Page 36 of Descent

As soon as I see Ero, another feeling takes over, drowning out the sour sickness from moments before. Heat and fire blossom in my stomach. Without a second thought, I sprint toward the center of the court, launching myself at him.

Ero turns his head from the wooden practice dummy he’s battering with his forearms just in time to see my foot flying at his face. His eyes widen a fraction before he snatches my calf. With a sudden heave, he swings me away, tumbling through the air.

Twisting in mid-flight, I round off into a crouch, my fingers digging furrows in the dirt as I slide to a stop.

“Good morning,” Ero grumbles, cracking his neck from side to side with an audible pop.

“Decent. Good to see your instincts are sharp as ever,” I snap.

“They have to be. It’s barely midmorning and you’re already trying to kill me.”

“Try to make it to lunchtime, if you can.”

But I’m the one on the ropes a second later when he kicks dirt up, arrowing through the haze from my left. He was just?—

How the fuck did he get over there?!

I barely dodge, flicking my hair to the side to distract him and redirecting my side flip into a low spin. My heel catches his foot, tripping him up. Hopping over the stumble, he turns toward me just in time to take my scything elbow to the sternum, knocking him back with a gust of breath.

Something almost like a laugh shudders as the wind blasts out of him.

The sound is so shocking I almost miss his recovery. Flinging back his hands as he falls, Ero catches his weight, bent fullybackward, and kicks his legs back in a snap. The momentum launches him back to his feet.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I growl, backing away as I block a flurry of blows from his fists, his feet. It’s like the more danger he’s in, the better he gets.

And goddamn it, it challenges me like nothing else.

“I shit you not!” he barks, ducking back as I arc into a split backflip, my first foot missing his chin, my second clipping him enough to sting.

My feet hit the ground and he’s there, slipping a hand through my reach, twisting my arm behind me. Ha. Got him.

“My turn!” I shift with the flow of his grapple, bending farther than he can, using his arm as a fulcrum, tucking my knees and hooking one leg around him as I drop like a deadweight, overbalancing him. Bracing against his shins, I drag him with me, flipping him onto his back.

Dust settles, and I’m straddling him, a knife to his throat.

“Nowthatwas spectacular.” He grins through the blood smearing his teeth.

Fucking. Audacity.

“Try topping that.”

His eyebrows twitch upward right before an explosive lunge lifts both of us off the ground and through the air. It all happens so fast I barely have time to process.

All I know is that I’m suddenly on my back, with his hands pinning my wrist. With my mind racing in all sorts of directions, all of them filthy.

“I’d rather topyou,” he retorts, his eyes smoldering.

9

ERO

“Where are you?”

“I’m right here where I said I would be,” Circe hums, instantly making my jaw clench.

“Helpful. I still don’tseeyou,” I grit through my teeth. She’s been pushing my buttons since we left Italy. Like she wants our first mission to fail. Or maybe she’s just hazing me.

After days of training and strategizing together Ananke gave us out first assignment. Our skills are more than a match for each other, complementary even. I started to think we were going to make this work.

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