Page 88 of A Reign of Roses
Arwen, blade pointed at the ready, gasped. “That’s cheating!”
Leigh had taken a seat next to Beth, Barney, and Ryder, leaning back on her hands in the snow. Griffin had rested against the bare sycamore behind them, and at some point Dagan had come to join him, too.
“I’m the cheater?” I asked Arwen, incredulous. “You two pulled a bait and switch.”
Leigh snorted from the sidelines but Arwen’s eyes only gleamed.
I resisted the animal growl that spurred in my chest as the breath funneled in and out of her. She was ravishing like this. Determined, a little flushed, playful.
Shaking my head, I lifted my feet from their hold and prowled toward her.
Arwen darted back, feet sliding through the snow, as I advanced on her. Steel slammed against steel.
Griffin and Dagan were still supported against that broad sycamore tree as we weaved around it. They leaned into each other like furtive conspirators as they commented on our every strike and step. Griffin shot me an entertained look as we rounded, while Dagan’s face revealed nothing as he watched, keeping a careful, concentrated eye on both our movements. Always a teacher.
When I lunged to sweep Arwen’s leg and she deftly shot over me and nearly struck my spine, a sound I’d never heard rang through the bright snow-laden annex: the flutter of Beth’s laughter.
Arwen and I both spun with the noise. A smile splitting the serious seer’s face was almost uncanny. But Arwen offered no warning as she attacked anew, grinning herself as she feinted and swung. We clashed, drawing close, and Arwen pressed an unexpected hand against my ribs and murmured through ragged breaths, “You’re lucky I don’t have a dagger on me.”
“That I am.” I grunted in agreement. Arwen’s eyes flickered with heat. I hated to disappoint her, but I was nothing if not competitive. When I transferred the blade back to my dominant hand it was hard to fight the smirk that threatened at my lips.
Arwen’s gaze colored with surprise. From the ground, Leigh released a low whistle and Beth laughed once more until Ryder shushed them both.
Our near-evenly-matched sparring dissolved once I made the switch. My blade flew from me like another limb over and over, and Arwen could barely blink in time to keep up. Breathing rough and parrying sloppier, Arwen offered me the first real opening, which I ignored.
The second, though, I lunged for.
She had to learn, and time was not on our side—
I only understood the move for the trap that it was once my sword was too far from my body. Arwen slashed upward. My blade would never reach back in time, and I wasn’t nimble enough to hop away. She had me beat.
Black, spindly shadows—thin and virtually harmless—split from my rib cage to guide her steel behind me. Arwen stumbled with the unearthly force and guilt tickled the base of my neck.
“You all right?” I breathed.
Arwen righted herself and tucked a freed strand of hair back into her braid. “New rules?”
Her twitching lips and rosy cheeks expanded something in my chest. My lips ached for hers. I managed to say, “It would make Dagan very happy, wouldn’t it?”
“For Dagan, then,” Arwen agreed, panting.
To our left the old man grumbled something that sounded like, “Leave me out of it.”
Arwen closed her eyes, sucked in a thorough inhale, and when she flicked them open once more, they gleamed.
The bubble of lighte that she bloomed around her body was as delicate as glass and as glittering as fresh water in the midday sun. It reflected the daylight and blinding snow around us in sparkling arcs. When I slammed my blade against its face, the blows reverberated into the calluses of my palm.
I allowed my darkness to advance, flirting with the bubble’s surface, lashing at it playfully. But Arwen had moved onto the offensive, taking my tentativeness as an opening. She panted hard, sweeping her sword through her own shield with ease as if it were mere fog. Lustrous, glittering fog.
Arwen parried each of my blows, angled low, and ducked expertly,and with an expression that belied her own surprise, sent out a ribbon of white flame toward me that nearly singed the hair of my forearms.
“Woah,” Leigh uttered.
Dagan grunted in approval behind us.
But my eyes pulled from our clashing silver up to her face. Her expression—so poised, so confident. So focused. I had been a wreck this morning over this woman, and here she was ducking and retreating and driving her blade with utter sureness. I had been going far too easy on her—she wasn’t a finch, but a falcon.
I let my lighte loose, her whips of that strange, delicate firelighte sailing amid cords of my ultraviolent ebony.
