Page 46 of Enchanted Shadows
“Was counting on it.” I spun around him.
At one point we both used our power tomake it seem like ice beneath us, spinning and turning around trying to get one another faster than the eye could normally process.
I glanced over at the women, thinking by this point they had to be bored, but instead I found them all watching intently. A few whispered and looked as if they needed snacks to properly keep enjoying what they were witnessing.
I managed to advance on Miles, and then dropped my shoulder and launched him over my back.
Unfortunately, I had trained him well, so he rolled and used his magic to land himself back on his feet a few yards away.
On and on we went, until we were both glistening in sweat. I was about to just call it a draw when Miles swung at my feet, suspecting which direction I would spin away from him, and caught my arm with the sword, bending it backward.
He had my arm in a lock.
“Drop it,” Miles panted. “Drop it and we can be done.”
I looked at the women before me, their eyes wide. They were surprised I could be beat. And that made me smile.
I wasn’t beat yet. It wasn’t in me to yield to anything. I was merely taking a little break.
My arm muscles were screaming at me from my wrist all the way up to my shoulder, but I allowed him to lock me down, using his stability over my body while I kicked out and threw my body over his, ripping my arm out of his grip when I did.
In three quick moves, I had my weapon to his neck.
“Dammit, Raikes. I didn’t want to dislocate your arm or break your collar bone again,” Miles explained. “You okay?”
The pain in my arm wasn’t done yet. Likely meant I pulled a muscle somewhere. “I will be?”
Just then a strong breeze knocked me into Miles, our heads colliding.
“You’re both knuckleheads, you know that?” the queen of Wylan stated.
I knew she was on the way, had felt it while we were sparring.
The women were all scrambling to bow to her, but Jorah stopped them before saying to Miles and me, “Please don’t almost break each other’s arms because you’re stubborn.”
I gestured for the women to start their own matches and headed over to Jorah. I had asked her to check in today.
“Do you need to see a healer?” she snapped.
“I’m fine,” I lied. It still hurt like hell, but I’d learned with most injuries, the most it ever hurt was immediately following. It eased up after the initial pain.
She rolled her eyes in annoyance.
I put up a sound barrier around the three of us. “Look. I will make this short and sweet. With the end of this first session of training coming up in a few weeks, I just wanted to see what you wanted to do for the celebration.”
She thought on it. By this point she’d been to dozens of similar training events for the other classes I’d trained. Normally the trainees and their families were invited to the castle to celebrate the end of the first round. It was one of my favorite parts of training. Watching people put in the hard work and then allowing them to see their loved ones after some time away.
Miles offered, “We’re going to need multiple teams present to make all loyalists behave. A damn heavy presence in the castle. Do you really think it’s worth it to even attempt to do it?”
Jorah opened her mouth to respond, but I was already snapping, “Yes. You got to celebrateyourtraining, so why shouldn’t they?”
Jorah smiled at me with approval. “Precisely what I was thinking.”
“And what about their attire?” I asked.
Jorah tilted her head to the side.
“I assume that you have Flora making a female variation of formal guard gear? Because the end of the first round of training iswhen we normally get that. Typically, we wear our formal wear on the night of the dinner.”
