Page 42 of The Chosen Fae

Then Lolita joined them; Silas followed; Caspian showed up; and Elon poked his head in and saw the others. He came in, and he and the others started looking for books to read.

The librarian raised her glasses and smiled, appearing glad to see some of the competitors reading books! Everyone was lounging on the soft seating, nose in a book.

The scene was reminiscent of a peaceful oasis, where the librarian’s kind smile and raised glasses were a welcoming gesture in a sea of book-buried competitors, content to lose themselves in literary worlds.

Across the reading area, bodies draped over armrests and tucked into corners, each one absorbed in a different world while the librarian watched from behind her desk with quiet satisfaction.

A few competitors had pulled their knees to their chests to prop their books higher.

Then Vesper and Xena finally entered the library. Rune and Stone watched them. Everyone glanced up, but then continued reading their books as if they couldn't care less if Vesper and Xena were there.

Rune suspected that Vesper and Xena must have gotten word, or even just smelled all the wolves entering the library, and probably thought they were having some secret meeting about them—the narcissists that they were.

"Losers," Vesper said and left the library.

Xena soon followed after him.

Everyone was smiling. It seemed Vesper and Xena's hold over them was loosening a bit. But it didn't mean that they had ditched them completely.

Still, it was a positive sign.

After reading about swordsmanship, Rune grabbed a wolf-shifter romantic suspense book and started reading. Stone looked at the book and chuckled.

It wasn't a fae shifter book, but a straight wolf shifter one.

He grabbed the next book in the series and started reading.

When they had gotten about an hour into their books, Rune said, "Let's check these out, put them in our rooms, and practice sword fighting."

"Yeah, I'm all for it." Though Stone appeared not to want to put his book down.

"Do you want to get to a better place and stop?"

"No. I'll get to the end of the chapter, and the author will leave me at a cliffhanger, and I'll dive into the next chapter. Maybe the librarian has bookmarks."

They went to check them out, and all they did was write down which book they were taking out, and the librarian gave them bookmarks featuring wolves.

They thanked her and took their books to their rooms. No one else seemed to plan to move from their chairs; they were so engrossed in the stories they were reading.

When Rune and Stone arrived at the weapons training room, they found only a few instructors talking among themselves. And then they hopped to. Lolita soon entered the room, eager to practice with her short sword too.

Stone and Rune began running sword drills—blocking and countering, stepping wide to evade or closing the distance to strike

Sparks rose where their steel met. Footfalls and the clank of blades ricocheted off one another. Students dodged back and forth in the designated sparring space, each locked into their own practices. Rune circled her opponent with the wary focus of a wolf, her eyes locked not on the blade but on the subtle twitch of the instructor’s wrist that forecasted each attack. Her own sword darted out in rapid thrusts that seemed to flicker in and out of existence.

Across from her, Stone parried with his chest heaving with the effort. Rune kept her world narrowed to the play of ankle and hip, the faint shifts in her opponent’s balance.

Above it all, the weapon master’s shadow moved along the wall, silent and watchful, keeping time with the progress of the duelists as they practiced swordsmanship—parrying, thrusting, using their footwork to dodge or rush forward.

Then Vesper showed up, and he wanted to fight Stone, but the weapon master said, "This is for practice only. If the two of you take this into a deadly match, you'll both be sent home from the games."

Rune struggled to concentrate on working with a teacher when Vesper and Stone began to fight.

Stone noticed that everyone in the weapon training room, including Rune and Lolita, was focused on the fight ahead.

Stone readied himself to fight Vesper, though he didn't really want to battle with him again, and he had already been practicing for some time before that. He didn't trust that Vesper would follow the weapon master's rules and treat this as just a practice session; if Vesper got the chance, he would do something dastardly. Stone noticed that Rune looked really worried about it also.

At least Stone had been practicing so he wasn't a complete newbie. As soon as Vesper struck at him, Stone blocked the blow. But Vesper quickly struck again, barely allowing Stone to recover. Vesper kept attacking, and Stone fell back, unable to do anything but defend himself.