Page 47 of Lady for Embers

He ducked as she swung for him, and she smiled as she whirled and swept at his legs. He found himself on his back again when her foot connected with the side of his knee, but she didn’t stop like the others had. She leapt for him, and he barely managed to roll out of the way in time.

“Get up, Callan!” Drake shouted from a sideline somewhere.

And he was scrambling to his feet, blocking a blade that was swinging for him. She came for him again and again, and he didn’t have time to prepare. He didn’t have time to study her movements. He didn’t have to think, only to react. Another blade sliced across his torso, and he snarled in frustration.

“Use it, Callan,” Scarlett demanded. “Let that fury out.”

He gritted his teeth, blocking her next attack and shoving her back.

Her grin widened, eyes dancing with excitement, and he realized she may have been trained to take life, but sheenjoyedthis part of it. The training. The sparring. Getting knocked down and forcing herself to get back up.

He lunged at her this time. She blocked easily enough, dancing out of the way.

“Yes, Callan!” she encouraged.

She came at him again, slipping around him and landing a kick to his lower back that sent him to his knees. Drake and Cassius were on either side of him, but it was Eliza who spoke to him.

“Fight, Callan,” the general ordered. “Fight her. Now.”

“I can’t ?ght her,” he panted.

“You can,” Eliza insisted, stepping back as Scarlett came for him again.

Was she ever going to stop? Eliza had him practicing technique and form. She pushed him, but not like this.

“He can’t ?ght me,” Scarlett taunted, circling him once more. “Never could. I was always too much for him to handle.”

He scoffed, rotating to keep her in his line of sight. She winked at him.

Godsdamn winked in the middle of a sparring match, as if this were nothing for her.

“If you can’t ?ght me, Callan, how are you going to ?ght for your people?”

“Stop,” he gritted out, blocking her thrust.

“No,” she replied calmly. “Tell me, Callan. How will you protect your people from those who took your parents from you?”

“Stop,” he snarled again, lunging at her this time. She de?ected easily. “They took them from you, Callan. Right in front of you,” she continued. “In front of Eva. Your sister had to see her mother and father murdered right in front of her eyes.”

“Enough,” he spat, both knives swinging for her in a move Eliza had made him practice for an hour straight one day. He’d never gotten the hang of it, even after continuing to practice it every fucking day.

But he got it today. It was perfectly executed, as if his body knew exactly what to do, and one of Scarlett’s knives went skittering across the deck.

She wasn’t even fazed. She ?ipped away from his next attack, his blades barely grazing her tunic.

“They took Finn and Sloan, Callan,” she continued, somehow popping up behind him and landing a clean kick to his back that sent him to the deck of the ship yet again.

He rolled as she moved to jump on top of him, his feet kicking out and launching her backwards. He knew she could have caught herself with her magic, and was even vaguely aware of Cyrus holding Sorin back with a hand on his shoulder.

Scarlett was climbing back to her feet as he got back to his. She pulled a dagger from her boot. “They will come for you, Callan. They will come for you. Your people.”

She lunged for him, landing hits again and again, and she never let him breathe. Never let him catch his breath or collect himself. Just kept coming for him. But he was beginning to hold his own. Sure, she wasn’t using her magic, and maybe she wasn’t coming at him with everything she had, but she certainly wasn’t going easy on him. Years of training he’d never had to use slowly began waking up, and the more she pushed him, the more he began to react on instinct, letting muscle memory take over.

Now she had him back on the ground, straddling his waist, somehow keeping him from ?ipping her off of him. She leaned closer, a manic gleam in her eyes. “What will you do when they come for Tava?” she whispered. “What will you do when it is Mikale who has the blade to her throat instead of Veda? What will you do when he does to her what he did to me?”

He let out a bellow of rage at the mere idea, and before he knew what he was doing, he was ?inging Scarlett off of him. She rolled to her back beside him. He heard her land with a curse. But before he could capitalize on his advantage, she was punching him in the side, and he barked a curse of his own.

“Good, Callan,” she panted from beside him. “Good.” She dropped her hands to her side, the one long knife she still held slipping from her ?ngers with a clatter.

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