Page 51 of Great Falls Rogue
My chest squeezes, my heart hammering my ribs. If Coal raises a hand to Arisha, I will kill him, whether I can move or not.
Cocking his head, Coal takes stock of the corral. Arisha, trembling but standing her ground. Me, my eyes flashing with thunder despite my shaking legs. The cadets, tense and silent lest they bring Coal’s ire on themselves.
Striding across the pitch, he wordlessly reaches down to retrieve Arisha’s discarded blade. The chiseled muscles of his abdomen ripple as he straightens, weighing the weapon in his good hand. With controlled slowness, he stares down at Arisha, then me, from his much greater height. “I see,” he says finally, his low voice prickling along my skin. “In that case, I’ll take Tallie’s turn for her. The rest of you are dismissed for the day.”
Fight Coal?Now?The overwhelming notion presses so hard on me that it’s an effort to force air into my lungs. But I still too. Even as I watch my dripping sweat leave wet clumps in the sand, as the others hasten to make themselves scarce before Coal changes his mind, I keep breathing. Keep my chin lifted to hold Coal’s intense scrutiny.
“Still think it’s a wise idea to go battle sclices, yocklols, the Night Guard, and anything else in those woods all by yourself?” Coal asks quietly, his blue eyes riveted on my face. Beneath his fury and frustration, I mark another emotion—fear. Desperate fear of a mate that I’ll do something he can’t save me from. Coal swallows, his emotions buckled down deep once more. “Do you imagine they will care more than I do whether you are tired or not?”
I flash Coal a smile that doesn’t touch my eyes. “I imagine they will at least talk less than you do. Can we get started? I’ve some running to do yet.”
6
Lera
“Unification of the c-c-continental kingdoms is both symbolized and furthered by G-G-Great—” Standing at the front of Master Erik’sUnderstanding Islanders’ Goals and Strategies class,Kerill speaks over the tops of all our heads as if addressing a phantom listener in the ceiling.
“G-G-Get on with it,” Puckler calls from his seat.
Kerill’s freckled face darkens.
Or maybe that’s my eyes closing. My whole body aches. From bruises and strain to an odd knifelike pain that pierces my shin when I step. Despite having inhaled everything in sight for lunch, I was hungry again by the time I walked out of the dining hall—Coal watching my every step with a gaze caught somewhere between righteous and haunted.
And then, then the bastard caught Arisha and bid her to watch me. As if two hours of harsh work had rendered me a cripple.
That last burns the most. Conscripting my own friend in the campaign to patronize me. It would have been different if Coal had forced me into the stream as he once did, or let the unfiltered power of his blows tear me to shreds. But he did none of that. He just pitted me against one human after another after another. Because if I can’t keep up with a few cadets, what chancedo Ihave against immortals?
My jaw tightens. We clearly still have a long way to go before Coal trusts me to defend myself—let alone get myself safely from dining hall to dorm without wasting away. But if he imagines he can make me surrender to self-pity just by throwing a few more runs and sparring matches my way in the meantime, he has another thing coming.I never claimed I was perfect, Coal. Only that I’m the best option we have just now.
At the front of the room, Kerill shifts from foot to foot before starting his sentence again. This time, the stuttering starts on the first word, and Puckler snorts loudly.
I wait for Master Erik to call the royal down, but he just looks on with impassive eyes. Either the impending arrival of the royals’ parents makes disciplining Puckler less attractive, or else Erik wants Kerill to self-select himself out of the Academy. Either way, the master says nothing. Doesn’t even look twice at the Prowess Trials team, all sitting together in their red dress uniforms in the middle of the class. A perfect, colorful island.
Teachers already turning a blind eye to open cruelty—which bodes poorly for the next two months.
“And so it starts,” I mutter beneath my breath as I glare at the back of Tye’s tousled red head, the male’s broad back and shoulders standing out in the crowd no matter what he wears. With his long legs extended in front of him, Tye has an aura of indulgent boredom, equally indifferent to his teammates’ rudeness as he is to the simpering glances of all the female cadets in the place.What’s happening to you, Tye?
The only person Tye actively refuses to make eye contact with is me—which, at this point, I’m ready to take as a compliment. Avoidance has to be better than apathy, doesn’t it? Our coupling in the dungeon now feels like it happened between two entirely different people. I don’t see that Tye anywhere in this one—and that scares me almost as much as Sage’s announcement.
I shift in my seat, my face blanching at sudden knife-deep pain ripping through my left shin. Taking a deep breath, I wait for the blaze to settle down, staring at nothing for several heartbeats. When I rotate my ankle, the muscles along my lower leg seem to creak like a rusty door hinge, and I know I’d feel more crackling if I was to run my hand along my flesh. The thought sparks a wave of nausea to creep up my throat, and I swallow quickly.
Are you all right?Arisha’s note lands on my desk just as I recover.
Fine.My pen hangs in the air a moment too long, a drop of ink fluttering from the tip. When I jerk to save my dress, another knife blade jabs into my shin. Biting my lip, I add two more quick lines.I’m just one big aching bruise. Feel free to leave your unholy alliance with Coal any time now.
The bell rings before Arisha can reply, and I gather my things quickly, aiming to intercept Tye at the exit. As if marking my trajectory, Tye lingers by his seat until I’m too far to change course, then heads for the other door that heads deeper into the keep instead of straight onto the central courtyard.
“Just because I think that watching you for injury is a reasonable idea doesn’t mean I’m in alliance with Coal,” Arisha says with an angry swish of her brown braids as we head toward the dormitories. “After the horseshit he pulled this morning, I hope his arm blazes with infernal flame and Yocklols wither his balls.”
“I’m not injured.”I’m hurting. That’s different.I quicken my step to demonstrate my perfect walking ability, the stabbing pain in my shin making me stumble only once. “Stop looking at me as if you are waiting for a piece to fall off.”
“Fine, you aren’t injured. But you are in pain,” she says, frowning fiercely, her dress a splotch of yellow against the green-walled hedges of the reflection garden. “Tell me how bad it is.”
Right.So she can report it all back to Coal and Gavriel under someLera’s own goodumbrella. My fingers curl over the fabric of my dress. I know Arisha means well, but she doesn’t understand Coal—not like I do. Doesn’t realize that whining about a bit of discomfort would undo everything I’d won by meeting Coal’s morning challenge.
Frankly, the ongoing insistence I lay out my shortcomings for general scrutiny is wearing my nerves down. Five minutes. I want five minutes to lick my wounds without someone pointing out that I have them.
Arisha huffs. “Stop being silly. We need to tell Coal that—”
