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“Are you proposing?” he teased, a quirk of his lips making her heart beat faster.
She slipped into her careful footwork. “Not exactly my choice of venues for such an occasion.”
“No? Where would you prefer?” Fordham mirrored her steps with approval.
“Probably not a fight to the death.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He lifted his sword and nodded once. “Ravendin’s twelve paces?”
“The Great War hero.”
“Chutrick’s art-of-war formations next?” Fordham asked.
Their blades clanged against each other as precise as a practice session. Chutrick’s method was deadly, even at practice, but neither missed a step.
“Kristoffer next?” she suggested.
She moved into a swift lunge, aiming for his exposed side. He grinned and countered with the first Kristoffer parry move. She’d seen it done hundreds of times back home. Thrust, parry, lunge, deflect. The best thing about all of these moves was that they were versatile. A person could flow through them in any order once they were mastered.
So, Kerrigan kicked out of the measured steps they’d walked into and cut between sword masters. Fordham just smiled as she came at him. He took one step backward and then another. The crowd cheered as she bullied him out of the center of the sand.
“You … are … letting me advance,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Or you’re just this good.”
“You’re not even … sweating.” She used another master’s footwork to maneuver him a few steps backward.
“You are much better than when we first started.” Fordham deflected her casually. Enough that her irritation began to show through. She was advancing, but he was making it look like child’s play.
“I’d sure hope so. I’d barely held a sword before that. I was only fighting with my magic.”
“Imagine the fight if we had our magic.”
She scoffed. “I took out Wynter with her shadows still intact.”
“Ah, but you had the ring then,” he reminded her.
The ring. She shuddered at the loss of that ring. The famed Ring of Endings, which was purported to vanquish all of its enemies. She’d thought it was a ring that made her immune to magic. A ring that the first Fae queen, Titania, had told her had healing properties. It hadn’t saved her when she needed it. Bastian had it in his possession now.
“I had my magic then too.”
His gaze softened momentarily, and he let his guard down. She took the opportunity to slice against his forearm. He took it with his calculated stoicism but pulled his guard back up.
The crowd cheered its approval, but she knew it for what it was. “Stop holding back.”
She was tired of waiting for him to fight her. He clearly believed he would win if he didn’t give her an advantage. Well, time to show him otherwise.
The first step into the Andine style caught him off guard. This time actually off guard. She watched the confusion settle onto his face as she slid almost sideways through the steps, coming around to jab him in the side and sweep his feet out from under him.
There was a thunderous boo from the stands as their hero landed heavily in the sand. She rushed forward then, brandishing her sword toward his unprotected chest, but he brought his feet up to kip to standing, his sword still in hand. He met Kerrigan’s with his own. The metallic clang rattled down her arm, and he forced her to regroup. She could see then the anger in his expression. The beast that she had unleashed by humiliating him in that way. He wanted her to win, but he didn’t want to lose. Oh, what a conundrum.
Fordham came after her then. All the ground she’d gained was quickly lost to his long strides and powerful swings. She tried the Andine style several more times for an advantage, but it was close enough to what they’d learned that it didn’t have the same impact as the first time when he hadn’t been expecting it. Now, they fought viciously, putting on the show the crowd demanded.
Minutes ticked by. Sweat dripped into her eyes. Her muscles fatigued. They couldn’t keep this up forever.
“You’re going to have to make your move now,” Fordham said.
“We can’t do this.” Her voice had panic in it now. Because the fact remained that there was only one outcome for the end of this. An outcome she couldn’t go through with.
Still … she had to make it look real.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
His brows rose in question. Then, she was sliding through the heated sand, as she had done a hundred times in the Dragon Ring. Fordham went to block her, but he was a second too late. She had a fistful of sand and tossed it up into his eyes. In the past, she would have used her air magic to swirl him in a vortex away from her. But now, she only had her wits and her tricks.
