Again, and again, we try, and she’s a fast learner. Portaling short distances can be more difficult than traveling hundreds of miles. It requires focus. Skill.
Still, I can’t get the beach out of my mind. We are similar ...so similar. Though, at the same time, so vastly different.
Does she think of us as the same? Does she think our lives could ever intertwine at all?
She finally gets it right, after many attempts. Pride rises within me, again, as if her win is shared. As if her own flash of excitement and pleasure has elicited the same feelings within me.
Her happiness wilts away as I make some rude comment. And this, I think, is the truth of our situation.
She is a rose, blooming, and lovely.
I am a shadow, blocking out her sun.
No use in pretending anything different.
When we finish practicing portaling, we switch to swordplay. I should tell her to leave.I should leave. The gods know I have a thousand things to get done.
But I stay.
I teach her everything I can, starting with the most important lesson of all: I can kill her at any moment.
“Dead,” I say, slicing the thinnest of lines across her chest. I slice against her stomach next, slashing only her clothing. “Dead.”
My sword sweeps across her throat, and I have two alarming thoughts.
One. If I was wholly committed to saving my realm, I would kill her now. Have the augur drain her body of blood and use it to break the curse on the sword when I find it ...
Two. I imagine something very different from the thin, almost imperceptible line across her throat.
I imagine a necklace.
“Very dead,” I say, our mouths just a breath apart, and that’s how I feel.
Too far gone. Hurtling us both toward a ruinous fate.
A low growl sounds in her chest and a fire ignites in mine.Good.
The hearteater is fighting back.
She advances again and again, skillfully, until she manages the smallest cut on my chest.
She grins, and then she makes a small gasping sound as her back hits the floor.
I’m over her in a moment. “Another lesson. Sometimes your opponent will let you get a hit in, as a distraction.” My blade travels to the center of her breast. I tap once and say, “Dead.”
Her annoyance and heat rise in equal measure. “I get it. You could kill me any number of ways, including with a sword. Teach me to be better.”
I do as she says.
I teach her. I teach her everything I can, until the unlikely words, “Thank you,” leave her mouth.
Thank you.
When was the last time someone thanked me? When was the last time I did anything for anyone outside of pure obligation?
This is pure obligation, I remind myself, though it doesn’t feel that way.
The thieves in the den told us that whoever has the sword will be at a very specific event, happening soon, on my lands. “The celebration on Creetan’s Crag is in three days,” I tell her. “Before then, do me a favor, and don’t die.”
