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There was no way I was ever going to be able to match his skill. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I would ever be able to manage to hold my own without being a liability to him. The thought was at once frustrating and depressing, but while I couldn’t control my natural ability, I could control how hard I worked.
I was just going to have to train that much harder.
It didn’t take long before I was exhausted, both physically and mentally, but I could tell the session was far from over. Castor’s movements had grown a bit faster, giving me hope that I was making at least a little progress.
As if he could somehow sense that thought occurring to me, and had decided I needed to be put back in my place, Castor’s next attack was so sudden, I jumped.
I brought my blade up swiftly to block his, but I wasn't quick enough. I gasped sharply as his blade came down on my forearm and fully expected to see one of my limbs fly off. Instead, I was merely treated to a dull yet intense band of pain where the blade had made contact that was definitely going to leave a bruise.
I looked down at my intact arm, then up at Castor. His eyes were shining with amusement. Evidently, he did have a sense of humor. It just relied on me being sufficiently terrified.
"What? How?" I asked, since I was incapable of forming much more of a coherent thought than that at the moment.
"What, you really thought I was going to let you train with an actual katana on your first day?" he challenged. He ran his hand along the curved edge of the blade. "It's called alaido. It's made for training."
"Oh," I said, feeling like an idiot. "You could have told me. Or was that on purpose, so I would take it more seriously?"
He paused for a moment as if to consider it. "No. I just wanted to see the look on your face."
I scowled at him, but I wasn't really surprised. "You know, you can be kind of an ass."
He just laughed, but at least this was an actual, honest-to-goodness laugh. Yeah, his sense of humor was definitely at my expense.
Oh, well. I found myself thinking that I was more than willing to be the brunt of the joke if it meant getting to hear that beautiful song more often.
"Come on, let's try again," he said, readying his blade to strike once more. This time, he rushed out first, and I managed to dodge, if barely. During the course of our fight, and our training in general, I had noticed something. Whenever I made progress, Castor adjusted his tactics just slightly, as if I had passed some threshold and unlocked the next level. I wasn't sure how long it would be before I had any idea what he was truly capable of, if ever.
If nothing else, as I struggled to block his thrusts, I could understand why he was so pissed about Father Marius assigning him to me as a partner. I assumed he was still going out with Arrow on the hunt, but not only had I doubled his workload, now he also had to worry about a complete newbie watching his back.
"That's enough of that," he scolded the next time I blocked him, pushing against my blade hard enough to send me staggering back a few feet. "No getting lost in your head in the middle of a fight. That's the best way to come home in a body bag."
"Sorry," I said, dodging his next strike.
I was just relieved he hadn't asked me what I was obsessing over, since something told me I would have a hard time lying to him. Another strange instinct, since I got the feeling that had never been a problem for me before.
It didn't help that the room was sweltering. I wouldn't have been surprised if he had turned up the heat just to make it more uncomfortable, but he had yet to break a sweat while I was a clammy mess, so I wasn't so sure. I just chalked it up to the difference in our fitness levels.
He showed no sign of slowing down, either. I was dreading the prospect that we were going to spend a full day doing this, since it was even more brutal than the rest of the training.
"Watch your defense," he warned. Like just getting back on my feet every time he put me down wasn’t enough of a challenge.
To be fair, a decent defense probably would've at least helped.
I had barely recovered my footing from the last block when Castor managed to pin me against the wall, his blade resting up against mine and pressing it into my chest. I gasped sharply, but it was more than just the sudden attack that caught me off guard.
His close proximity was playing games with my head. Cruel, twisted games entirely unbefitting of the sacred place we were, even if this room was by far the least religious-looking part of the Abbey. He was still a priest, though. I wasn't sure what the Church's rules on celibacy were, but getting turned on right now still felt like something that could get me damned, if I wasn't there already. I really didn't have a whole lot of wiggle room in that regard.
"You're getting sloppy," Castor accused, his face so close to mine that his hair brushed against my forehead and his breath tickled my nostrils, cool and minty. Everything about him was perfect. Infuriatingly so.
At least, I assumed that was what the aggression roiling within my core was about. Aggression, lust… The lines all kind of blurred together when it came to him. A lot of things did.
"Sorry," I said, breathless for all the wrong reasons.
"You think you're not going to get tired on the hunt?" he challenged. "You need to be ready, no matter what you're feeling. No matter how exhausted you are. You get sloppy even once out there and you're dead, or someone else is. Since I'm saddled with you as my partner, that makes your laziness my problem."
I swallowed hard. "You're right. I'm sorry, Father. It won’t happen again."
He narrowed his eyes, and I wasn't sure if he didn't believe me, or he just didn't think I had been sufficiently scolded enough. "Why are you so out of breath? We've trained more intensely than this, and we've barely been doing this for an hour."
