Page 78 of Fae Champion

22.FIRE WRITHES, LICKS, TOYS … AND EMERGES TO BLAZE ACROSS THIS WORLD

Bond? What bond?echoed through my thoughts, insistent, demanding an answer, while Rush’s sword pushed me backward. Forcefully, I shoved the question from my mind and focused on the metal swinging my way.

After the queen’s little chat, I’d expected Rush to launch at me with his magic—whatever it was. Was he taking it easy on me? If so, how long would he be able to do so before the queen commanded him to use the full array of his arsenal against me?

I’d have to make the most of this reprieve. Metal on metal, I could do.

I swiped, parried, and struck, spun, lunged, and deflected. Within mere moments, Rush and I were flowing together.Chiing, clang, chang, shing, our swords went. My breathing matched his. My pulse thrummed evenly in my head.

I turned one way, he spun the other. He stabbed, Iducked and swiveled. I sprang from a low crouch, blade first, and he arched backward so metal only skimmed the air above him, not even a single strand of his hair falling to the ground.

We were as synced as the choreographed dancers who’d performed on this very field on the opening day of the Fae Heir Trials. The hushed appreciation of the audience faded into a buzz in the background.

Azariah spoke, commenting on our fight. I didn’t register the words. All I noted were the graceful movements of Rush’s body, the admirable lack of tells he possessed, his every next move a surprise.

And yet, they weren’t, not entirely—as if I knew his body nearly as well as my own.

We were acrobats, sliding this way and that, skimming around each other, the steel in our hands glimmering beneath the sun … but never slicing skin.

My breathing came heavier now, steadily reassuring in my chest, and I would have sworn my heart beat in rhythm with his, that our hearts beat as one, no matter how unlikely that was.

He twisted, his long hair trailing in a shimmering arc behind him, his sword reaching for me as I whirled the opposite way, metal clanking together as we met, before separating again, our next dance move pulling us apart … before drawing us together again.

I sensed the moonlight in his eyes dancing along with us, though I didn’t pause to confirm, the tempo of our attacks and feints denying me a moment of distraction for fear I’d lose this connection, whatever it was.

Sword first, he swiped. I dipped backward, watching his blade swing above my curved body, then sprang upward, slicing toward him.

We were a single organism—a shared body, heart, and mind.

Until I stepped backward through the clouds drifting as hypnotically as we were—and tripped on … something that hadn’t been there moments before, my chin jutting forward for an instant before I windmilled my arms to fall hard to my ass.

The tip of Rush’s sword dragged across my throat—not deep enough to kill, but sufficient to sting like a hundred bees and send blood spilling down my neck and rolling beneath my armor.

Sucking a sharp breath through my teeth, I registered how his eyes widened and our stunned audience gasped, how regret darkened the moonlight I starkly realized I’d learned to love in such short time.

“Pretend you don’t see us,” urged a tiny voice as I scrambled backward, forcing some distance between Rush and me before I popped to my feet, my free hand dragging across my throat and coming away red.

Had he wanted to kill me, that would have been the time for him to press his advantage, and the concern that weighed down his features told me he knew it too.

As would the queen.

Ignoring the warm trickle as it swam across my collarbones, I shuffled away, that synced flow between us now disturbed, and risked a glance at the spot where I’d landed.

The fluffy mist was still eddying, revealing four tiny heads of differently colored bright hair and wings like those of dragonflies lifting the diminutive fairies above it, a length of coiled rope—obviously heavy for them though it was no thicker than a bracelet I might wear around my wrist—drooping between them.

Eyes widening, rage swelling, I snapped my attention back to Rush, who appeared to be sizing me up, likely trying to decide how to put on a believable show for the queen without actually seriously hurting me.

If that was the game he was playing, it was a very dangerous one.

One of the fairies hissed, “The queen doesn’t know you can see us. Don’t let on that you can or she’ll kill us.”

I swapped out my sword for my twosais, now forced to divide my attention between Rush and the fairies. In a swift attack, I forced him back while telling the fairies, through gritted teeth, “Stop tripping me, then.”

Rush’s brow arched in confusion as he sheathed his sword and drew a pair of wickedly sharp curved daggers, pushing me in the other direction until I returned the favor.

That tiny voice said, “The queen says you’re sparring, not fighting to kill. Let us take you down.”

Jaw clenched against the vibrations of our daggers meeting, I growled, “No.”

---