Page 70 of The Gathering Storm

Around the mat they went, slowly revolving around each other as the crowd’s quiet murmurs stilled and silence fell around them. A testing blow here, a feint there, but it was gentle, like the first snowfall in early winter, when the ground was still warm from the summer’s sun.

This could last all night.

Rebecca parried a thrust, twisting her hanbo around Lukas’s in an attempt to disarm him. He easily countered and danced back, hanbo in hand, and she blew out a breath. It was time for this to end, time for young Lukas to receive his comeuppance.

She was going to let him stay.

The thought echoed in the back of her mind as she attacked, vicious now in a sharp contrast to the almost leisurely blows they’d been trading. It was time to end the challenge, but whether he won or not, he was too valuable to let go. He’d been right the day he’d issued the challenge. The People needed him as a go between with the Oracle. He knew her too well, knew too much about her, to risk having him wander about on his own, unprotected, following his own agenda.

He’d earned Rebecca’s respect here in a way she’d never expected.

But she must best him today, for the sake of every Daughter and Son who had fallen at the hands of him and his forbears. Justice must be met.

Still, she tempered her blows, refusing to strike hardest where he was most vulnerable. Humiliation wasn’t the aim here, merely defeat, and that could be accomplished with honor, as she had always fought. As she’d taught her own daughters and granddaughters, and the many, many others she’d counseled or taught or lead over the long, long centuries of her life.

It was time to end this.

And so, she did.

Three minutes after her real attack began, after a dizzying array of strikes Lukas had barely been able to counter, if at all, and two points earned for her part, Rebecca caught him in a rare defenseless moment, when his body was turned slightly away from countering a thrust, and swiped the hanbo against the back of his legs. His feet flew out from under him and he landed flat on his back.

Quickly, she tapped his chest lightly with the end of her hanbo, then stepped back. “Do you yield, Shadow?”

He rolled over on his side and onto his knees, and to his credit, not a single groan issued from his throat. He placed the hanbo across his thighs and looked up at her, pride shining from his eyes in place of the defeat she’d expected to see.

A burst of whispers in the bleachers interrupted his answer. Rebecca glanced around and located the disturbance. The Oracle, followed by four Handmaidens, was stepping calmly down from the seat she’d assumed at the beginning of the first match earlier in the evening.

Lukas sighed, and when Rebecca looked back at him, his head hung low and his shoulders were slumped. He rubbed a hand over his sweat soaked hair, ruffling it into dark spikes, then looked up at her, and his expression was no longer that of a proud warrior, but one of a man facing certain hardship.

He opened his mouth, pressed his lips together into a thin line, then said, “Take care of Stephen.”

She arched a single eyebrow. “I thought that’s what we were settling here.”

Lukas shook his head. “Take care of him if Nala kills me.”

“What?”

“She’s done it before, so many times.” He laughed, low and bitter, and closed his eyes tight. “Probably will again.”

The Oracle stepped onto the mat, startling Rebecca out of her confusion over his answer, and walked straight to Lukas. The Oracle said something in her guttural, oddly familiar language. Lukas responded with a single word, then she slapped him hard and spoke again, her voice so dispassionate, chills ran down Rebecca’s spine.

She tightened her grip on the hanbo, ready to step in. Domestic violence was unacceptable, whatever form it took. She would not allow anyone to abuse an individual under her care regardless of the sins he’d committed. Battle was one thing, attacking a defeated man something else entirely.

Lukas held a hand up, though whether he meant it as a plea to the Oracle or to Rebecca, she couldn’t say. He spoke in a low voice in the Oracle’s language. Nala shook her head once, then he glanced up at her and Rebecca nearly gasped. His cheeks were red and the muscles of his neck and arms were pronounced, as if he were holding himself in check.

“Tell them who you are,” he gritted out, and when the Oracle shook her head again, he screamed, “Tell them!”

The Oracle stood there for a moment gazing down at him, then at long last, she spoke in the same, indecipherable language she’d been using.

Lukas laughed wearily and hung his head, his rage abruptly gone. “In English, Nala. English.”

The Oracle tilted her head up, chin high, and said, “I am Abragni, the Light of the People and the youngest of the Seven.”

The hanbo slid from Rebecca’s grasp and thudded onto the mat, and she sank down behind it, her legs suddenly too weak to hold her weight. “Abragni?” she whispered, and the name was echoed around the gymnasium, over and over again until it built into a roar that was a single name, obliterating the sounds of the attendees rising from where they sat and filing down onto the floor. Soon, a circle of people spread out around Abragni, kneeling down as close to her as they could.

A Sister, alive. After all this time.

The Oracle slid her fingers into Lukas’s hair, stroking gently. She glanced around at Rebecca, her expression like stone. “He will stay.”

Rebecca bowed, touching her forehead to the cool mat on which she knelt. Yes, Lukas would stay, and not just for his own sake or that of the boy bound to his care. How could she possibly turn away the mate of her own progenitor, the last surviving member of the Seven Sisters and a founder of the People?

The Light.

Rebecca eased upright as the Prophecy floated through her mind. All along, they’d had its key hidden here within the refuge she’d helped create, and now, the pieces were falling into place one by one.

It was a good time to be alive, she thought, and stood, as the leader she was, to officially welcome this oldest member of the People back into their fold.

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