Page 28 of Legacy Elite

"Again," he says.

The second round is a completely different experience.

He doesn't leave his ankle anywhere. He doesn't let me inside. He puts me on the mat twice in ninety seconds, both times without any apparent effort, and the second time I stay down for a beat longer than my pride would like.

But he's working for it now. I can hear him breathing.

That's the part I wanted.

"Better," Voss says, from somewhere behind me. It is not clear which of us he's talking to and I suspect that's deliberate.

I'm hauling myself up off the mat when a voice cuts across from the benches, pitched to carry.

"Amazing what a year of private lessons with Lucian Draeven can do for a girl."

Natasha is sitting on the low wall with her wraps half done.

Everybody hears it. That's the point of it.

And she's not wrong, which is the irritating part. I don’t think everyone at the academy knew that before, but now they certainly do.

"It is," I say. "You should ask him for some."

Somebody laughs and tries to take it back.

Natasha's chin comes up.

"You—"

"Enough."

Voss hasn't moved. He hasn't raised his voice either.

"If the two of you have enough breath to argue," he says, "you've got enough breath to work. Mat. Now."

Oh, fuck.

Natasha is good.

Annoyingly, genuinely good. She's been trained properly and expensively since she could walk, and it shows in the first ten seconds. Her stance is textbook. Her hands are where mine are supposed to be. She doesn't waste anything.

She hits me twice in the first thirty seconds, and the second one catches my mouth, and I taste blood and get genuinely, thoroughly angry.

And I feel it.

That heat coming up out of my chest and down my arms, the whole body going loud, the thing that lives underneath now.

This is it, some part of my brain says, absolutely delighted. This is exactly the kind of moment. Come on.

I reach for it the way I've reached for it a hundred times in a field all summer.

Nothing.

Not a flicker. Not a pull. Just a girl on a mat with a split lip and a mouthful of blood, exactly as human as she was yesterday.

Natasha comes in again while I'm still somewhere else and puts me on the floor.

Right.