Page 84 of Brutal Union
“You think this is about you versus me. About revenge. About pride. But I’m not here to win.” He steps forward, blade lowering. “I’m here to end the part of you that thinks we’re still playing the same game. The rules have changed.”
My grip tightens on the knives.
“You think things have changed,” I shoot back. “But you still talk like the broken little prince your father makes you.”
His jaw twitches. “I am broken,” he says, stepping into striking range. “And I rebuild myself using the ruins of what you left behind.”
He comes in faster than before. Not erratic—precise. His blade slashes at my right hand. I parry—but it is bait. His left fist comes in under my arm, striking the nerve above my elbow. The blade flies from my hand, skittering into the dust.
I spin to catch him with the second, but he catches my wrist mid-turn, wrenches it hard, and twists until the steel slips free and drops beside my boot.
Two more knives. Gone.
He drops my wrist, but holds his blade against my neck. The rusted edge hovers just beneath my chin, cold and steady, angled with surgical precision against the soft curve of my throat. A cruel courtesy—he gives me my hand back, but steals my life in the same breath. If I am anyone else—one of the nameless fools who bleed out in the dirt—my neck blooms open like a red flower, my body collapsing in a graceful, twitching heap beneath his feet.
But I am not anyone else.
I am me.
Sho’s blade stays in place, unmoving. But his eyes—those sharp green eyes, usually locked on mine like we are the only people in the world—refuse to meet me. They hover somewhere betweenmy shoulder and the blood pooling near our boots. His jaw is tight. His breath comes out uneven.
“I can’t have you breathing down my neck anymore,” he mutters, voice rough, broken at the edges.
“Threatening my life. Interrupting my plans.” His grip on the blade tightens, but he still doesn’t press in. “It’s over now, Nadia. I’ve got bigger things to deal with.”
The words land hard, but not because of what they mean. It is the way he says them. Like he wants me to believe this is mercy. Like he doesn’t want to admit that ending us hurts more than the slashes across his skin.
My fury comes in hot—white and feral, rising in my chest like a scream I don’t have time to release. “And I don’t?” I spit, my voice a blade of its own. “You think you’re the only one with bigger things to deal with? You think this game stops being a game for you a long time ago?”
I snap my arm up,fast and vicious, and chop at his hand, trying to dislodge the blade. He grunts but holds firm. No disarm. No slip. That hesitation from before vanishes, and the steel remains steady. But I don’t stop there. My knee comes up, sharp and brutal, but he twists to avoid it. I spin on the ball of my foot and launch a push kick straight into his chest—one born more from rage than form.
He stumbles back, boots dragging through the dirt, shoulders rolling with the force of it. It isn’t enough to hurt him—not really—but it sends him flying several yards, and that is all I need.
I dive to the ground, dirt scraping my palms, and slide across the arena floor, grabbing one of the lost knives just as Sho beginsto recover his footing. The metal kisses my fingers like an old lover. I rise to my feet again, taller than I feel, blood in my teeth, the ache in my ribs threatening to slow me—but it doesn’t. I unsheathe my second-to-last knife, hoping the final blow comes soon.
Sho stands across from me, that rusted blade now lowered but still in hand. His breath comes harder now. His eyes—darker. There is no grin this time. No taunt. Only that hollow space between us. The one we keep refusing to fill.
“You want to end this?” I growl. “Then do it.” I open my arms wide, blade in one hand, the other beckoning. “Come on, Sho. Show me you’re not just the one who survives me.”
His eyes narrow. And I can feel it in the air—the next strike won’t be about winning. It will be about deciding.
He strikes first.
A wide, arcing swing from overhead—easy to read, but not to ignore. I bring my blade up to meet it, steel crashing against steel with a thunderous clang that echoes through the pit like a gunshot. Sparks flash. My arms shake from the impact.
But the real blow comes a second later. His left fist swings into my ribs, a hook so fast and precise I barely see it before I feel it—right into the liver. My breath leaves me in a violent gasp as my body lifts off the ground and twists sideways, pain detonating through my core like a mine. I don’t even hit the dirt gracefully. My feet are swept from under me, and I slam down on my shoulder, the impact jarring up through my neck and into my skull, dislodging both knives from my grip.
I lie there for half a second, face twisted against the blood-soaked soil, trying to remember how to breathe. He is fast. Toofast. Stronger than before. Cleaner in his movements. Colder. He is better than me.
Sho isn’t fighting like the broken boy I leave behind—isn’t trying to impress me, outplay me, flirt his way to an advantage. He is fighting like a man on a mission. Efficient. Unforgiving. Unapologetic. I am not a dance partner anymore. I am a problem to be solved. A threat to be eliminated. And that… that does something to me.
I can’t tellwhat hurts more—the brutal efficiency of his strikes, the suffocating closeness of death, or the fact that I can see it in his eyes now. I am not a princess anymore. Not even a rival. Just a shadow in his path, a relic from a war he no longer wants to remember.
He circles around slowly, blade steady, steps calculated—not to gloat, but to line up the final strike. To finish me with precision. I let my eyelids flutter for a moment—just enough to let him believe I am done. Maybe I am. I am not sure anymore.
Then I remember how he beats that mountain of a man.
My hand curls into the loose soil and flings it high into his face.
