by Alex Lidell
Allowing the blade to bite him deeper, Coal used the opening to close the distance with River, even though it meant sliding his own flesh along the sharp blade. River’s eyes had only a moment to widen before he felt the sharp point of a dagger that Coal had pulled from stars knew where against the soft triangle of his throat.
“Yield.” Coal’s voice was ice, his blood still dripping onto River’s blade.
4
Lera
The sight of Shade leaning against the fence of our training corral, hands stuck casually in his trouser pockets as he speaks with Coal, sends a ripple of energy through me. In some ways, the two males couldn’t be more different, Shade’s long black hair, kind eyes, and relaxed shoulders an utter contrast to Coal’s crossed-arm glare. Yet, the pair’s size and power —not to mention their chiseled, beautiful faces—set them apart from the rest of the group. As does my body’s instinctual hum upon seeing them together.
I am not the only one humming, it appears. By the time Arisha and I duck under the training yard fence—Arisha sneezing and nearly hitting her head in the process—the female half of the class has migrated closer to the chatting pair. The boys strut about the edges of the court, practice swords in hand and chests out. One hair away from pissing in the corners just to mark their territory.
Coal’s gaze catches me as I straighten, his blue eyes dark and feral. The sudden intensity of even such a causal connection sends a ripple of energy along my spine. Unwelcome energy. The male hasn’t come near me since we mated in the cave, always calling a change in rotation anytime we come close to facing each other on the sands. It’s taken weeks to build up the emotional calluses to feel nothing for the oversight, and I little want to surrender the hard-won shields over a single glance.
“Are we learning field medicine today, Master Shade?” Katita steps close to Shade and Coal, breaching the two paces of empty space everyone else leaves around them. With her long legs and shining blond hair whispering in the wind, she has the grace and looks to match her confidence. When Shade gazes down at her and smiles, golden eyes flashing in the sun, my jaw clenches so hard, I can hear my teeth scraping together.
“Not today, but I do like the notion,” Shade says, clapping Katita on the shoulder. “I will speak with Coal about working it in if there is general interest?” He says the latter part as a question, his voice rising to encompass the ring.
Most everyone nods, the girls all but bouncing on their toes.
I cross my arms. The day has barely started and I already want it to be over—want to go out into the night with my sword and do something I know will make a difference. At least the sclices and Yocklol trees see the true me and find me worthy enough to warrant killing.
“Why are you joining us today, Master Shade?” one of Katita’s friends asks, a delicate olive-skinned beauty who’s somehow even shorter than I am.
“Because you will be rendering each other unconscious this morning.” Coal barely raises his voice, but the entire training pitch falls silent. Feet shift, faces losing color.
Dressed in his usual black pants, today Coal wears a sleeveless leather jerkin over a black shirt that covers his arms to the biceps. Some distant part of my brain registers that this is unusual for him—but stops short when it gets to the ropes of muscle twining around his forearms, shifting beneath his skin as he strides to the center of the ring.
“There are two primary types of chokes,” Coal says, making a motion with his finger that has the class circling around him. “Wind and blood. You all will feel both today. Osprey, come here.”
I jerk. Me? Why? Coal never chooses Lera the cadet. Not for anything. As he brusquely beckons me toward him, eyes still on the class, I feel that same unnerving tingle rush along my spine as I had when our gazes met earlier.
I stop before him, but the male circles behind me, Shade’s sudden alertness making me tense. As he disappears from my sight, I feel dozens of eyes watching my face, waiting for the inevitable—some nervously, other with the eagerness of spectators at an execution. Shifting my weight, I strain to hear the sound of his silent footsteps, to track microshifts in his metallic scent, but catch nothing.
“Wind chokes—” Coal’s gravelly voice is so unexpectedly close to my ear that I jump, and the class chuckles softly. He clears his throat, and silence settles once more. “Wind chokes,” he says again, “compress the throat, cutting off the opponent’s air. Blood chokes compress the vessels on the sides of your opponent’s neck. Right here.” Coal’s calloused finger traces along the vulnerable spot on my neck, finding my rapid pulse with centuries of experience in taking lives. A shiver races through me. For a second, all I want to do is run. Then his hand disappears, his phantom touch still lingering on my skin.
I draw a shaking breath. Coal, I remind myself as I force air again and again into my lungs. You know Coal. You trust Coal.
The words that would have put me at ease a month ago now only dry my mouth. Yes, I know and trust the warrior Coal was in Lunos. Not because Coal didn’t hurt people—he did—but because I was special. Now, I’m no more than a face in the crowd. One whom he cares little for.
I suddenly want to be anywhere but here in the ring.
“This is a wind choke.” He steps behind me again, his body now flush with mine. Hard muscles flex against my back, Coal’s heat soaking through the thin fabric of my gray training uniform to spread along skin. After a month of no contract, the intensity of Coal’s touch is almost too much to bear. My heart quickens, a zing of unwelcome need rushing through my core and sex. A heartbeat later, the blade of Coal’s forearm rests knifelike against my throat, and the sensations change altogether.
Despite the light pressure, I feel each fragile ring of cartilage in my throat, hear their coming crunch beneath a tighter hold. The rush of panic hits me so hard that my ears roar. My hands shoot up to grab his forearm, my body twisting like a fish out of water.
He releases me, his fingertips resting lightly on my shoulder while I rub my throat. My chest heaves with shallow breaths.
“A wind choke is painful from the start,” he tells the class, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. As if he expected my reaction. And demonstrated on me anyway. “Thus—as you just observed—your opponent will struggle long before her air truly runs out. In contrast, the effects of a blood choke will sneak up on the adversary. Additionally, while an opponent might fight without breath for a time, he cannot function with the blood flow halted. This is also why it is vital to know what a blood choke feels like. You must be aware of what you will and will not be capable of if attacked this way. To demonstrate…”
Before I can stop myself, my body takes an involuntary step away from him.
The class laughs, the grating bellows of Katita’s cousins Rik and Puckler rising above the rest. They’d laughed that way in the stable too, as they tried to force a horse’s bit into my mouth.
Shade’s golden eyes flash in warning as Coal’s scent spikes behind me. He grips my shoulders, dragging me back with a primal possessiveness that makes me long to rake my nails down his back in answer.
As if he’d heard my thoughts, Coal lowers his voice so only I can hear his warning tone. “Fight me, Osprey, and I will fight back. I’d stay very still if I were you.”
His words are a buzz in my ear, their sound mixing with…with a copper scent of blood. I swallow. Take another breath. The smell is still there, coming from Coal’s shirt. As if blood from an opened cut is seeping into the fabric. My magic bucks, feeling its hidden mate. Tangling with it despite my protests.
My head swims, desperate darkness and clanking chains closing around me. My shoulders scream, the scent of blood and pain filling my lungs. I yank against my shackles as if they might give, but they don’t. They never do. Behind me, footsteps get closer, metal instruments clanking against a blood-caked tray.
I gasp, blinking away the nightmare—the memory. Coal’s memory.
I’m on the training pitch, the chill ai
r biting my skin. The class watching. Overhead, a drafting falcon lets out a hunting cry. With my back flush against Coal’s hard body, I can feel each of the male’s unyielding muscles, the light rumble of his chest as he explains the move. If he felt our magics tangling as I did, he shows no sign of it. I certainly felt them, though. Stars, the echoes of Coal’s horrors have not been so soul-strikingly raw since they overwhelmed our bond in Lunos, so early on. With flashes like this, I’ve no notion how the male functions.
A heartbeat later, as his thick arm slides around me, I don’t have the time to care either.
My chin drops instinctively, protecting my vulnerable neck. A futile move against Coal, but my mind can’t think over my still-hammering heart. I want out of this restraint. Out of this demonstration.
“Cooperate, Osprey.” He drives a knuckle beneath my chin, the bruising pressure forcing my head up. In the next second, his arm comes around my neck neatly, the bend of his elbow pressing the vessels on both sides.
For an instant, nothing happens and I think the choke failed. Then dizziness hits, panic riding its wings.
“Stop fighting, Lera,” Shade’s voice calls through my haze. “Trust him.”
No.
No. No. No. Shade, all these cadets, they all think Coal’s a human soldier. But I know it’s an immortal primal predator who attacks me now. So much more wounded and dangerous than anyone in the Academy can begin to imagine. Trust him? Once, I would have. Now, after a month of the veil amulet squeezing his mind, he is nothing but a beautiful, deadly stranger who rouses my body in a primal way I can’t help.
I slam my elbow back into Coal’s ribs, the impact waking a strength inside me. Again. Again. My heart pounds against my ribs, Coal’s arm a tightening inescapable noose. When I try to take another hit, he arches me backward, reducing my resistance to no more than child’s play.
Whistles, then chuckles sound from the class.
“This isn’t the time for a sparring match, Lera,” Shade orders, a dark blur in my side vision. “Tap out, or stop it.”
I can’t think. With blackness descending, I slash my nails over Coal’s forearm so hard that I can smell the blood leaking through broken skin, its scent mixing with his older wound.
“Enough,” Shade bellows.
Coal throws me down to the sand. When our eyes meet, specs of purple dance amidst the blue of his gaze, the roused magic potent enough to show itself in the mortal world. A heartbeat passes, and the magic dies, Coal’s chest heaving in a mirror to my own. In that moment, I know that he had felt it after all, the bridge linking our fears and nightmares to each other. Our desires.
“Find a partner you trust enough to let him render you unconscious,” Coal calls to the class, struggling to corral his breath, never taking his gaze off me while the sobering crowd looks on in silence. “Or at least to release you if you tap.”
As I had not trusted him. That knowledge too is plain in Coal’s shuddering gaze as he twists away so quickly that sand flies into the air.
The tolling Academy bell nips at my heels, quickening my steps through the dark grounds. A soft spring breeze makes the decorative Ostera lanterns sway almost eerily, carrying the heady scent of flowering jasmine. Despite the morning’s training disaster with Coal, the day has improved exponentially with Arisha’s news that Gavriel’s tests against my last Yocklol sample proved promising. The two caveats to the potion I’m supposed to shoot at the creatures are its long preparation time and short life span. That, and the need to hit the things in the eye.
“We can do a test tonight at nine,” Arisha had told me at dinner, her voice dropping to slide beneath the polite din of other finely dressed students, most discussing the upcoming celebration. “Taking the escape route passage into account, that will leave you a twenty-minute window to find a Yocklol and deploy the eradicant. Do you think you can do it?”
Twenty minutes. Provided the Yocklols haven’t moved far, it should be possible, though difficult. If tonight’s test works, Gavriel will have a full batch for me to use tomorrow night, at the start of Ostera—when the moon’s alignment spikes magic’s potency. Unfortunately, the flaring of Ostera-spurred magic is also likely to widen the existing rip in the fabric protecting the mortal world.
On the bright side, it means I will have a good reason for leaving the bloody ball early.
Dong. Dong. Dong.
I glare at the bell. I know, I know. Eight thirty. Just enough time to change out of my dress into leathers and use the nightly cover to get to my exit point. My blood courses quicker at the thought, the fresh air of freedom and adventure calling on the light wind. Now that I’m not fighting it, I like Lera the fae a great deal more than the cadet.
“Lera!” Despite the formal evening dress code, Tye is in his training grays, his red hair mussed with sweat. When the male falls into step beside me, the scent of his male musk mixes with the pine and citrus that is always Tye, rousing my body to his fake familiarity. The heat of recent exercise radiates from his large, lithe body, his corded arms trembling slightly in proof of heavy exertion.
Training for next month’s Prowess Trials. As if they matter. They do matter. To this Tye, they do.
“Good evening.” I give Tye a curt nod, stiffening against the blaze of desire the sight of him sends through me, my thighs clenching of their own accord. Then I remember the questions the intensity of our coupling gave rise to, and force my mind back where it belongs. “I’m surprised you aren’t still twirling around a wooden bar.”
He grins, his beautifully sharp face and emerald eyes lighting with a mischief that kindles a fire inside my chest. “It broke.” His grin widens, the male not realizing I know him well enough to read through those sparkling green eyes to the uncertainty beneath. “Speaking of breaking things, would you be doing that to my neck if I, say, asked you to accompany me to the Ostera ball tomorrow?”
I trip over my own feet. For a moment, the growing warmth inside my chest spreads south, the image of Tye’s feline grace spinning around the dance floor making more than just my mouth water. In Lunos, the five of us came together beneath the magic’s pull without true courtship—and the tingling excitement of being invited to a simple dance is both new and intoxicating.
A corner of his mouth twitches, his eyes playing over me. “Is that a yes, I’ll come with you?” he drawls. My immortal senses pick up the sweet tingle of Tye’s arousal as he leans down to whisper into my ear. “Or yes, you’ll attack me like you did Coal? I might enjoy that, though.”
My face heats, but not even the morning’s embarrassment is enough to douse the excitement. Reality, however, is. I’ve other plans for the evening, and even if I didn’t, I can’t answer the questions I know Tye wants to ask. Plus, the other plain truth is that I dance worse than I read. Calling more attention to the deficiencies of my noble upbringing will draw scrutiny. Questions. Especially when I’d have to run out on him at midnight.
No. I’ll go to the ball as expected, prop up the wall for a few hours, and retire to more pressing duties. After a month of working male-free, I finally have myself in a fighting set of mind. One that I know better than to compromise.
His eyes dim as if he’s read the change in my thoughts. Or smelled it. “You’re turning me down, lass?”
“We both agreed that our tussle in the bathhouse was for the pleasure of the moment.” I hug my books to my chest, the hurt flashing in Tye’s face squeezing my heart. “That’s all I was looking for. Weren’t you?”
His jaw tightens. “Of course.”
Turning on his heel, he strides away before I can say anything more. Not that I have anything to utter. Despite knowing I did the right thing, my stomach pulls tighter—whether in regret over hurting Tye or self-pity over stepping away from the male I love, I don’t know.
Dong. Dong. Dong.
Damn. I hurry my pace across the central courtyard, my mind already calculating the location of each piece of gear to make up lost time. To make myself ignore the nag
ging ache in my chest.
“Leralynn.” River’s voice hits me in the back just as I’m about to step into the safety of the trees.
I swallow a curse. It is well past eight in the evening, a time when getting through the Academy unharassed never poses a problem—bar the one day when I’ve a fickle eradicant to deploy. For a moment, I contemplate feigning deafness, but even I know better than to play such games with River.
Turning around, I bow to the male, begging the stars to make whatever he wants quick. “Sir?”
The few cadets still out veer off to give the deputy headmaster a wide berth. I wonder if it’s the same distance they’d keep from any senior officer or if, without being aware, they feel the aura of centuries of power that River carries on his shoulders.
He gestures his head toward the reflection garden ahead of us, his hands clasped behind his back as if he is taking a leisurely stroll.
My stomach tightens, my gaze darting to the sky to check the moon’s position. Gavriel and Arisha will be making their way to the meeting point by now, wondering where the bloody hell I am.
“Are you expected somewhere this evening?” River inquires with a raised brow, his too-rich voice scattering across my skin.
“The library.” Holding up one of my books, I try to conjure up an air of studious intent. “I’ve a bit of work to catch up on still.”
“I’d always thought the library was located in the opposite direction,” says River.
“My life would be simpler if you occasionally stopped thinking,” I mutter, clearing my throat quickly. “I wanted to change first. Might I go about it, sir? Arisha is waiting for me to study.”
“Why the hurry?” His voice lowers enough to send a chill down my spine. “Copying another’s work can’t possibly be all that time-consuming.”
5
