AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“If you are not thinking, you will not be winning.” While he wasn’t wrong, I wasn’t altogether sure I needed to “win” the matches so much as I needed to burn off the anger and the hurt. The tangled weave of emotion weighed me down even as it left me sick to my stomach.
“Understood.” I pulled the sabre from its sheath and performed a series of test swings to check the balance. While I had my own weapons, one should always verify the weapons were as expected. If someone swapped them out, or if I’d made a mistake, better to find out before the match began.
“Best two of three then?” Bless him. The man had been my fencing teacher for a decade. From the first time Grandfather walked me into his studio and told him to train me, Lombardi had been both mentor and guide. He never went easy on me, but he always made sure I understood everything from the rules to the handling of the weapons themselves before he let me hold a real one.
His drills had, as much as anything, left me in pain the next day from their ferocity. But he made me stronger, more determined, and far more capable. I won at least as many matches as I lost now. Sometimes, I won more.
“Two of three,” I agreed and forced myself to take deeper breaths to control the wild thrum of my pulse. I saluted him with my sabre and he with his. The gym where we sparred was empty. I never practiced with others around. Lombardi had other students, but Grandfather never wanted me working with them in case they learned who I was.
What others didn’t know I could do, they couldn’t defend against. Since fencing was as much about the physicality and the boldness as it was about strategy, I also accepted his reasoning behind it. He didn’t want anyone to be able to use my own moves against me.
So, it was down to Lombardi to spar with me. Amusingly enough, as well as my trainer knew me and I knew him, we could still surprise each other, and I was thrilled when our matches made scoring even a single point an accomplishment.
He came for me swiftly. I raised my sabre and parried his first three blows. His rapid swings put me on the defensive. The parry, circle, parry, strike maneuver allowed me to turn the tables and then he was the one giving ground.
The frustration began to bleed away as he came for me again. The first strike sounded a soft buzzer. The bodywire helped us keep score, not that I really cared. The first to fifteen won. Then we’d dive into our second match.
Parry, riposte, strike, parry. The score began to tally up and the noise faded even as the complicated web of conflicting emotions settled. Our scores were neck and neck, but I didn’t rush him, nor did he force me to make a choice. Instead, we kept the match to a warm-up. The strike of blade to blade echoed in the air.
Every ring of metal sliding on metal helped to sand away the wild need to cry that had burned inside me since the confrontation bared our secrets to Adam and, consequently, of his presence, Bodhi. While I wasn’t worried about Bodhi’s opinion changing, I had no such assurances with Adam.
Not after his declaration that I was his. Where had that even—
A smack against my handguard nearly knocked the blade from me, though I recovered—barely.
“Focus,” Lombardi ordered and I resumed the engagement. He struck fifteen points a moment before I would have taken the match. We saluted and backed away. “Walk it off,” he said. “Catch your breath. Then again.”
I chuckled. “That was my plan.”
“Better,” he complimented me. “You’re thinking.”
I was thinking. The fact I’d been choking earlier hadn’t been lost on me. As my racing pulse steadied, I took position and brought the sabre up. When he called for the go, I was the one who put him on his back foot. We went back and forth, trading the lead, but I scored higher during this round.
While I might be panting, I was also grinning behind my mask. There was an exhilaration that flooded me when I let go and concentrated on the battle to be waged. As much as I needed to let go, and Lombardi recognized it, I’d also caught the faint limp he sported as we engaged.
He wasn’t at his best. I could slow my own pace to make the match more equal, or I could keep my eyes on the prize. His strategy could very well be to feign an injury to lull me into complacency. Ruthless might not be sportsmanlike, but in life, the spoils went to the victor—not to the fairest of players.
I took the second match, barely, because he had been feigning. Still, it was worth it. When I would have paused, to remove my gloves, Lombardi shook his head.
“You’re well and truly warmed. I have advanced students coming in to drill. You could use some sharpening.”
I was already more than a little sweaty and tired. And while the idea of a new opponent I hadn’t faced before was intriguing, I didn’t care for being surprised. “You never allow anyone to join my training times.”
“Correct,” Lombardi told me as he removed his own mask. His face was flushed and sweaty, his hair plastered to his forehead. “You’re tired now, which means you’ll be more likely to make mistakes. You need a challenge. Mentally and physically. To protect your anonymity, say nothing.”
He gave it a pause as though allowing me the time to decline the offer. “How long have you been planning this?”
“Since the last time you messaged me in the middle of the night to tell me you needed a real fight.”
I rolled my eyes. I really didn’t like being predictable.
“Then once,” I told him. “But if I don’t care for them, we won’t be doing this again.”
“Agreed.”
With that, he left me to walk it off and keep my muscles warm while I cooled down. Whomever he’d summoned must have been waiting for the message, because they stepped into the training room not ten minutes later, fully geared up.
So, we would both be anonymous.
