Page 39 of House of Embers
“Hence me on my ass.”
“Indeed,” he said smoothly. “Now, think about the space between the energy, and then I want you to draw the shadows in like a thread. Pull and wrap your blade in them so that the shadows are the weapon and not the blade.”
“Easier said than done.”
“If you don’t think you can do it—”
“No,” she interjected.
This was the first time they’d had to train all week. Fordham had been busy with his kingly duties. Meanwhile, Kerrigan was fitted and refitted into dresses and other outfits. She’d tried on royal jewels. She’d sat through meetings on color schemes for the coronation. She’d tasted samples for the buffet. She’d listened to various musicians audition. It was a long, tedious week of monotonousqueenlyduties, which seemed to mean dealing with frivolous things that someone else surely could have made decisions about. She could hardly complain, since they were listening to her, despite many an upturned nose at her presence. She had to be seen as competent just as much as Fordham. She would rather be in war meetings and trade agreements and, gods, on the back of her dragon. But right now, her battlefield was the Fae nobility of the House of Shadows—as much as she hated it.
She’d take this training interruption for as long as they’d let her. Stretching her muscles and learning new skills was far superior to napkin embroidery.
So she leaned into her well of powers and felt for that bridge between her and Fordham. It was cast wide open across the bond. She felt for that one black string that she could pluck like a harp. Then she gently pulled against it, feeling for the shadows in the room, the negative space between worlds, and drew them toward her. She had done this with ease on the back of her dragon. Today, it took concentration and effort rather than instinct. She wanted precision and not brute force.
The shadows answered.
For a second, she had to force down her panic as they rushed for her. The first couple times she’d done this, she’d shrieked and dropped the connection. Once she’d gotten past the initial fear, they’d snapped at her, and she’d ended up knocked out. She didn’t want that. She wanted…no,neededcontrol.
They were at her command. With a steady breath, as she moved into Chutrick’s art-of-war formations, the shadows wrapped around her blade one tendril at a time. She bit down on her lip as they slowly slid into place. She was nearly to the end of the blade when she switched to Kristoffer. The complexity of those moves put her mind at ease.
And then it was complete. Her blade held before her was wreathed in shadows, her arm trembling with the control needed to hold it aloft, as if it suddenly weighed twice her body weight. As it settled into her, she lunged at Fordham.
A wicked smile reached his face as he met her advances with the grace of a predator. She’d seen him fight more times than she liked, and it never ceased to amaze her how superior he was in every way—his smooth movements, his precise bladework, the fire in his eyes as he took command of every situation. She respected him for it long before she fell in love with him.
So when her blade went flying from a misplaced thrust and his sword tapped under her chin, lifting her face to look at him, she smirked and said, “Again?”
“Ugh, the foreplay,” Wynter groaned.
“You did better,” he said, not acknowledging his sister as he dropped his sword arm.
“I got it!” Kerrigan argued. “Come on. I did better than better.”
“Your arms were shaky. The shadows were half ready to explode out of you. You barely had control.”
“I’m a work in progress.”
He shot her a look. “Understatement.”
“So am I ready to jump or what?”
Wynter threw herself backward, laughing.
Kerrigan winced. “I’ll take that to mean no?”
“No,” Fordham agreed.
Kerrigan shook out her arms. “Can we try that Ollivier trick instead?”
Wynter raised her eyebrows. “You showed her how to store things in the nothing?”
“Not exactly,” Fordham grumbled.
“He proposed to me by pulling the ring out of the shadows.”
Wynter lost it, doubling over. “Gods, that’s clever.”
“Shut it,” he grumbled.
