Page 86 of Crown of Wrath

“You’re talking about true sparring, then.” She takes a moment and then nods. “Dulled blades.”

I nod to her and walk across the field to where the shadow walkers are dusting themselves off. They look at me, not sure what to make of me, and I just smile at them. As they walk away, I glance at the little girl across the field. She wields shadows and has been trained by my mother. She’ll steal them if she gets a chance, and the last thing I want is to be overpowered by her when everything I’m wielding is made of shadows. Including my clothes.

Without a second thought, I focus on the ground beneath my feet. It’s not the same as in Nyth, and when I consider having the stone flow up into armor, I dismiss the thought. I don’t know what it’d be like to wear stone from this place.

Instead, I lift my arms and will blue sapphire into being. A thousand tiny crystals explode into the air, each of them shaped into tiny interlocking plates like the armor I’d made of stone previously.

My stone armor hadn’t protected me very well from crossbow bolts in the past. I know that these sapphire plates will shatter, but they won’t let crossbow bolts through.

The shadows surrounding me disappear. I smirk at Echo, whose jaw hangs open as she realizes I won’t be wearing mymidnight armor any longer. I hold my hand out, and a matching blue crystal spear appears in my hand.

It’s far more draining than in Nyth, but that’s what training is for. Working. I glance at the tip of the spear and make sure that the long, flattened tip has been blunted sufficiently. “No rules, Echo. Fight as though your life depends on it.”

She nods to me, and I test her strength. A hundred tendrils of shadow explode from my feet just as she’d done previously. They race across the field, and just like her previous sparring session, they stop when they’re only a foot away from her. This is what Cole felt when I wrenched control of his shadows away from him.

That was the purpose of that attack. Learn what she can do. Without a second thought, I run straight at her. My Earth strength gives me speed like she’s probably never seen before. Shadows flow from her body like water, creeping along the ground in thick bands that hide in the grass. They blend in, and the fine movement of the green blades is the only indication of their existence.

When they look to be a few feet away from me, I leap and sail through the air toward her, my feet almost ten feet in the air. Echo’s eyes open wide as she sees me getting past her tendrils, and she raises her hand as she backs up.

Shadows move from her fingertips, racing straight through the air toward me. I raise two hands as I hit the pinnacle of my leap and fall toward her. A sharp, paper-thin disk of blue crystal appears in front of Echo’s face. It falls and slices through the shadows that Echo doesn’t have time to harden. The darkness that had nearly reached me disappears as soon as the connection with her is lost.

At the same time, a crystalline spear grows from the ground behind her, the spear tip just as blunted as the one I carry. It grows into an upside-down “L” with the short leg facing Echo’sback. I hit the ground about twelve feet from Echo. Shadows explode from her feet again. Hundreds of them. There’s no way I can cut them all off, and for a moment, I feel a little bit of fear that the fourteen-year-old might catch me just as she did to the shadow walkers.

Except that I don’t think she has ever faced down someone she can’t simply overpower.

For the first time in my life, I consider how badly I can hurt a fourteen-year-old. How much like Casimir Cyrus am I willing to become? She’s an Immortal, so she’ll heal. The future Queen of Shadows is a child with very little training, and war is about to come to Nyth. She’s not ready if this is her only training.

Pain does wonders for helping someone to realize their inexperience. At least it did for me.

I hurl the crystal spear at Echo with all of my Earth strength. If that spear hit a House of Steel soldier in full armor, even the blunted version would pierce the breastplate.

I fall through the world immediately afterward, only touching the void for the half a moment it takes to find the shadow I’d been staring at when I’d shadow walked.

I appear two feet in front of Echo, my hand outstretched. Echo’s shadows are in front of her, a shield against the oncoming spear, and they block her sight. Everything’s happened too quickly for her to maintain control of the darkness surrounding her.

As easy as catching a grasshopper flying by, I catch the spear I’d thrown before it reaches Echo and leap over her shield to land behind her. She tries to bring more shadow up to stop me again, but she’s too slow, and my spear catches her squarely in the chest, not hard enough to even bruise her.

I stare into those stormy eyes and say, “You need to learn to move. A shadow walker is only safe when they’re moving. Everyone else will out muscle you. Everyone else will punish youfor standing still, and your shadows are nothing against steel weapons or anyone with fire.”

I glance at the spear that had grown up only a foot behind her, and her eyes follow mine, finally seeing the hidden danger. “Something I learned from fighting my mother for months is that something is always trying to attack you from behind. It’s so easy, and your only real defenses are awareness and never staying still.”

I step back from Echo, and a shadow whips from my foot to the crystal spear, hardening as it connects with the bend of the L. The Crystal shatters, and the spearhead soars past us, barely an inch from Echo’s chest.

“You’re strong, but strength doesn’t always win. Experience, awareness, and flexibility with your powers win out nearly every time when you’re fighting someone even close to as strong as you.”

Echo frowns, but my mother doesn’t let her say anything as she interrupts. “She’s fourteen. She hasn’t even begun actual battle training. We don’t hurt children here, and no daughter of mine…”

“So you won’t be participating in the war, Echo?” I ask.

Echo’s eyes flash with lightning as she whirls toward my mother. “I am supposed to claim the Throne of Shadows, aren’t I?”

I meet my mother’s gaze, and there’s an edge to it I don’t understand. She’s willing to use everyone, but she won’t let the future Queen of Shadows train? I hadn’t expected that.

“Echo will not be taking part in any battles,” my mother proclaims loudly. “She is too young, and I will not allow it.”

Echo blinks slowly. “You have been my teacher since I was born, Brenna, and I respect you. More than anyone else in the world, you have earned that respect, but the very survival of theworld depends on the coming battles. I have to fight, and if you were my age, you would fight too.”

Brenna, the greatest manipulator in the last thousand years, stares down the fourteen-year-old, and I’m sure she feels powerless. Then I understand. She’s raised this girl. She may not be her biological mother, but she raised her as much as Vesta raised me.

---