Page 10 of Enchanted Shadows
“I am now,” she responded back.
“And if you’re ever not, you will let me know?”
She kicked at me again, this time far harder. “Sure.”
Neither of us believed that.
We moved into doing some blocking. Zara hadn’t been wrong in saying she already knew some of this, so the blocking drills I had her do were one step farther, blocking and spinning away.
“What’s Zara short for?”
Her eyes stayed on mine, but her feet faltered. “Who says it’s short for anything?”
I smirked. Was she always this bristly or was it just me? “The fact that we are on the fourth day of this and sometimes we have to say ‘Zara’ multiple times before you answer.”
“It’s a nickname. One my family uses,” she explained.
“What’s it short for then?” Zarlynn? Zarell? Zarbana? Yeah, I was bad at this.
“I will tell you when I trust you,” was her only response.
“Are you intentionally trying to be mysterious? You seem to keep to yourself.”
She sighed and relaxed out of ready stance, her lone blonde braid swinging as she did. “No. I’m not trying to be anything. I just have trust issues. That’s all.”
I looked to the sun and took a deep breath. “I once had to stand there and watch the dead king, the same one I eventually helped kill, rub Wren’s back. It was—” Even now I had to stop and clench my jaw remembering the level of helplessness I felt. “Repulsive,” I finally finished as traces of forest green ran along my veins in my forearms.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I may be growly. I may yell. I may straight up be an ass. But I made a promise to myself that I would never stand there and allow something like that to happen again.”
“Okay,” she said softly.
“Okay.”
“Don’t say it.” She got back into ready position.
“Say what?”
Her voice went deeper as she imitated,“Again.”
It wasn’t all bad, but her voice couldn’t dip as deep as mine was. I had been saying that an awful lot lately. I grinned. “Again. And this time bring it.”
A few minutes later, I heard Miles call for me, “Raikes.”
“Be right back,” I told Zara before heading over.
Remy was bent over, grabbing at her stomach.
“What happened?” I asked Miles. Maybe this was why we shouldn’t start defense training in the first few days. They weren’t confident enough on their feet yet, hadn’t pounded out enough miles. Hadn’t gotten used to their own limbs yet.
“I don’t know,” Miles told me. “She just started gasping out in pain.”
I looked to Remy. “You take a kick to the stomach?”
“No,” she gritted out.
I noted the way a few of the other women were glancing between themselves and realization dawned on me. There were a few things different about this training class, but I also had two sisters. “Cramps?”
