Page 41 of Beast of Blood and Ash
“Again!” I barked, because letting her rest was no mercy. The sound of her harsh breathing, the grit of sand under our boots, the sting of old fear sharp in her scent, every detail hammered into my brain, a map of her limits, her will.
She spat sweat from her lips, glared, and charged again. This time, I let her connect. The blow caught my forearm, a jolt of pain more satisfying than any easy win. I let the force knock my guard aside. In battle, holding ground gets you nothing. Surviving means yielding, striking back at the right moment.
“Good,” I grunted. “Use your weight. Use surprise. This is not about trading blows until someone falls. It’s about ending it before you bleed.”
And then, when she staggered, breath hitching, hands shaking, eyes gone glassy with fatigue and shame, I pressed the lesson home.
“The most dangerous moment is when you’re pinned,” I said, circling her. “When your attacker is sure he has you and you think you’re already dead.”
She paled, the memory of every time she’d been held down flickering across her face, but nodded once. Absolute, fatalistic.
I moved in. Slowly, telegraphing every bared inch of threat. I didn’t reach for her like a monster. I let her see me, let her brace, let her decide not to run. Then I swept low, my weight brute and unstoppable—her staff went one way, her body another. In a heartbeat, I caged her on the sand, one forearm pinning her shoulders, my chest pressing down. Just a technique, one that had saved my life a dozen times in Ignarath’s pits.
But the stink of old fear erupted in my senses. I smelled it before she even moved. Pure, animal terror, hot, sharp,chemical. Her whole body went rigid beneath me, her eyes wide and lost, not looking at me but at something far away and terrible. I heard her breath snag, high and broken. Not resistance. Not anger. Just pure panic.
My own reflex screamed to finish the maneuver, to hold her down, force the lesson, make her fight through it. That was how Ignarath taught. Pain. Shame. You learned or died.
But I was not Ignarath.
Not anymore.
I released her. Slowly. Every movement open, hands showing, my body melting back off her before she even had to breathe. I pulled away, sat back on my heels, and forced my voice into something soft as sand after rain. “Deep breaths,thravena. Center yourself.”
She blinked, a broken bird floundering back to the world, eyes darting across stone and shadow and finding me, still above her, but not a threat. Never a threat to her.
The tremors in her limbs broke to shame, then fury, then brittle exhaustion. She glared at me, burning with a pride that I would not break by force.
I sat and let her come back to herself. The silence rang, full of everything I did not say. “That’s right,” I said. “We’re not in Ignarath. It’s me,” I managed, aware of my claws digging so hard into my palms that I smelled blood. “You survived. That is more than most can say.”
Her chest heaved, a wild flutter of breath. Her jaw worked, grinding back everything she wanted to say.
Then, raw and ragged, she shoved herself to her feet, bravado a shield of filth and fire. “Again,” she rasped.
The demand was a gift.
I nodded once. If she wanted, I would give her the world all over again.
I pinned her. Not gentle, not slow, just enough to force the terror back, to make the lesson real. She didn’t freeze. She snarled. The fear in her scent sharpened, laced with rage.
She exploded beneath me. Hips twisted, elbow slamming into my side in a move I’d shown her earlier. Pain cut through nerve and bone, a precise shot to an old wound. I grunted, shock scattering my thoughts, and she was out and gone, scrambling clear, staff up again.
A survivor forged in fire. Mine.
She stood over me, panting, forehead shining with sweat, her body trembling from effort and adrenaline. Her eyes didn’t hold terror. They burned with the victory of someone who had clawed their way out of hell and wanted witnesses to the scars.
I bared my teeth, a twisted smile. “Good.”
The wariness never left her body, but her chin lifted. She had tasted power, and it was more intoxicating than any honey or gift. For a moment, we stood, two feral beasts, neither willing to break that new, tenuous peace.
I moved to the wall and slid down, passing her the battered waterskin. She took it, hand bumping against my claw in a flash of accidental intimacy. Her breath rasped, still hot with fighting, but the panic was gone. In its place lingered something sharper—resolve.
We passed the waterskin in silence, shoulder to shoulder. I noticed a fresh scrape along her arm, a thin line beaded with blood. I tensed, fighting the urge to snarl at myself. Blood always found her, even by accident.
She caught me looking, her mouth twisting as if she expected a lecture.
Instead, I nudged her arm. “Let me.” I drew a clean cloth from my pack, something I always carried, a habit from years of patching up allies and rivals in the pits. She let me tend the wound, my big hands awkward around her delicate skin, but Ikept the touch careful, reverent. I wiped away the grit, pressed the cloth to stop the bleeding, wrapped the cut with a strip torn from my shirt. Her pulse beat against my fingers, rapid but steady.
She leaned in closer. That small surrender flickered through me like hope, brittle and wild.
