“Not like that.”
“Not like Aelin.”
“No.”
Jinneth nodded. She tapped her chin. “Now, I don’t want to be a fighter like you, yeah? I ain’t no bulky fightin’ bitch.” She tried on a small smile. “But mayhaps we . . . mayhaps you could teach me to use that dagger ye be carrying there off your hip?”
When our eyes locked, a promise was molded between us. “I’d like nothing more, my friend.”
“Faster!” Lukain belted.
He took aim and threw another wooden dagger at my face. The grayskin’s speed was blinding, but I had learned to watch his arm and the tilt of his eyes rather than the dagger in his hand.
I split left a hair’s-breadth before the dagger thwacked against the wall behind me—
Only to take another thrown rapid-fire to my leg as I made it two steps. The dull throb of the dagger, wooden though it was, made me yip.
Master Lukain sighed. “You were supposed to zig and zag. What happened? You didn’t zag.”
“Sorry, Master. Distracted.” I was playing nice today—all “master” this and “sir” that. I hoped he didn’t know I was planning something.
I rubbed the red welt on my thigh. At least the projectile hit the meaty part of my leg and not the bone of my hip, like the last one did.
I was startling to hobble, which Lukain noticed.
“You might face grayskins like me in the ring, little grimmer. Humans? They don’t move fast enough to dodge strikes like that.”
I tilted my head. “Yet you expect me to?”
“You need to bebetterthan humans, is what I’m saying. If you want any chance against my kind.”
Letting out a sigh, I leaned back against the wall, crossing my arms under my chest and propping up my foot behind me. “What about fullbloods? Will I have to fight them?”
Lukain shook his head. “Purebloods don’t watch other purebloods fight for entertainment.”
“So that’s what this is then? Entertainment for the noblebloods in Olhav?”
“Did you have delusions it was anything else? Who do you think I am, Sephania, a rebel dhampir raising an underground armed militia?”
I smirked. “It had crossed my mind.”
“You think too highly of me.”
My shoulders lifted in a shrug. “When you killed that questioning boy I arrived with, I saw the fury on your face, Master. Youhatepurebloods.”
“How astute.” His voice and affect fell flat.
This was a dangerous subject. I knew there was real rage under the surface of that handsome face.
“Why?” I asked anyway.
Lukain took a step toward me. His stride was slow and measured. I could feel the heat of his body, fresh from sweat of chucking wooden daggers at me all day, trying to get me moving faster.
“Worry about yourself and what you have to look forward to,” he answered. His eyes took me in, and for the first time I felt like he was seeing me differently.
In a short time, I had grown strong and fierce. I’d seen men look at me this way my entire life, and had learned to capitalize on it when it suited my purposes.
If Master Lukain Pierken was looking at me as hispropertynow . . . it was a different sort of property than he was used to.
