Page 46 of A Kingdom of Destruction

Aven didn’t expect her lady’s maid to understand. Not the need to move, to work herself until her arms and legs trembled so uncontrollably she was barely able to make it back to her room.

The distraction of working herself to physical exhaustion.

The guards watched Aven move through her paces, one right after another, with their hackles barely constrained on her first day. The second day, when she forced her body into movement despite her protesting muscles, they were less inclined to make noise. They kept their under-the-breath remarks to themselves.

She jogged circles around the room when her arms refused to hold any of the weights.

The third day she felt more like her old self than she had since her arrival. Aven plucked a staff from the wall, its bulk awkward compared to the comforting weight of her sword. She turned the wood over in her palm while moving through the first steps of basic hand-to-hand combat moves that General Hunter had taught her.

She lost her grip when she tried to turn her wrists, the wood clattering against the mats and her fingers shaking.

Pathetic.

Her old tutor would knock her flat if he faced her now.

She’d deserved to be knocked flat.

Aven had let too much time pass before requesting access to this kind of space. She’d never been afraid to open her mouth before and demand what she wanted. Just as she hadn’t beenafraid to make her escape when she saw the opportunity. Why had it been so hard for her to approach Cillian about it?

She bent her knees to grab the staff, and her lower back gave a twinge of pain as her muscles spasmed.

Pressing a hand there, she gripped the staff in the other, moving through her paces slowly, focusing on her breathing. To the left to the count of three, hold, strike. Back a step and twist, holding the staff as she would her sword.

“My god.” The voice sounded from behind her, and Aven frowned at the sound, the slight twist in her lower abdomen letting her know exactly who watched her now. As though his energy had announced his presence before she saw him in person. “I knew you were a bumbling oaf with a weapon, but I never thought you’d bethisbad.”

She ignored Roran, which was surprisingly hard to do as she continued to move through her paces.

“Have you never had a proper trainer in your life? You’re holding the staff all wrong,” Roran continued.

Aven glanced over her shoulder at last and found the prince grim-faced and leaning against the door with his arms crossed over his chest. The guards, she was shocked to see, were nowhere around.

Had he dismissed them?

“Would you like to come in here and show me? Since you apparently need to work off a little bit of frustration,” she retorted with ease. “There are two small lines between your eyebrows I’ve never seen before. What’s the matter, Roran? You stressed?”

She wasn’t the only one who needed to let off some steam.

Today he wore a tunic cut to leave most of his arms bare. Runes the same as hers flowed down from his shoulders over the muscles of his biceps, their darkness a contrast to the cool silver of his hair.

Her stomach muscles contracted the longer she looked at him.

A flash ofsomethingflickered over his face. She’d never seen it before. Their eyes connected across the room, and although it was the ghost of an expression, in her current state of mind, there was no ignoring it.

Her heart twisted.

“If you have enough time to offer invitations, then you aren’t doing it right. As I already said. Your form is abysmal,” he continued.

“You said I was bad with a weapon,” Aven corrected without slowing down. “You never commented on my form.”

Roran jerked his chin toward the wall of weapons. “You’re too loose in your core. Choose something a little lighter to start. You’re used to working with steel, but these are completely different.”

“Here I thought you were only here to mock me. Now you want to help me?”

“Merely pointing out the obvious,” he said in a slow, lazy way. “You’re out of shape. You shouldn’t push too hard unless you want to toss whatever you and Cillian ate for breakfast.”

“You sound jealous.” She finally stopped and set the staff between her legs, inclining on it while she caught her breath.

Roran hadn’t moved a muscle. He was all coiled strength, like a tightly wound spring ready to burst free, and the way he watched her—his eyes traveled down and followed the trail of a bead of sweat winding from her clavicle to between her breasts. The movement had her tongue twisting in knots and her mouth going dry.

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