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Máel kept walking. He passed the place where he’d dropped Moralltach in the dirt, and as he went by, bent and picked it up, never stopping. It settled in his hand like a key into a lock. As if they were fitted for one another. As if the blade was home again.
The way he felt when he held Cassia in his arms.
“Yield,” he said again.
Bennett gripped his sword. “Never.”
“You’re going to want to yield,” he said one last time and lifted the blade in two hands, sweeping it up and to the side.
Bennett braced his feet then, ducking low, he lunged.
In the stands, Cassia leapt up, fingers at her throat.
Máel ducked to the side as Bennett came forward, then swept the blade down and crashed it through the air.
It impacted Bennett in the chest. Lifted him straight off the ground and flung him against the walls lining the sides of the arena. He hit like a rock and lay, writhing and groaning, slumped against the wall.
“I warned you,” Máel said softly.
Lying on his side, gasping for air, Bennett lifted his hand in surrender.
“I yield.”
Chapter 36
The other combatants whooped and hollered—perhaps no one liked Bennett.
They crowded around Máel, slapping him on the back. But he was already turning to Cassia, while she was rushing to the stairs, running to him.
Her father rose to his full six feet, grim and terrible. “You will never marry my daughter.”
Silence winged across the field. People turned in amazement. Bennett was trying to stagger to his feet, but kept falling back, hanging onto the wall for support.
“I cry foul!” he rasped. “There is something strange about that sword. And I will not lose that which is mine. Lady Cassia is worth too much—”
“In truth, I am not worth much a’tall,” Cassia said loudly. “Or rather I shan’t be, once the truth is known.”
Everyone turned.
She walked across the fighting arena, her skirts dragging through the dirt, raising dust. But dust was meaningless. She’d rolled in pine needles and whittled a horse and turned a hare on a spit and howled for the man she loved, while he devoted himself to her body.
A little jousting dust made no impression anymore.
“Cassia,” her father said in a strangled voice.
Another voice lifted, overtaking whatever her father had been about to say. An unexpected voice, but a familiar one: Lord Yves.
“What truth is that, Lady Cassia?”
He’d appeared out of nowhere. He was fielding the home team at the mêlée, the biggest event of the tournament, but now he stood at the edge of the ring, his gaze moving across all the men assembled here.
They all bowed. Except Máel.
His gaze lingered on Máel before returning to Cassia. “I would like to hear this truth.”
“There are three truths, my lord.”
He wiped his hand over his brow. “And on a Friday,” he said wearily.
