find out whether you can keep the person next to you alive."

Somebody near the back makes a noise.

"You'll be fighting with a partner. You'll be fighting for a partner. You'll be getting people out of places they can't get out of themselves, some of whom will be panicking, most of whom will be heavier than you, and none of whom will be helpful." He unfolds his arms. "Before any of that, I need to know what you've each retained over the summer. Pair up as I call it. Two minutes each. Try not to embarrass me."

He goes down the room.

"Soren. Miller."

Of course.

Evren Soren comes across the mat, taking his jacket off as he walks, and stops in front of me with an expression of total neutrality.

"Did you piss him off?" I say.

"Frequently."

"Recently?"

"Continuously."

He's a head and a half taller than me and roughly the shape of a door. Last year that would have finished the conversation before it started.

"Two minutes," Voss says. "Go."

Soren comes in slowly.

And I clock it immediately, because Luke spent months teaching me to watch shoulders and hips instead of hands, and Soren's shoulders aren't committing to anything.

He's being careful with me.

He remembers last year. He remembers the girl who couldn't hold a stance and flinched at everything, and he has decided, kindly, in the interests of not humiliating a scholarship student in front of the class, to go easy.

Oh, I don’t fucking think so big guy.

I let him take my wrist, because he's expecting me to pull away from it, and instead I go toward him. Inside his reach, where all that height stops being an advantage and starts being a lever. My shoulder into his ribs. My foot behind his ankle, which is exactly where he left it, because he wasn't taking this seriously enough to move it.

Then I use every pound of him against himself, the way I got shown over and over in an empty gym every afternoon, and Soren goes down flat on his back with a sound like a dropped bookcase.

The room stops.

I stand over him with my heart going and my hands, for once in my life, up.

Soren lies there and looks at the ceiling for a second.

Then he looks at me, and it happens again — the smile, small, about a quarter of a second, gone before anyone else in the room could swear to it.