Page 7 of Great Falls Protector
“Love the new instincts,” I murmur to Katita. The princess’s heaving breaths fill the air between us, strands of fine blonde hair now plastered to her cheeks and forehead. “Ignore heavy things trying to bash your skull in.”
“What are you doing here?” Her nostrils flare, her heart beating so quickly that I see it vibrate in her neck. She wants—needs—to win this round with the desperation of a stallion trampling his way to a mare in heat. Fevered and blind. “No one on this team can stand the sight of you.”
I believe her. And little care. Unfortunately for Katita, I’m not looking to champion the Prowess Trials. I’m looking to champion the whole mortal world. There is no option to lose.
Hooking my foot behind her ankle, I drop the girl backward. Her eyes widen in indignation as she lands hard on the sand.
“Didn’t anyone tell the dimwit that only strikes with abladescore points?” Puckler calls.
Ignoring the royal, I follow Katita to the ground, jamming my knee into a spot just beneath her rib cage so hard that she can’t draw air. Grabbing the top of her tunic with one hand and the material beside her thigh with the other, I pull up on both pieces of clothing, bending the girl’s body like a bow around my knee.
Calls of indignation race through the watching cadets, but I little care. I can see the losing struggle in Katita’s face already. One heartbeat passes, her face turning dark. Two, and her eyes flash from fury to panic to pain. Three. The sword falls from her hand, her whole being now focused on nothing but dislodging my weight. On drawing breath. A bug trying to escape the burning sun.
Grabbing Katita’s fallen sword, I slide the length of the blade against her neck, killing her over and over. “Did anyone tell you that dead by any rules is still dead?” I say. “Yield.”
“No.”
With a shrug, I put my blade right across her windpipe and press, the wood threatening the tender cartilage of her throat. The girl’s eyes bulge, her hands gripping the sand, as her legs kick out uselessly.
“I can do this much longer than you’d enjoy, Your Highness,” I tell her coolly.
“Go. To. H—”
“Forfeit.” Han’s voice rings out across the sand a moment before his hand closes on the nape of my neck, throwing me off Katita and face-first into the ground.
Spitting sand from my mouth, I rise in time to see Han drag Katita up by the front of her shirt, the girl’s eyes glazed with unshed tears.“I didn’t yield, sir.” Her voice sounds small. Desperate. “We weren’t standing, so Lera’s strikes won’t count for points. Please. My father is coming and—”
“And I’m not going to embarrass the Academy by letting him see the rubbish you just called a fight,” Han finishes for her. His voice is ice, but he looks polished, calm—no sweat on his forehead, not a single black hair out of place. “If you can’t tell death when it’s pressing down on your throat, you’re too dim-witted for the slot. Ten laps around the Academy, and when you crawl back, I’ll let you stay on as an alternate.” Throwing Katita onto the sand like he did with me, Han meets my eyes. Their cold blue-gray depths send an eerie shiver through me, and I have to fight not to look away.
“Let me be clear, Osprey—you’ve won Katita’s slot by virtue of your mutual stupidity. One cadet was too idiotic to remember the rules and the other too dim to take reality into account.”
I stand, dusting myself off, and, after a moment of considering, decide to keep my mouth shut.
Han snorts. “You have what you wanted. Whether you keep it—or survive it—is entirely up to you.”
Three hours later,I discover Han wasn’t kidding about my survival being in question. While the rest of the team rotates through stations varying between general fitness and event-specific techniques, I spend the time in nonstop sparring sessions with whoever is an odd man out. The setup, which seems comfortingly familiar at the onset, becomes something else entirely when Han instructs the cadets to provoke me into breaking the rules and then punishes me each time I do.
A method—like everything else he does—designed to win athletics events and lose battles.
At the end of the training, Han tells everyone to get cleaned up and change into clean uniforms for the midday meal—which I realize I will now be eating with this group of vipers instead of Arisha. Despite that being the plan all along, I can’t help feeling the uncomfortable twist in my stomach at the notion of sitting with a group that wants nothing more than to see me fall flat on my face.
Having busied myself retying my perfectly intact shoelaces to buy myself some breathing space, I’m the last to leave the sand, the keep tower’s bell just beginning to strike the hour.
Or so I thought. Tye steps out of the shadow of the low side exit as I approach, one muscled arm blocking the door, his pine-and-citrus scent coated with bitter anger. For a moment, the sheer proximity of the male, his bare chest glistening with sweat as it shifts with deep breaths, tricks my mind into hope. Then my gaze lifts to Tye’s ice-green eyes, and all that hope shrivels like a sun-dried grape. Taking a step back, I cross my arms over my chest and wait for him to say whatever it is he plans on tossing my way.
I’m too tired to fight. I just hope I’m too tired to feel too.
Tye advances on me with the menace of a prowling tiger, his powerful limbs picking their way across the sand. “What game are you playing at, Osprey?” His lilting accent has deepened, his shoulders spread, taking space and air as he looms over me. “First, you try to have me kicked off the team, and now, failing that, you go after Katita. What’s your angle?”
Protecting the mortal world while you are busy twirling around a bar.
“Well?” Tye presses closer now with a threatening jostle, so close I can see every freckle on his sharply carved face, the small scar on his lip that I’ve kissed too many times to count. The flecks of silver in his eyes that dazzle when he’s using his magic.
The leash I hadn’t realized I had on my anger slips with a resounding pop. My teeth grind together so hard, they screech, my heart pounding against my ribs as all the heat in my body fills my face. I hated hurting Tye. I truly did. But even knowing his barbed comments are born of perceived betrayal and pain, I’ve had enough.
“What answer can I possibly give that you’d find satisfactory?” I demand, refusing to take a step away as I know the male is attempting to make me do. Though I initially considered telling him the truth—that I’m here to be able to respond should the Night Guard strike—I no longer trust Tye not to use my own words against me. Not to pass them on to Han. A groan rises through my chest, my nostrils flaring with hot breath. “I’m here because I want to compete.”
“Since when do you care about the Prowess Trials?”
