Page 86 of When the Moon Met the Sun

Father led Dimi to the back of the large tent, murmuring to him fervently. He pulled a pair of fighting leathers out of a wooden chest, handing them to Dimi, who quickly donned them over his more casual clothes.

Leaving Dimi to prepare, Father swiftly shoved the war table to the side, closer to the water basin, to make a larger area for the veltik khan.

Standing closer to the center of the tent now, I unsheathed my own sword from across my back—the one Dimi had given me for my fourteenth birthday, that I had named Elaera. It was among my things back at Cairnyl, and I brought it out specifically for the possibility of this battle. Though I never expected to be using it against the person who gifted it to me in the first place.

After placing all other weapons on the war table, I made sure to specifically shift my mother’s dagger to the bottom of the pile to hide it. I weighed my sword in my palm, looking down at the shimmering silvery blade, crested at the top with an array of bright blue sapphires. Originally, Dimi had said they matched my eyes.

If only he knew.

Cracking my knuckles, I watched as Father said a few final words to Dimitri, then they both turned to face me. Father backed up a few paces, while Dimi stepped forward.

“It didn’t have to be this way,” he said to me quietly.

I smiled at him sadly. “Yes, twin. It did.”

And with that, I swung my sword in a high arc, aiming straight for his fighting shoulder.

Dimi quickly lifted Tarrious, blocking the blow, but the unexpected swing cost him a few feet as he yielded a couple steps backwards, obviously startled.

Our eyes met, and I could see the warrior instincts in him rising to the surface.

Good, I thought.Let’s put on a show.

One thing about Dimi was that he had tells. The slight shift in his foot before he swung, the intake of breath before lunging forward. I had spent years studying people, but because he taught me to fight, I studiedhimmore than anybody else.

Every move he made, I easily blocked, until we were both in a dance of swings, arcs, blows, and lunges, trying to knock the other person off balance. The only sounds filling the air was the sound our swords made when they met, and our heavy breathing.

Finally, I saw Dimi’s patience beginning to thin ever so slightly. He threw himself into his next blow, aiming for a non-fatal spot in my lower side.

Taking the opportunity while I could, I side stepped swiftly and lowered my sword towards his shins so his legs hit the flat part of Elaera, causing no damage but still making him falter. He stumbled forward, and I kicked his back between his wings just hard enough to cause him to land on his knees. I placed the tip of my sword at the top of his spine, where his head could easily be severed from the rest of him. I pressed slightly, not breaking skin, but enough where he could feel the threat.

Almost too fast for me to keep up with, he turned on me, obviously enraged at having been bested by his own previous student, even briefly. He hammered his sword so hard into Elaera that she went flying, skittering to a stop at the far edge of the tent.

Because I had been looking at where my sword landed, I almost missed Dimitri advancing on me. My eyes flickered to meet his as he raised his sword, and there seemed to be nothing beyond purerage in his eyes. Like everything he had been holding back his entire life was finally rearing its ugly head.

With no weapon left, and only a heartbeat left between me and what was likely certain death as Dimi’s sword was coming down, I played the only card I had left.

Wielding.

I flung my energy out into the earth, searching. I used the sun stones in my pocket resting in my right glove to center me, instead of focusing on my panic or anxiety. Only a few feet to the left and about ten feet below, I felt a chunk of crystal. I solidified my connection to it, then yanked with everything I had.

The iridescent crystal came between Tarrious and I at the last possible second, and shattered it into a thousand different pieces on impact.

I threw my arm over my face as I fell backwards, shielding my unprotected eye. I heard, more than saw, Dimi also fall.

I could feel our father’s eyes on me with a newfound interest, who now stood behind my brother, but Dimitri’s rage had been temporarily interrupted.

“Viva… how?” he asked.

I cringed, wishing we were kids again when I had told him everything.

Well, almost everything.

“It seems I inherited more from Mother than just her good looks,” I said boldly, although I didn’t feel it, as I slid the eyepatch still sitting over my right eye off.

I looked up at him with both eyes for the first time since I walked in, then let my gaze flicker to Father’s for a moment before looking back to Dimi.

Then, still holding the eyepatch in my palm, I called towards the fire in my veins, and the patch erupted into blue flames.

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