Page 112 of Embers of Midnight
Draven drives me backward until the wall sigils warm my calves. His next lash catches high and opens my left side just under the ribs. Heat pours into my sleeve and down to my palm; the hilt goes slick. Breath breaks, tries to run, and I trap it in the count because that is the only thing that still listens. Two short in. One long out. He presses, precise and unbothered, and I feel the drop that comes before going down.
I lift the blade to guard my throat. Blood from the cut tracks across my wrist, slides over the horn along Pyrelight’s spine, and vanishes into it as if the steel had a seam I never saw. The floorsigils pulse once. The sound that hits my bones is not pretty; it is a low, hard chord that shoves up my arms and locks my wrists steady. Light rips along the spine—bright, straight, and shaped like a pattern I do not remember learning. Heat floods the edge without touching my skin. The pressure he’s throwing folds for a heartbeat, not because I earned it with skill, but because whatever woke in my weapon refuses to bow.
The surge is not gentle. It snaps through the ward lines under his feet and knocks him half a step off his measure. The air between us shakes the way air does when a bell is struck too close to your ear. My vision clears instead of tunneling. The pain in my side stays hot and honest; it stops dictating the terms. I take that single window and cut across his bind at knee height. It parts cleanly where nothing else would, like the edge already knew where the weak point lived.
His eyes hit the blade, then me, without the safety of surprise to hide behind. He resets his stance and tries to drown the chord with more weight. I meet it with both hands and let the hum carry my elbows where they need to be. The next lash glances. The one after that dies on the edge as if the room forgot to power it. I am still bleeding. I am still one bad angle away from the floor. The difference is simple: I have something in my hands that hits back hard enough to matter.
“Interesting,” he says, and means dangerous.
“New,” I answer, because it is both.
We trade in close then. He gives up distance for control and tries to take my center with his shoulders and his hips the way menwho have seen real fights do. I let him crowd to steal his elbow. Pyrelight travels the pocket under his guard and nicks a tendon he will miss in two more steps. He answers with a forearm across the wrap on my ribs that makes my vision sparkle. I keep my feet anyway. He aims a second verdict for my knees. I change levels and let the hum in my blade shear the base of his bind. His eyes narrow. The ring nearest his hand brightens in little angry steps.
Outside the sealed doors, something heavy hits wood. I hear it through the floor first, then with my ears. He hears it too. He doesn’t look away. He lifts his palm and the pressure climbs again, tuned toward my breath, tested against its rhythm. He is reading me like a metronome and adjusting for it.
“Stop using my lungs,” I tell him. “They are not your map.”
“Everything is my map,” he says, and the truth in it lands like gravel.
He feints for my shoulder and tries to take my wrist. I let the grab land so I can cut the inside of his sleeve and take the nerve line instead. His hand fails for half a breath. I drive the butt of my blade into his sternum and feel the dull, flat answer of bone. The rings behind him flare a fraction and die. His control isn’t perfect with pain in it. Mine gets cleaner.
He lets go of the idea of persuasion and shows me the man the Academy needed once—fast, cold, exact. War-sigils stack under his palms and then spin like a gear. When the pressure comes this time it is layered—one wave for bones, one for breath, one for the muscles that keep you standing. I ride the first and let the second slide through the count. The third locks my thighs. Hemeans to freeze me long enough to finish my throat while I am upright.
I do something ugly and correct. I cut my own leg where the bind sits against tendon. The pain shoves me out of his grab and onto my knees. His blade passes over where my neck was, clean and businesslike. I kick behind his ankle and he stumbles one pace. The hum along Pyrelight’s spine climbs a note and the pattern blooms again—lines intersecting at angles that feel like memory in my hands.
“Who put that in your steel,” he asks, truly curious.
“Me,” I say, which is not a lie in the only way that matters.
He tries to bring the verdict down while I am low. I roll to the left and come up inside the arm he prefers. He goes for the cheap break at my nose. I go for the little ligaments that keep his shoulder anchored. We both score. My eyes water. His shoulder drops a half inch and won’t lift as neatly.
He steps back to buy space and rebuild. I don’t give it to him. The blade hum is not a song. It is instruction. I follow it and cut across the face of his ward where the geometry says it will part. It opens in a thin white line like a zipper. He sees it too late to reseal.
The door behind me complains in a way that sounds like wood fighting metal. This time I let the noise answer for me. He tilts his head a fraction, does the math for how long he has beforecompany, and makes the choice men like him always make when the schedule gets tight.
He reaches for my heart.
The push is clean and perfect and merciless. I meet it with everything I can drag into my arm. The edge sings like heat under ice. The line between us becomes a seam I can hold. The binds under his feet flare. I ride the hum through the seam he can’t see and step past his weapon side.
The final work is simple because it has to be. My left hand catches his wrist and holds it long enough for the blade to decide where it belongs. Under the sternum. Through the ribs. Into the muscle that pumps certainty through a man who thinks certainty makes him good.
Pyrelight slides in. The sound is wet and real. His breath leaves on a small, surprised sound someone who loved him would recognize. He grips my forearm and then forgets the reason. The rings behind him dim. His knees think about the floor and accept it. He looks at my face the way he looked at me across his kitchen table and I hate the part of me that still knows the color of his tea.
“I kept you alive,” he says, and there is no triumph in it.
“I am alive,” I answer, and twist the blade because I learned to finish what I start.
He folds as if someone unhooked him from his frame. I guide the weight to the ground because leaving him to fall feels like a lie I don’t need to tell. The light in the nearest ring gutters. The bind lines around the door lose their edge.
The wood gives. The first body through is Ash—eyes blown wide, mouth all teeth, ready to cut the world. Ronan shoulders the gap wider and makes room for Darian. Caelum slips past them like a shadow that learned manners. They take in the room in slices—the blade in my hand, the blood on my sleeve, the weight on the floor.
I pull Pyrelight free. The blood on the edge looks too dark. My own leaks down my elbow into my palm and makes the hilt slick. My ribs feel like a fist is still squeezing them from the inside. I do not put the blade down. I do not fall until I have told them what they need.
“He planned it,” I say, and my voice holds because I make it. “All of it. He routed them. He opened locks.”
Ash makes a sound I have only heard when something breaks in him. Ronan’s hands ball and then loosen because the axe is not the tool this second needs. Caelum’s eyes find the sigil shadow still fading along my blade and widen. Darian is already moving toward me with the kind of calm that puts a room back on its feet.
I have one more breath in the count before the floor decides it wants me. I use it to sheathe Pyrelight. I use it to meet four sets of eyes that make staying alive make sense. The floor rises.Someone says my name from far away. The lights along the rings finally go out.
