Page 27 of The Ocean's Heart
He grinned, and the knots in my chest eased. He was close now. Just a few meters.
“Left again!”
I heard him clearly this time and jumped, but a blast of air hit me as my boots left the ground, knocking me back onto my previous square.
Vaarin’s bellow rang out, clear as a bell in the sudden silence. The warriors had frozen.
“Thalia,” Vaarin said. “Left, then to me. Do it now.”
But if I did that, if I moved now that I’d fucked up, wouldn’t that release the whole battlefield? “Vaarin, won’t that free them all?”
“We’ll worry about that if it happens, just?—”
The specter on the square beside me slowly turned its head and fixed glowing blue eyes on me.
Vaarin took a step toward me in my periphery.
“Don’t move!” I held up a hand. “You’ll release them all if you do.”
The wraith turned its body my way, and I drew my sword.
“Thalia, what are you?—”
“Hush and let me focus.”
The wraith attacked.
ChapterFifteen
VAARIN
“Hush and let me focus,”she demands, and something in me stills because there is confidence in those words. An age of experience, and she proves it a moment later as she swings her sword up to counter the wraith’s attack.
She dances around it, dodging its blows yet somehow managing to remain on the same square. How is it that a princess can fight like a seasoned warrior? This level of skill cannot be learned in a training room. But my questions will wait until she subdues the wraith, and there is only one way to do that.
“You must land a strike!” No easy feat against these ancient warriors, but with Thalia, the way that she parries and evades, I have hope. There is a shrewd look in her eyes, focused and intense, that tells me that she’s gauging the situation and biding her time. Still my muscles strain, the urge to leap to her defense coursing through me, but to do so would be to bring the whole army on our heads.
She was wise to counsel me to halt.
Beautiful, accomplished, wise, this woman is a unique creature indeed. My heart flutters.
A moment later, she spins on her heel, bringing her body low to avoid the swipe of the wraith’s blade and taking advantage of his exposed torso with the slice of her sword.
The wraith shatters silently into fragments of spectral energy.
She stares at the spot where it stood a moment ago and then straightens to look at me, her stormy eyes bright with the thrill of triumph, waiting for me to congratulate her. I want to. She deserves it, but the hammer of my heart and the strange sensations blooming in my blood confuse me so that when I speak my tone is brusque and angry.
“Hurry up!” I beckon her to join me. Her mouth tightens, but she obliges by leaping onto the square beside me. I want to hug her, but I instead I bark instructions. “Focus and stay close.”
I move off, slowly this time, checking back to make sure she’s watching, taking one step at a time so that she’s only a step behind me.
We make our way across the battlefield in silence, and it’s only when we reach the other side that I breathe a sigh of relief.
I turn to her, shoulders relaxing. “You did well back there.”
She lifts her chin. “I know. I don’t needyouto tell me.” She shoulders past me into the woodland. “I’m cold. Get me to shelter.”
I’ve upset her. Good. That’s good. It will add a distance between us, one that I believe is much needed if I’m to keep myself from crossing a boundary that could ruin everything.
