Page 267 of Dirty Hit

Nik took stance: a dip to his knees, shoulder-width apart. His wrist twisted with his blade, warming up to the weight of it. His eyes homed in on her.

Zaiana shifted one leg back a fraction and folded one arm behind her back.

Nik’s smile stretched at her arrogant position.

“If you think I won’t scratch your pretty face, you’re mistaken,” he said.

“You can try.”

He moved first, and she waited for it. Zaiana sidestepped with practiced ease and swung her blade in a low arc toward his ribs. Nik pivoted sharply, avoiding her strike by mere inches. He retaliated with a feign to her left, which she played into, knowing he would take the opening of her right. As his sword hand swung, her body bent, right leg kicking high and slamming into his wrist.

The Farrow Sword clanged loudly across the platform.

“Your footwork tricks are amateur,” she said lazily.

Nik rubbed his wrist with a contorted expression of pain and surprise. He retrieved his sword, rolling that wrist a couple of times. He angled his blade toward her with more reverence this time.

“Now it’s my time to have fun.”

She didn’t get to respond to that when he darted for her in his next breath.

Zaiana twisted, kissing their steel for a long note that sang through the motion of her arm.

“Predictable,” she said, bored.

This time, Zaiana charged, her blade moving in quick, precise patterns. Nik had a great focus, countering every attack, but she was relentless. Zaiana fell into a familiar acute and lethal calm that had her moving faster and faster on instinct. The room didn’t exist—Nik himself barely existed—when all she knew was one long blade to avoid and a body to cut down.

Zaiana saw her opening to end it with a kick to his torso. She should have landed the kick, but Nik avoided it a split second before, catching her ankle before her foot would have knocked the wind out of him hard enough to fell him to his knees.

Her eyes snapped to his with incredulity. Nik yanked her ankle, believing it would crash her to the ground, but Zaiana wasn’t giving up that easily.

She caught herself on her hands and turned her body in a back flip. She landed on one foot, immediately swiping her sword horizontal, but he jumped over it. She growled in annoyance. He shouldn’t have avoided that either.

Then it hit her—Nik was reading her thoughts. Seeing her next move a second before she made it. Though she’d asked him to train her to block it, the cheat still riled her.

Knowing what he was doing, Zaiana tried to trick him with her intention, but he read her real one right after it, parrying against her attacks no matter how many times she changed her mind. That wouldn’t work. She had to block him.

“It can work.” Nik answered her unspoken thoughts.

Her teeth ground.

“You can work out how to send a trick thought then block me from seeing your next.”

“You’re not showing mehow,” she grunted, hitting his blade again and again in their dance around the ring.

“It’s mostly going to happen in practice. You learned how to master aruin—you have great control of your own mind already.”

Nik stopped the fight by taking two long strides backward.

“Again,” Zaiana demanded.

Nik huffed. “I’m afraid my teaching hour is over, and yours has just begun.”

Zaiana frowned in confusion. Then she felt the new presence enter the training hall.

Faythe Ashfyre strolled in, dressed in Rhyenelle fighting attire and carrying one of the wretched ruins in a box.

Nik sheathed his sword, stepping down from the platform.

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