Page 261 of Of Empires and Dust

The three men circled her, trapping her between them. On a different day, she would have held her patience and waited for one of them to strike first. Men were bigger and stronger, and they knew it. In battle, whether they realised it or not, that simple fact informed everything they did when they fought a woman. It made them sloppy, careless. And that was a weakness she could take advantage of.

But it was not a different day, and Alina wasn’t standing in that sparring yard to practice or to learn. She was there for release.

She bounded forwards, ducked beneath Glaukos’s strike, and slammed her staff into the back of his knee as he pivoted. She twisted, leveraging her back swing and ramming the other end of her staff into the man’s now-exposed belly. He reeled backwards.

Alina made to go for the killing strike but was forced to turn away a swing from Savrin’s staff and then Alcon’s in quick succession. The two men came at her together, not allowing her a moment to breathe as she parried their strikes one after another, twisting and turning, her muscles screaming, the rage within her blazing.

She lunged, catching them both off balance and dropping past their guard. Alina rammed the butt of her staff into Alcon’s gut and then snapped it upwards into his chin. She whipped the other end towards Savrin’s leg, only for him to ram his own staff into the sand and block the strike.

Alina smashed her shoulder into Savrin’s chest, knocking him backwards and following up with a flurry of powerful swings. Savrin blocked each with ease but never struck back. She pushed harder, exposing herself. She cracked her staff into his left hip, then back across his jaw, into his chest, and hard as a hammer against his shoulder.

“Fight back,” she growled through gritted teeth. She doubled down, driving Savrin harder, her staff a blur as she rained blow after blow after blow. Marks of black, blue, and yellow already bloomed on the man’s flesh, and yet he didn’t stop or yield. He let her unleash her fury with abandon and that only angered her more. She lunged forwards and shoved Savrin in the chest, knocking him back a few paces. “Hit me!”

The man simply stared back at her, blood trickling from his nose and lip. “You did what needed to be done, Alina. Your mother would have made the same choice.”

Alina clenched her jaw, swallowing. She lunged again. Savrin blocked her first three strikes, then redirected her fourth, sending her stumbling off balance. She dug her foot in the sand and twisted, hammering her staff into the side of his shin.

Alina let out heavy breaths, Savrin’s staff levelled against the side of her head, just resting gently against her temple.

“Emotions are only useful on the field of battle if you can control them, my queen,” he said calmly.

“Savrin, if you will not spar with me, I will have to strip you from my guard. It is your responsibility not only to protect me but to ensure I am prepared to protect myself. How can I be prepared if you refuse to fight me to the fullest? Do you understand?”

“I understand, my queen.”

“Then fight back!” Alina smacked Savrin’s staff away with her own and bounded to her feet. She struck hard to his right leg, finding his staff instead, then again to his left arm with the same result. Twice more she hurled herself at him with all the rage and fury she could summon, but on that second strike, he blocked, then countered.

Savrin’s staff collided with Alina’s ribs on the left side of her body, then slammed into her jaw on the right with the force of a horse’s kick.

She hit the ground like a sack of stones, blood filling her mouth, her head ringing. She spat saliva and blood into the sand, then lifted her head to see Savrin extending his hand.

Alina gripped the man’s forearm and pulled herself upright, stumbling as her head spun.

“You asked me to hit you.” The slightest semblance of a smile flickered on the man’s lips, his shoulders twitching in an even slighter shrug.

“That I did.” Alina pressed her tongue against a tooth on the right side of her mouth, overjoyed to find it wasn’t loose.She stared down at the bloody pool of spit at her feet and then at Glaukos and Alcon, who had pulled back and were now watching. Olivian and Saralis were both a few steps closer, their stares hard.

“I’m sorry.” Alina licked the blood from her teeth.

“There will not come a day when your need for apology outweighs my own, Your Grace. But what is given is accepted. If I may?”

Alina nodded.

“Today I watched a queen with the strength to make the hard choices and the heart to feel the consequences. In my experience, those are two qualities rarely found in the same soul. And when they are, one is often burned away by the other. I would council, if you care to hear it, that you not allow either side to die. This was only the first hard choice of many. A true queen does not rule over her people, she serves them. She makes the hard choice and bears the weight and the cost so they do not have to.”

“Stop wriggling.”Dayne undid the buckles of Mera’s cuirass. He peeled the armour away from her skin, the blood dried and tacky.

Mera hissed, slapping at his hand. And as she did, Audin rose from where he lay against the rock wall of the Rest, a trembling rumble resonating from his throat.

“I’m not the one who sliced her open.” Dayne turned to glare at the wyvern, regretting his decision as soon as his gaze fell on the maw of savage teeth that stared back at him.

The wyvern blew a puff of warm air from his nostrils, the smell of blood and fresh meat blowing over Dayne.

“And you,” he said, turning back to Mera, who was pulling her blood-soaked undershirt free. “Do you remember back in Stormshold, when you sewed my shin? This is going to be sweet revenge.”

Mera frowned at him, peeling the undershirt from her body, strings of part-dried blood pulling tight and snapping. The wound ran along her right side, just below her arms and along her ribs. Long and angry. A nasty piece of work, given to her by one of the treacherous Wyndarii’s javelins that morning.

“Sit.” He gestured to the rickety wooden chair he’d hoisted up to the Rest only two days prior. The sight of her truly hurt cut all the mirth from his heart. He didn’t know what he would do if he lost her. The thought didn’t bear considering. She was a Wyndarii, just as his mother had been. It was her purpose to fight for Valtara, just as it was his. And as much as he wanted to keep her safe, he would never take her purpose from her. That was a hard thing for him to accept, but he understood it. She was a warrior, just as he was.

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