Page 41 of Heart Cradle
Fenric grinned. “You’re just jealous I still have all mine, prick!”
Off to the side, Maeve sat on a sun-warmed rock with Aeilanna and Nolenne. The girls were perched like queens with cups of cool berry water, their hair loose and shining in the light.
“I’d pay to watch them do this all day, every day,” Maeve murmured, squinting at Eiran’s shoulders flexing with every strike. “Like… properly bloody pay.”
“Who says you need to pay?” Aeilanna said, raising her cup. “You’ve got a front-row seat and a claim.”
Maeve flushed slightly. “Hmm, I am enjoying the view.”
“Especially Soren.” Nolenne said with a wicked grin. “That one has the finest male arse in the six realms.”
“Glad you specified male” chided Aeilanna with a grin.
As if summoned, Soren lunged for Fenric and promptly slipped, landing flat on his back with a grunt and a puff of dust. The girls howled and Soren raised a hand without getting up. “Oh sure, keep laughing. Come join if you’re so sure of yourselves ladies!”
Nolenne rose smoothly, stretching with slow, deliberate grace that made every vertebra seem sculpted from purpose. “Don’t mind if I do.”
“You’re serious?” Calen asked, already regretting everything.
“Deadly,” Nolenne replied, untying her outer tunic with a casual flick and shrugging it off. Beneath, her fitted brown training vest clung to toned muscle and movement. She stepped into the ring like she owned the earth it was carved from. “Let’s see what you boys have got.”
“Go easy on us,” Fenric called, twirling his wooden blade lazily. “I bruise like a summer peach.”
“Good,” Nolenne said, cracking her knuckles one at a time. “I like peaches.”
What followed wasn’t sparring, it was humiliation in every sense of the word. Eiran and Branfil watched from the side as Nolenne launched into the circle with the speed of a falling star and the control of a master. She caught Calen’s opening swing on the flat of her forearm, twisted beneath it, and slammed the hilt of her own blade into the meat of his thigh. He yelped, staggered, and tried to pivot, but it was too late. She ducked under his guard and swept his legs clean out from under him. He hit the dirt with a thud and a strangled “Ooof!”
“Fucking hell,” he groaned. “You’ve got an illegal amount of style.”
“And an even more illegal amount of pain,” Fenric added, right before Nolenne turned and drove her foot into his blade hand, knocking his weapon flying.
She followed with a palm to the centre of his chest that sent him stumbling backwards like a drunk on ice. “You done?” she asked sweetly, twirling her blade once behind her back like she was bored.
“Lady Nolenne, I was done the second you stood up,” Fenric wheezed, cradling his sternum.
Soren, ever the optimist, made the mistake of thinking a sneak attack was a tactical option. He lunged, quick and precise, aiming for her ribs, but Nolenne didn’t even blink. She twisted, caught his blade on her bracer with a metallic clack, grabbed his wrist, and used his own momentum to flip him over her hip. He hit the ground so hard it knocked the wind from him and for a heartbeat, the clearing went utterly silent. In three minutes flat, they had all yielded as she moved with the fluid power of someone who’d trained their whole life in the dark, without applause or audience, just with the determination to survive.
Maeve let out a long whistle, punctuating every word. “That. Was. So. Fucking. Hot.”
Aeilanna raised her cup without taking her eyes off the ring. “My true bound, everyone.”
Nolenne stood alone in the dust, chest rising and falling, red hair wild around her like a crown of fire. She rolled her shoulders back and grinned, sending Aeilanna a wink. Behind her, Soren groaned. “I think she bruised my dignity.”
“You don’t have dignity,” Calen muttered, still flat on his back.
“Don’t worry,” Fenric called from where he was sitting in the grass. “She only broke our pride, our ribs, and maybe our future chances at reproduction.”
“Anytime you need to be humbled.” Nolenne said sweetly, “Just ask.”
She turned as footsteps approached, Eiran, wiping his face with a towel, eyes gleaming with admiration. He stopped a few feet from her and offered an intricately designed golden dagger from his belt, hilt-first. “Lady Nolenne,” he said solemnly. “You are a deadly concoction of a storm and a raging bull. Serve with me, I will… we will need you.”
Nolenne took the blade slowly, eyes locked on his. “I already do.”
Behind them, Calen groaned from the ground. “Do we clap now? I feel like clapping.”
Branfil admired his broken brothers and said, “I vote we make her captain of the guard.”
?????
