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I spin out of reach, blocking his staff with mine and rapping the solid wood against his knuckles before he can attack again.
He winces and lets out a hollow-sounding laugh.
“Thank you,” I reply sardonically, letting him know I didn’t miss his darker undertones.
Though, he hasn’t seen anything yet. I switch to the offensive, a thrill running through me at being able to unleash the full force of my carefully honed agility.
Khijhana paces near the fire, an anxious spectator to our impromptu event.How far will she let us go before interfering?I have a feeling we’ll find out.
Einar surprises me by switching hands and defending from the right instead of the left while I narrowly dodge his colossal arm whooshing overhead. I duck low, sweeping my leg beneath him and sending him to his knees. He reaches out for my ankle, but I flip over him, landing on my feet before turning to face him again.
He stands, shaking his head. On we go, taking turns besting each other or scarcely escaping traps the other has lain. All the while, my chalyx has remained attentive, though she has finally stopped stalking around us.
We’ve been sparring for hours. Or minutes. The clock I keep running in my head seems to have gone awry somewhere in the feeling of his impossibly warm body pressed against mine.
Even if it is a ploy for him to pin me. Throwing his staff to the side, he spins me by the arm, locking my body to his.
“I mean it,” he comments casually, his breathing measured in spite of the sheen of sweat on his brow. “It must have been galling to your pride, hiding this deadly skill. I never would have seen this coming.”
Mypride? That’s laughable coming from him, especially when he doesn’t realize I’ve never been afforded an ounce of pride in my life.
I twist out of his hold before responding. His face is an impassive mask, but I know he’s intentionally needling at me. Instead of correcting him, I can’t help but to respond in kind.
“Don’t sell yourself short, Einar,” I say in an overly pleasant tone, punctuated only by my sharp movements. “I’m sure if you had bothered to spend more than a week of the two months we were married in my company, you would have caught on quickly enough.”
I feign movement to the right, and he follows before I bring my staff around to sweep his legs again.
This time, he is more prepared and leaps out of the way just in time, grabbing his staff once again.
“You can’t be blaming me for those instincts. Not now,” he scoffs, stalking around me like the beast he is.
But I’m tired of pretending to be prey. As fast as I can, I run toward him, sliding between his legs and landing a kick to the back of his knees.
He growls as he launches forward, only just managing to keep his balance. While chopping wood seems to give his rage an outlet, this fight only seems to be fueling it.
An ember of fury rises up in me at the way I have taken every single ounce of his vitriol and blame for a situation I had so little say in while he takes exactly none. I may have allowed myself to play the villain, but it was a role he had no trouble casting me in.
Until this moment, I hadn’t realized how much it chafes that he has so little faith in me. That for a man who can seeeverythingwhen he chooses to, he has remained intentionally ignorant to any sign that I am more than the monster he paints me to be.
I keep my tone neutral to match his, but the tension in the air is rife with every buried truth we are so recklessly unearthing.
“Don’t pretend it was some divine knowledge that kept you from bothering to get to know your wife, to give a single consideration to me at all.” I laugh, but the sound is false even to my own ears. “What if I had just been some poor orphaned noblewoman who came to you willingly?”
He gives the barest flinch at the word ‘willingly,’ but recovers quickly enough.
“Thenshewould have been glad to marry a king.” He smiles around the statement as he goes on the offensive again, but the expression is more of a grimace, all false niceties vanished.
“Do you think so?” I ask casually, meeting his staff with mine before dancing around him, thwacking him in the back.
“Yes. I do,” he growls, turning to face me.
His arrogance truly knows no bounds, and I wonder how much of the reason he refuses to forgive me is because of his sands-blasted wounded pride.
“Even if you thought her wedding markings were dirt? Even if you insulted her from the moment she arrived in your foreign land?”
He isn’t the only one growing angrier with each pointed jab, each memory of how resentful and unaccommodating he was when I arrived.
“How was I supposed to know what those were?” he fires back, and I want to throw something at him.
