Finally, she got that deadly tip of Starfire beneath my chin. I breathed heavily, grinning down at her.
“I yield,” I purred. She dropped her weapon, but before she could step back, my hand snaked around her waist. Our sweat-drenched skin pressed together as I pulled her to me and kissed her desperately.
I didn’t really care who won, only that we shared the impassioned fire burning between us and the steel of our blades was forging new vows to the cursed stars.
“Want to go again?” Ophelia panted.
“Absolutely,” I said with a smirk, stepping back. And that time, as we sparred, laughter barreled between us.
We fought—unfairly on some part, like when I gripped her by the waist and tossed her over my shoulder—and Malakai and Cypherion trained beside us. Santorina joined, and the five of us took turns, forming a tournament of sorts.
Soon, Mila and Lyria came outside, and I watched my sister closely for any hints of shadows from last night. She seemed unusually chipper, and I couldn’t tell if it was forced.
Jezebel and Erista added to the rotation, the former having recovered a bit from last night, but she and Ophelia both seemed to want to use steel instead of magic today. Neither seemed ready to talk about whatever Aimee had implied.
The Engrossians and even the fae lined up to join. We started our roster over, pairing up to battle throughout the rest of the morning. The only one missing was Vale, who CK said was testing her new supplies inside.
Maybe we should have been on the move again. After last night, we should have been refocusing everything on finding the final emblem. On figuring out whateverwhere all dead and riddled secrets liemeant, along with all the other information Aimee revealed and what happened with Jezebel’s magic, but we needed this reprieve. This chance to breathe because we were only a group of young warriors and the Angels had dealt us a damn unfair hand lately.
So even if it was only a few hours, we allowed swords to clash, taunts to be thrown, bets to be made, and for a little while, in those hours behind an inn in the Lendelli Hills, everything didn’t feel so damn threatening.
“Lyria wins!”Mila called.
“You’re a biased judge,” I cursed.
“You’re a sore loser, baby brother,” Lyria mocked.
My jaw dropped open. “Such unsportsmanlike words.”
“I assure you, I could have said much worse. Do you not recall the things you heard shouted across the war camp a few months back?”
I certainly did remember, and I certainly laughed about them, too. “But you are the Master of Weapons and Warfare,” I teased.
“Then it’s only fitting that I have the best insults, no?” She lifted her sword, pointing it at me in a mock threat. “Would you like to hear some of my favorites?”
I knocked aside her blade with my own. “I’ll allow you to throw the more colorful language at your other opponents. It wouldn’t be brotherly of me to respond, and you know I can’t resist a challenge.”
“A wise choice.” Lyria grinned and flounced to the side of the makeshift sparring ring beside Mila. It was the happiest I’d heard her sound in a while, so I didn’t argue the ruling, instead traipsing to where Ophelia sat beneath a cypher.
“Resting?” I asked, dropping down next to her. The sweeping branches stretched all the way to the sand, some of the only trees able to persist the desert.
She flashed me a welcoming smile, eyes drifting over our still-sparring friends and the trees dotting the perimeter. “It’s pretty hot,” she said. Her eyes narrowed on Lancaster and Mora, sitting on the outskirts of the circle opposite us.
“True. What are you doing there?” I nodded to where she was using her dagger to whittle a branch fallen from a cypher into a lethal point.
She searched the trees again. “I wanted to keep my hands busy while I watched.”
That meant she was agitated. Not at us or she would burst with it, but atsomething. Likely the influx of information from the Storyteller.
Ophelia tilted her head, studying the carving, then scanning the sparring ring. “Rina?” she called.
Santorina jogged over, wiping sweat from her brow. “Yes?”
“That was a good disarming of Celissia.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re dropping your left elbow a bit. Watch out for that,” Ophelia said, and Rina nodded. As she turned to go, Ophelia added, “If you’d gotten that last jab through her defenses, and it went through her shoulder, would that be a killing blow?”
