Page 43 of Fourth Wing

I watch his back retreat, then retrieve my daggers, sheathing them at my ribs before returning to Dain’s side.

“What the hell was that?” he seethes. “I told you to lay low when it comes to him, and you…” He shakes his head at me. “You just piss him off even more?”

“Laying low wasn’t getting me anywhere,” I say with a shrug as Rhiannon’s opponent is carried off the mat. “He needs to realize I’m not a liability.”And I’ll be harder to kill than he thinks.

There’s no ignoring the prickle at my scalp, and I let my gaze shift to meet Xaden’s.

My heart does that damn stuttering thing again, as if he’d sent shadows straight through my ribs to squeeze the organ. He lifts his scarred brow, and I swear there’s a hint of a smile on his lips as he leaves, walking over to observe the Fourth Wing cadets at the next mat.

“Badass,” Rhiannon says as she moves to my other side. “I thought Jack was going to shit himself.”

I smother a smile.

“Stop encouraging her,” Dain chastises.

“Sorrengail.” Professor Emetterio glances at his notebook and raises one bushy black brow before continuing. “Seifert.”

Swallowing back the panic that threatens to creep up my throat, I step onto the mat opposite Oren, who’s definitely looking green now.

Right on time.

I’ve prepared the best I can, wrapping my ankles and my knees just in case he goes for the legs.

“Don’t take this personally,” he says as we start to circle, both our hands raised. “But you’ll only be a hazard to your wing.”

He charges at me, but his footwork is sluggish and I spin away, landing a punch to his kidney before bouncing back on my heels and palming a dagger.

“I’m no more a hazard than you are,” I accuse.

His chest heaves once and sweat dots his forehead, but he shakes it off, blinking rapidly as he reaches for his own knife. “My sister is a healer. I’ve heard your bones snap like twigs.”

“Why don’t you come find out?” I force a smile and wait for him to charge again, because that’s what he does. I’ve had three sessions to watch him from a few mats over. He’s a bull, all power and no grace.

His entire body rolls like he’s going to vomit, and he covers his mouth with his empty hand, breathing deeply before standing straight again. I should attack, but instead I wait. And then he charges, his blade held high in a striking position.

My heart pounds as I wait the torturous heartbeats it takes for him to reach me, my brain somehow convincing my body to hold my ground until the last possible second. He swings his knife downward, and I dodge to the left, nicking his side with my blade in the process, then turn and deliver a kick to his back, sending him sprawling.

Now.

He falls to the mat, and I take immediate advantage, digging a knee into his spine just like Imogen had with me and putting my blade to his throat. “Yield.” Who needs strength when you have speed and steel?

“No!” he shouts, but his body undulates under mine, and he retches, bringing up everything he’s eaten since breakfast and splattering it across the mat to the side of us.

So fucking gross.

“Oh my gods,” Rhiannon calls out, disgust dripping from her tone.

“Yield,” I demand again, but he’s heaving in earnest now and I have to pull my knife away so I don’t accidentally slit his throat.

“He yields,” Professor Emetterio declares, his face contorted in revulsion.

I sheathe my blade and climb off him, dodging the puddles of sick. Then I take the dagger Oren dropped a few feet back as he continues to vomit. The knife is heavier and longer than my others, but it’s mine now, and I earned it. I sheathe it in an empty place at my left thigh.

“You won!” Rhiannon says, clasping me in a hug as I walk off the mat.

“He’s sick,” I say with a shrug.

“I’ll take being lucky over being good any day,” Rhiannon counters.

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