Page 41 of Synodic

“That’s Dyani,” Ven whispered, seeming to know exactly where my eyes had landed. “She is one of our strongest warriors.”

Dyani disarmed her opponent with a vicious swing and kicked him to the ground, leaving him panting in the dirt.

“That’s her twin brother, Demil. Also a great fighter but second to his sister. Don’t make her mad or you’ll be the one on the ground.”

My eyes took in her feminine warrior body dressed in traditional Wyn attire, albeit slightly more combat friendly with thicker panels of protective gear. She wore tight but flexible pants and a henna-red jerkin that hugged and moved with her sinewy body. She must have felt the prickle of my gaze watching her because she turned and looked at me with glaring feline eyes.

She made her way towards Ven and me, her pulled-back tresses swaying behind her like an ivory pendulum. Her austere face was all sharp lines and angles as if her features had been pinched from molding clay.

“So you disrupt our borders then decide to grace us with your presence,” she said, sarcasm dripping from every word. Her onyx eyes were like double-edged swords, daring me to get within wounding range.

“I didn’t know I was on anyone’s borders,” I said, matching her stare.

Watching her fight had awakened something in me—empowered me. I remembered how Graem grabbed and tore at me, and how the men from Prism held me down and touched me however they pleased without my consent. I shuddered thinking about how completely and utterly defenseless I had been against them, and I vowed never to feel that way again.

“Teach me to fight like you,” I said, glancing at her blade and all-around badassery.

“And why would I do that?” she practically huffed.

“I know something is coming, and when it gets here, I don’t want to be a burden.”

She paused, considering my answer. “Have you ever even held a blade in your life?”

My stalling silence was answer enough.

She scoffed and expertly flipped her weapon through the air, catching it by the blade’s tip. “Fine, but only so you aren’t a deadly distraction to me and the other warriors.”

She offered me the hilt, and I grabbed it in what seemed like the obvious way to grip a knife, but she only rolled her eyes.

Okay…so that was wrong.

Feeling like a fool and clearly exhibiting no finesse for this form of combat, my skin tingled under the weight of watchful eyes. A dark light flashed in my periphery, and I turned to see Rowen leaning casually against a tree, arms crossed over his chest with an amused expression on his face.

Smug, arrogant prick.

He’d made himself scarce all day long, leaving others to fetch me for him, and now here he stood, showing up at exactly the wrong time, looking like he wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. He would witness all the humiliation I was sure to endure at the hands of Dyani’s teachings, but I wouldn’t let his presence affect me. I’d trained in front of all manner of people before, though usually with the advantage of knowing what I was doing. Here, I was clearly and utterly out of my league.

Dyani briskly fixed my hand on the roughly woven hilt and kicked my stance farther apart. “Strike me,” she said unexpectedly.

Not wanting to give her the satisfaction of faltering and possibly failing this first test, I lashed out at her as hard as I could.

She easily side-stepped my attack and knocked me down as though I were a minor nuisance. The pebbles on the ground dug into my palms and knees, and my face flamed with embarrassment.

I didn’t look at Rowen. I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him or anyone else see the humiliation on my face. I turned my self-consciousness into determination and stood before Dyani, expecting some corrections, but “Again,” was all she said.

I thrust at her once more, changing my angle of attack, but the outcome was the same. With an easy side-step and a forceful kick to my Achilles tendon, she knocked me to the ground, the trace of a smile pulling on her lips.

It wasn’t hard to see where this was going, but I would take as much as she could dish. If it was her plan to get me to quit, she would soon be disappointed.

For what seemed like hours, I lunged at her in every possible way, sometimes feinting and darting, or misdirecting her attention before a swipe. I tried to catch her off guard, but every move I made ended up with me lying beneath her nose.

I was completely drenched in dirt and sweat, at a loss for how many times she’d taken me down, when she finally said, “That’s enough for your first lesson, though I can’t say I’m impressed. We’ll see if you even make it back for a second.”

“A second lesson? Does that mean I passed the first?” I asked with a little too much enthusiasm, considering how my ass was just handed to me. Somehow it felt like a win even though her glare cut me just as sharply as any blade ever could.

Leaving me on the ground, she spun away and walked past Rowen as she left.

He hadn’t moved the entire time, still leaning against that damned tree with his arms over his chest. “Interesting first lesson, Dyani. I don’t usually see that type of tutelage until at least a dozen lessons in,” I heard him say as she stalked by him.

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