Page 94 of Of Blood and Banes
I lift my chin. “You train me tonight. Now. Consider me graduated. I don’t have time for a ceremony.”
A small smile warms his cheeks. “Such a demanding little thing, aren’t you? You aren’t ready for weapons.”
“Watch me,” I growl, snatching the dagger off the ground and pointing it directly at him. “New term. If I beat you at any point, you tell me what the King wants.”
“That’ll never happen?—”
I chuck the dagger at him and miss his head by two feet. The blade sinks into the bed behind him, straight into a pillow. His rigid stance tells me he’s considering that I might be bad enough to hit him by accident.
Good. Let him be scared—even if it’s not for exactly the reason I want him to be.I stalk across the room and rip the dagger from the pillow, pulling out white goose feathers with it and leaving a trail of them in my wake.
“Fine,” he purrs. “I’ll play. It’s only fair I get some sort of incentive, too. If you want to train with weapons, you remove these shackles from me.”
“When are you going to give that up?”
“When are you going to givein?” He takes a few steps into my direction and cranes his neck to look at me. “If you want to train with the best?—”
I scoff. Though, his arrogance shouldn’t surprise me in the least. He closes the space between us, and I watch him with uncertainty as he grabs the wrist of my hand holding the dagger.
“—then that is my requirement. You know I can’t kill you at this point, even if I might want to. And I wouldn’t be fast enough to escape if you called your oversized black lizard for backup. But if you’re so concerned about me fleeing…block the door. It’ll give you more than enough time to keep me trapped until your scaled beast arrives.”
Flicking my attention down to where he grips me, I spot blooms of purple and greens peeking out from underneath his shackle. The strips of the bed sheets I tied around his wrists to create a barrier between his skin and the metal are gone.
Swallowing against the sympathy rising in me like an ocean swell, I lift my chin to look him in the face. “Fine.”
I stalk over to the dresser and, push by push, shove it in front of the door. Once I’ve got it blocked, I return to Darian and unlock his shackles. As soon as the metal drops to the floor, his shoulders relax an inch. He brushes a thumb softly over his bruised wrist, looking like he can’t believe I’ve actually done such a thing.
“But I don’t trust you with a weapon, yet,” I state.
While rubbing his wrist, he snorts, acknowledging that we both know he’d be more than capable of taking my own.
“Think you can make do with what you’ve got?” I taunt, powering my stance with my dagger and waiting for those wicked eyes to look back up at me.
His dark lashes snap up to reveal those sage-green eyes. That signature bastard smirk pulls his features into all the lines that should make me feel wrong. But they don’t.
“You’re on,” he purrs.
I lunge toward him, stabbing the dagger forward with one hand and keeping the other near my face, taking into consideration his tip from earlier.
He glides with a ghostly technique, evading each plunge and swipe of my knife and muttering out words with each dodge. “You’re…making this…too…easy.”
Striking like a snake, he grabs my arm wielding the dagger and twists it behind me, pinning it to my back as he sweeps me toward the closest wall and slams me against it. My breath puffs out from my lips, my hand springing open in shock and dropping the dagger. I blink against the ringing in my skull.
At least he’s not holding back.
“So easy,” he taunts again, leaning his chest into me.
Sucking in a breath, I kick my head back as hard as I can and slam into his face. The grip on my forearm disappears, and I slip out of his grasp before he counteracts. When I spin to face him, blood trickles down from one side of his nose, over his lips, and drips off his strong, stubbled chin. He wipes the blood off with a hand, successfully smearing half of it across his face menacingly. His brows lower over his eyes, darkening his expression into a mix of hunt and play.
We explode into a series of swipes and strikes, ducks and dodges.
He eventually pins me with my back against the wall with a hardthump, my wrists locked above my head by his commanding hands. “Easy,” he purrs.
Gritting my teeth, I kick out at him, slipping from his grip with an ease that flirts with the idea he let me. We’re back to a new set of spins, kicks, and punches.
He pins me next with my face down on the ground. “Easy.”
I snarl in frustration, swatting at his hands, and he lets me up. As soon as I get to my feet, we’re back at it. Not even a minute later, he slams me backward into the desk, his hand seizing my throat.
