Page 56 of Swords and Curses

"What on earth is he thinking?" Eli demanded, and they hurried out of the room.

"I have no clue, but he turned up at their training pissed off and loud mouthed," Saul replied. "He's throwing about a lot of magic."

"This is my fault," Nimue murmured to Rosa. "I made him angry last night, and now he's taking it out on everyone else."

"Lord above! Not every stupid thing Eldon does is your fault," Rosa replied. "He liked to act plenty stupid before you arrived."

"He's behaving like a damn child," Eli said and opened the doors outside.

"A damn child that's tearing through Zalan's finest." Balthasar joined them on the outskirts of the crowd of warriors surrounding the section of the parklands they had allocated for training grounds.

"It's a good thing they are all Gwaed Gam," Rosa said numbly as she saw the carnage that Eldon was wreaking. Everywhere she looked, Gam regrowing limbs and healing long gashes. Eldon's torso and arms were covered in blood as he fought off three warriors who were no longer simply training. He'd embarrassed them and they were out for his blood.

"If this is the best Zalan's finest has to offer, then we might as well fall to our knees and offer our necks to the Seelie fucks coming for us," he shouted, disarming two soldiers before plunging a spear through the thigh of another.

"We must stop this," Rosa said urgently.

Eli raised a brow. "Must we? He makes a valid point."

"They aren't going to want to fight with someone who despises them," Balthasar argued. "He will make enemies of them all, and we don't need that right now."

"Seren Du, with your permission?" Nimue asked formally.

"Do it," Eli replied, a vicious kind of mischief glowing in his eyes.

Before Eli could change his mind, Nimue stepped into the ring. Eldon paused as she rested her hands on the two long knives on her belt and looked him over. Balthasar's hand clamped down on Rosa's arm as she moved forward.

"Leave it, Rosa. This doesn't concern you."

"As Eldon demonstrates, the Seelie are much harder to kill than you could imagine," Nimue said, her voice carrying through the tense crowd. "Those Seelie the queen sent in the last attack were undisciplined raiders. You had victory over them because they were not trained for warfare. The army she will bring with her will be her finest warrior magicians, and you must be ready for whatever attack they will devise, whether it be swords or magic." She pulled her knives from their sheaths and stared Eldon down. "If you are so eager to show off, come and fightme."

"I beat you when we were children, so what makes you think you have a chance now?" Eldon asked, unable to back down from a challenge in front of so many people.

Nimue's magic shot out at him in two golden whips of light that he barely dodged before they took off his head.

"Oh, you are going to regret that, half-breed," he growled.

"Takes one to know one,mongrel."

Blades and magic cut the air as they clashed and clashed again. The Gwaed Gam shuffled backward as roots shot out of the earth seeking to snag Nimue's feet. Her knives slashed through them, and her power shielded her from the bolt of light aimed at her heart.

The wind picked her up in the air, and she dropped with uncanny speed onto Eldon's shoulders and flipped him backward, his sword flying out his hand as they hit the mud. Nimue rolled and Eldon twisted to grab hold of her.

"You still fight with no brains. Brute force can't win everything," Nimue mocked.

"We can't all have a mind as twisted as a Seelie's," Eldon muttered. He got back to his feet and retrieved his sword.

"Or as dark as an Unseelie's," she counted. "Are you ready to go again?"

Fire rolled out of him towards her so hot that Rosa's magic instinctively threw up a shield of its own. Nimue reacted with a wall of ice that exploded in a wave of water that doused them all as the fire brought it down.

When the steam cleared, Eldon and Nimue were both drenched with a blade pressed tight to each other's throats. Nobody on the field dared to move or speak as they stared each other down, silently daring the other to cut.

"Eli should have left you in that damn tree, and then you would've had time to grow the hell up," Nimue sneered.

"Over a thousand years in a lake didn't do much to cool you down. Perhaps, I'll dump you in ours and see how long it takes," he spat, and his grip on the front of her shirt tightened.

"Try it, and I'll stop pretending to miss," she threatened, her lips close enough to touch his. "You have no idea what I have gone through."

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