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Lio imagined what Tendo would say to him if he could see him now. Stop being such a silkfoot and throw a punch.
Lio pushed through his inhibitions and lunged at Solia, trying one of Mak’s favorite tackles.
It was the most perfect Moon Warrior he had ever performed. His move carried them down to the ground at immortal speed for a landing he controlled with levitation. Without giving her time to react, he twisted her into an armlock known for ending matches—Heavy Slumber.
It couldn’t be this easy.
“That’s more like it,” Solia said.
Heat flashed from her skin everywhere their arms were twisted together. Lio gritted his teeth and held the lock. A moment longer, and he could win.
Solia laughed.
The heat seemed to burn into his thoughts, searing them away like the sun. Impossible. This was pure mageia. Fire magic, affecting his body. It couldn’t affect his mind. And yet his senses groaned, teaching him the meaning of Hesperine weakness to magefire.
With a hiss, he released Solia and rolled out of her reach before she could use his retreat to her advantage. He was vaguely aware of the gasps of disappointment and calls of encouragement from the Charge.
Both on their feet again, they circled each other.
“Is that all you have to offer, silkfoot?” she demanded.
It was the wrong insult for her to choose. The reminder of Tendo only galvanized him.
Lio let loose. He threw every intermediate move he knew at her, combining rudimentary ones in ways he had never imagined before this moment. He now gave all the Will that controlled his thelemancy over to his body, schooling every muscle as he punched and kicked, blocked and dodged.
Every time he landed a hit, a searing flash of heat punished him. He no longer had to measure the force of his strikes. He couldn’t deal her more than glancing blows before her magic repelled him.
“Why Cassia?” Solia’s fingers were a burning vice around his wrist. “You could have any Hesperine in Orthros, any woman from the Empire.”
“None of them are my Grace.” He twisted out of her searing grasp and followed through with a punch.
She stopped his fist with her glowing palm. “That reason is not enough. The fact that you will die without her tells me nothing about why you love her.”
Did she think that was a hard question? “I fell in love with her before I knew she was my Grace.”
“Why?” She sent a lick of flame nipping at his heels.
He refused to retreat, and evaded to the side instead. Amid the smells of sweat and brimstone, he remembered the first time he had caught Cassia’s scent, so full of life on the night he had first witnessed death. “She’s a survivor. That inner beauty stunned me when we met. She had fought for every scrap of life, and yet her Will remained unbroken.”
“You think you’re rescuing her from the cruel human world to carry her around on a silk cushion for the rest of eternity?” Solia hurled a vicious punch at his face.
Lio laughed and evaded the blow. “She only lets me carry her on special occasions. Cassia is always too busy changing the world for me to rescue her from it. And that is more beautiful still. Her cunning. Her anger. Her power.”
“Do you appreciate how powerful she is? She always has been. And she will only become greater. What if she grows more powerful than you?” She swung her fist at his jaw again.
Lio levitated out of her reach this time, watching fire spring up where he had stood. “She already is, in many ways. I’m a Hesperine, Solia. Not some Tenebran man who needs women to be weak in order for me to feel strong. I would never hold Cassia back. I will always lift her up, even when that means helping her higher than I can reach.”
“How dare you quote Ukocha at me!”
They circled and lunged around the fighting ring. She herded him where she pleased with her magefire.
Lio kept his voice calm. The key was to let her lose her temper while he kept his. “Perhaps it would help if you tell me why you are so angry with me. I will work hard to make amends if I have wronged you.”
“You seek to cleave Cassia from mortal existence,” she accused.
“Remember what I promised you. I will never, ever take her from you.”
“Immortality will always be a veil one of us cannot cross.”
