He came up to me and thrust his sword at me. The blade reflected the last few rays of the sun as it moved toward me. Rune’s eyes flared with fear as I didn’t bring my sword up fast enough. But by some miracle, I raised it just in time to block the blow. I scrambled back a few more steps, groaning from the weapon’s weight in my hands. It was like bench pressing with someone pushing me back down and keeping me there with the added weight.
The muscles in my arms burned from the strain, and my teeth clenched as I held the position. Sweat beaded on my upper lip and at the sides of my temple, making the areas tingle from the adrenaline. My pulse thundered in my ears, but I still heard Harper whoop over it.
Rune put more of his weight into his sword against me as he stared into my eyes. As I tried pushing him back, my legs shook, and the muscles in my arms screamed as I kept the defense position. When I couldn’t hold for much longer, a whimper escaped me as I stumbled back a step. From my tiny sound, he pulled away and stepped back as he raised his weapon again. He didn’t give me enough time before he thrust it at me again at a different angle.
When I missed the blow by a hair, he tsked. “I know you can do better than this.”
I panted as I barely kept up with blocking each of his attacks. It was a struggle to raise my sword, and each time I got slower. Pieces of my hair stuck to the sides of my face and neck from my sweat, which became annoying. I didn’t have a second to push it away or even put my hair back up in a messy bun because of how ruthless Rune was.
Gritting my teeth, I blocked a blow with the heels of my boots digging into the ground. The heels of my books dragged backward with another of Rune’s heavy swipes.
“I’m supposed... to be... attacking you... not the other way around,” I said in between pants.
He chuckled and pulled back again, taking a few steps away to circle me with a gleaming look, and smirked. I turned with him, keeping my front facing him because I knew without a doubt he’d take that opportunity and tease me while making it into some teaching lesson. But it was becoming too much to even move. My hands trembled on the grip of the sword that slipped a few times from my sweaty palms. I wasn’t shaking because of being scared, but because of exhaustion.
“If I push you enough, then maybe you’ll let your other side come out to play again.” He tilted his head and stopped so my back faced the dark woods with the creepy fog. Behind Rune, off to the side, were the others, watching intently. Harper stood out with her red-brown hair that shone with lighter pieces from the setting sun. Her and Hlíf’s hair were the first to grab my eye with the way it was lighter in the stark contrast of dusk approaching. Rune shifting grabbed my attention again. “What if I tell you to stop fighting like a girl? Will you then stop holding back on me?” At my scowl, he smirked and chuckled as he took a small step toward me. “Oh, so you don’t like being told that, do you?”
I clenched my teeth and held back the anger that rose in me from what I expected he would say next. It was the stupidest thing for me to get upset over, but every time someone said I did somethinglike a girl, it made me see red. The coach who taught me self-defense learned that I didn’t like it.
And now, coming from Rune?
“Don’t,” I ground out as lightning flashed in quick succession in the distant dusk sky, followed by a rumble of thunder.
A flash of an image played before my eyes of me standing in a field, gripping my sword with lightning all around me. Some of the currents zapped along my flesh that would’ve blinded humans or hurt us, but this didn’t. As quick as the memory came, it disappeared, and I was back to glaring at Rune.
Hluti straightened from his relaxed position, his hands dropping to his sides. Slátra took a step toward Harper’s side. I wasn’t sure why they were moving to her like I was going to attack them.
Rune’s eyes darkened, and he curled his lips into a mischievous smile. He raised his sword and pointed it at me.
“You. Fight. Like. A. Girl.”
Blue and white light flashed in the dusk, followed by rumbling thunder in the distance that became louder as the storm moved in closer.
Rune glanced to the sky, and I took that moment to move toward him with three long strides. The sword was light in my grip as I raised it and swung at him. He snapped his eyes back at me and raised his weapon, catching my blade with his, and they sang as they met. He stumbled back half a step as I put my full weight into the strike. Which wasn’t much, but somehow it made him lose balance, and that pleased me.
I didn’t give him a break as I stepped back before I attacked him again. With each strike, the sword in my hand became lighter and lighter until it was nothing more than a feather.
Rune’s laughing pissed me off, making more lightning flash in the sky. The thunder got louder as I fought with Rune, which became something so much more than teaching me how to fight.
He chuckled as he dodged a blow directed to his side. “This is all you have? You can do better than this. I’ve sparred with children who can do better than this girly shit.”
Thunder clapped.
“Oooh, you’re really pissing her off,” Slátra sang and awkwardly laughed.
I struck at him over and over again, the sounds of metal clashing together mixed with the fast-approaching thunderstorm. Rune showed no signs of exhaustion as he kept up with me. It became a fluid dance between us, like we’d done this before in another lifetime. It helped solidify my guess with how my body moved that this was muscle memory. For a moment, I was shocked by how easily this came to me.
Rune was amused as he blocked each of my attacks like he knew before I did what I would do and smirked every time he made the first move. A few times, my blade missed him by a hair, causing me to clench my teeth. I wasn’t sure if it was from fear or irritation that I had been close to making him bleed.
Through our sparring, he gave me pointers, but he mostly teased me because it got a rise out of me. I quickly noticed how much he loved getting me worked up as his smiles grew more mischievous, and his laughs were louder to wind me up more.
A memory played in my mind’s eye of Rune grinning at me by my side as we sat under the blanket of the night sky with stars shining brighter than I’d ever seen in my life. The small memory brought the specific laugh he had after he teased me in a sexual manner to watch me blush and squirm.
I blinked it away as he laughed the same way when my sword missed connecting with his side. As if by memory, my body moved on its own as I put all my weight into the next strike to his side again and made it look like I over corrected. He blocked the blow with a half step back while he tapped the back of my shoulder in a move that screamed with his amusement and cockiness.
“Don’t let the enemy have your back,” he instructed.
“I didn’t,” I said dryly with a laugh while I was still bent into him.
