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All the heady warmth of the past few hours cooled to ice. I wanted to return to Hywel's nest, tuck myself against his scales. But Laszlo and Asterion and the others were waiting for Hywel to wake, and I wouldn't be able to sleep and dream calmly next to him when he went to war.
"I don't want… I don't—"
Laszlo walked forward. Unlike Asterion, he knew better than to read my flinches and winces and draw away from them. His arms unfolded and his hands cupped my shoulders, steadying me. "You will not be abandoned. You will not be left alone to defend yourself."
But…but perhaps these men would fall. Would fail. If they did, I stood no chance.
I glanced over Laszlo's shoulder to the steel and iron that surrounded the room. Was there any weapon that might offer me safety? Any monster who could provide me with impenetrable shelter?
Maybe not.
But I wasn't handing myself over to Birsha like I had the first time.
"First, we fit you in armor," Laszlo said, reading my surrender. He stepped to my side, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. "It's perhaps trivial of me, but I've set aside some of the armor Hywel and I have collected from the great female warriors of history. Boudicea should be just your size, I think. Although perhaps Artemisia's might be more…optimistic," Laszlo mused, his brow furrowing as he slid away toward a large armoire.
"Were you a warrior?"
Laszlo threw open the doors of the cabinet, his wings shrugging. "On occasion, when it was necessary." He paused, head turning and eyes focused on a distant thought. "My father was a warrior. He trained me from when I was a hatchling. But that was a very long time ago." Laszlo dug through the armoire, pulling out a pair of kid leather leggings and a long dress, slitted for movement. "I prefer scholarly pursuits now, so training will likely be good for us both."
"Would you…would you fight Birsha if not for…"Me,I thought, but said instead, "Asterion pressing the case?"
"If not forAsterion," Laszlo said, eyes glancing over the edge of his glasses to me, "Hywel and I may not have heard of any concerns at all. The minotaur is quite a champion of goodness."
He struggles to find it in himself, I thought, but that was Asterion's business, so I kept it to myself.
Laszlo passed me the garments and then surveyed the room. "Now we must choose a weapon for you. A sword, I think. You'd look just like a valkyrie."
"No," I said, shaking my head. "No, not that, please. I don't want to be the woman who guides souls off a battlefield."
I don't want to be the reason you or anyone dies fighting Birsha.
Laszlo blinked through the shine of his glasses. "You're right. An Amazon's spear then. Hippolyta was about your height."
"You have Hippolyta's spear?" I asked. My mother had told me stories about the queen of the Amazons, daughter of the god Ares. She was a divinity too, like me.
She'd married Theseus, who stabbed Asterion. The many myths of the day were starting to tangle in my head. I'd spent so long in the dark, so long a possession and a physical tool for others, I'd forgotten the world I was born into, even if I'd arrived many years too late for the best stories.
Laszlo returned to my side, a spear in each hand. He passed me the older looking of the two, the thick length marked and nicked with the impact of battle.
Laszlo stepped back and raised the spear horizontally. "We'll start with stretches, how to hold and move the spear between defensive motions and offensive strikes. Do as I do."
I sighed. I would've preferred Laszlo had taken me up to his nest and bedded me, or at least let me nap as I soaked up all the goodnéktarfrom our hour in the hoard. This was decidedly not the sort of activity to feed me. But it would be good to regain some strength. And I would enjoy watching him move.
I raised the spear in my hands and nodded for him to begin.
CHAPTER18
COURTING RITUALS
“You have to remember she is nearly human," Asterion snapped.
I whimpered as his hands dug into my shoulders, but he misunderstood the sound, starting to pull away. I reached back to grab at him, and my shoulders protested that motion too. I groaned and Laszlo huffed, watching us from his armchair.
"She is no such thing. She is out of shape," Laszlo said, and then added after a beat, watching me scowl through the ache of every little movement, "Tomorrow we will only stretch."
"She doesn't need to know how to fight."
"Of course she does. All of us must know how to defend ourselves. And because she is weaker and a daughter of Hedone, she will be coveted."
