Page 90 of The Crimson Walls Of Algorath

And didn’t that make his stomach knot.

Kall mimicked the stance and ran his blade up Ariadne’s with the familiar shriek of steel on steel. His blood curdled at the memories it invoked, and by the way Ariadne’s grip tightened, it did the same to her. But she didn’t flinch. She watched Kall with the same intensity he knew he also had when training. This was normal, then. A way to keep her accustomed to the sound in a safe place so it no longer impacted her.

“Begin.” Phulan spoke the word as though it’d become her regular job.

In a flash, Ariadne moved forward. She didn’t give Kall time to push her back and swung the sword from the side. He blocked, retreating a step to keep distance between them, and countered.

Madan watched in awe as his sister shifted her weight without looking at her feet. She moved in arcs, keeping her footing stable and wide. Any misstep and Kall took advantage without mercy. If she crossed over herself, he parried in such a way it knocked her off balance.

The first time he did so, Madan lurched forward. Ariadne stumbled to the side as the dhemon’s sword swung down at her, and he was certain she would get hit. A blow like that from Kall could split her spine in half.

Phulan, however, grabbed his short arm at the elbow and held him back. “Don’t you dare.”

But Ariadne twisted in time to smack the blade away, one hand on the ground to balance herself before pushing back to a correct position. Her muscles rippled under her sweaty tunic as she cleaved through the air back at the dhemon. Her leather boots that had seemed so new when she arrived at Monsumbra, creased and soft now from excessive use, gripped the stone with each pivot.

Ariadne advanced on Kall again, and determination blazed in her oceanic eyes. To Madan’s surprise, a smile curled at her lips. She enjoyed this. Though she’d begun meeting with Kall as a way to learn self-defense, she’d grown to truly love the rush, and Madan wasn’t certain he liked the idea of that.

Certainly, she needed to be able to hold her own against an adversary. He’d wanted that for her from the very beginning. But if she found as much enjoyment in it as he did…as Azriel did…they were in trouble. He knew all too well what happened when someone began this journey. They searched for an excuse to use their new skills whenever they could.

The swords clashed, and with a songlike slide of the blades, Madan watched as Ariadne’s flew out of her hand. Kall had disarmed her. He advanced, his red eyes almost glowing with glee.

Again, Madan jerked forward. Again, Phulan tightened her grip on him with a warning look.

Ariadne, however, didn’t look perturbed. She shifted her stance lower as Kall moved just close enough to keep himself out of reach. He slashed. She ducked. Swing. Side-step. Again and again, around and around, they moved. Kall struck. Ariadne dodged, and each dodge brought her a hair closer.

Then Kall shifted, his forward leg swinging into the back position, and in that moment, she acted. With one leg still poised forward, Ariadne lunged. She shoved her head against his belly, pushing him off-balance and scooping up his leg at the same time. Before he could swing the blade back around, she gripped his sword-wielding arm at the elbow and drove him back and around from her toes.

The dhemon landed hard on the stone, and Ariadne released her hold just before getting trapped beneath him. Her eyes tracked the sword still in his grip as she pushed a knee into his gut. The air rasped from Kall, and he bridged his hips at the same moment he tilted the blade back toward her to stab.

Madan couldn’t hold back his gasp of fear, yet Phulan refused to let him move. He could feel the magic curling around his middle to keep him in place. Still, his heart thundered as he watched with petrified certainty that his sister was about to be skewered.

As Kall released the bridge, Ariadne moved almost too fast for Madan’s eyes to track. Her vampiric speed and agility turned her into a blur, even to him. The sword swung away from its target. In the next moment Ariadne had pivoted around Kall’s head, one hand grasping the sword-bearing wrist and the other looped through his bent arm to hold her own. She used the grip to twist his arm into an uncomfortable angle, forcing the sword from his fingers before hauling his forearm against her chest, thumb up. Her back went to the ground, knees pinching around his bicep, and she thrust her hips up in one fluid, controlled motion.

Kall tried to roll his body towards her to pull his arm out of her hold, and her calf slid through the curl of his horns, across his face, to force him to look the other way. Without a word, the dhemon used his free hand to tap her leg twice. In an instant, she released him and pulled her legs back so he could sit up.

For a long moment, Madan didn’t move. Gods, he wasn’t certain he was breathing. Adrenaline pumped through his own veins, even though he hadn’t been the one sparring. Watching someone he cared for as deeply as his sister going through such motions made him queasy.

“Well done,” he croaked after a moment. Then he saw crimson blooming on the sleeve of Ariadne’s tunic. He was going to puke. He hadn’t even seen her get hurt. The magic holding him back eased, and he rushed forward. “What happened?”

Ariadne looked at her arm in surprise. “I did not even feel it.”

He took her wrist and turned her arm. “You’re cut.”

“She block me,” Kall said in his broken common tongue. He didn’t so much as look back at them as he hauled himself to his feet. “She live.”

Madan almost snarled at him. He bit back the urge, remembering the number of injuries he’d incurred over the centuries from his own training. And all the injuries he’d given others in the same manner. Gods, he’d even stabbed Azriel out of anger once. It’d been a different time then.

Things weren’t the same now, as much as it bothered him to remember. The people he loved most were in far more danger now than they ever were before. Even fighting a war.

“I am fine,” Ariadne reassured him and looked over his shoulder.

Phulan appeared a moment later to pull up the sleeve and inspect the wound. “It’s relatively shallow. Not a problem at all.”

“Relatively?” Madan blinked between them. “Have there been worse?”

“Mostly to Kall,” Phulan assured him without taking her eyes off the cut. She laid a hand over it and focused. “Darling Ari had a rough go when they first switched to steel.”

Kall snorted. “Yes. She had rough.”

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