“Fuck off, Aetos!” Tynan snaps, but Rhiannon presses her boot into his throat, garbling the last word. He turns a mottled shade of red.
Yeah, Tynan has more ego than common sense.
“He yields,” Emetterio calls out, and Rhiannon steps back, offering her hand.
Tynan takes it.
“You—” Emetterio points to the pink-haired second-year with the rebellion relic. “And you.” His finger swings to me.
She’s at least a head taller than me, and if the rest of her body is as toned as her arms, then I’m pretty much fucked.
I can’t let her get her hands on me.
My heart threatens to beat out of my chest, but I nod and step onto the mat. “You’ve got this,” Rhiannon says, tapping my shoulder as she passes me.
“Sorrengail.” The pink-haired girl looks me over like I’m something she’s scraped off the side of her boot, narrowing her pale green eyes. “You really should dye your hair if you don’t want everyone to know who your mother is. You’re the only silver-haired freak in the quadrant.”
“Never said I cared if everyone knows who my mother is.” I circle the second-year on the mat. “I am proud of her service to protect our kingdom—from enemies both without and within.”
As her jaw tightens at the dig, a bubble of hope rises in my chest. Marked ones, as I’d heard some people this morning refer to those carrying rebellion relics on their arms, blame my mother for the execution of their parents. Fine. Hate me. Mom often says the minute you let emotion enter a fight, you’ve already lost. I’ve never prayed harder that my ice-in-her-veins mother was right.
“You bitch,” she seethes. “Your mother murdered my family.”
She lunges forward and swings wildly, and I quickly sidestep, spinning away with my hands up. We do that for a few more rounds, and I land a few jabs, start to think that my plan might just work.
She growls low in her throat as she misses me again, and her foot flies at my head. I easily duck, but then she drops to the ground and kicks out with her other foot, which lands square in my chest, sending me backward. I hit the mat with a thud, and she’s already above me, so damn fast.
“You can’t use your powers in here, Imogen!” Dain shouts.
Imogen is trying her best to kill me.
Her eyes are above mine, and I feel the quick slide of something hard against my ribs as she smiles at me. But her smile fades as we both look down, and I can’t help but notice a dagger being re-sheathed.
The armor just saved my life. Thank you, Mira.
Confusion mars Imogen’s face for just a second, long enough for me to send my fist into her cheek and roll out from under her.
My hand screams with pain even though I’m sure I formed the fist right, but I block it out as we both gain our feet.
“What kind of armor is that?” she asks, staring at my ribs as we circle each other.
“Mine.” I duck and dodge as she comes at me again, but her movements are a blur.
“Imogen!” Emetterio shouts. “Do it again, and I’ll—”
I swerve the wrong way this time and she catches me, taking me to the floor. The mat smacks my face, and her knee digs into my back as she pulls my right arm behind me.
“Yield!” she shouts.
I can’t. If I yield on the first day, what will the second bring? “No!” Now I’m the one lacking common sense like Tynan, and I’m far more breakable.
She pulls my arm farther, and pain consumes every thought, blackening the edges of my vision. I cry out as the ligaments stretch, shred, then pop.
“Yield, Violet!” Dain yells.
“Yield!” Imogen demands.
Gasping for breath against the weight of her on my back, I turn my face to the side as she wrenches my shoulder apart, the pain consuming me.
“She yields,” Emetterio says. “That’s enough.”
I hear it again—the macabre sound of snapping bone—but this time it’s mine.
It is my opinion that of all the signet powers riders provide, mending is the most precious, but we cannot allow ourselves to become complacent when in the company of such a signet. For menders are rare, and the wounded are not.
—Major Frederick’s Modern Guide for Healers
CHAPTER
SIX
Flames of agony engulf my upper arm and chest as Dain carries me through the lower, covered passage out of the Riders Quadrant, over the ravine, and into the Healer Quadrant. It’s basically a stone bridge, covered and sided with more stone, which pretty much makes it a suspended tunnel with a few windows, but I’m not thinking clearly enough to take it in as we rush through, his strides eating up the distance.
“Almost there,” he reassures me, his grip firm but careful on my rib cage and beneath my knees as my useless arm rests on my chest.
“Everyone saw you lose it,” I whisper, doing my best to mentally block the pain like I have countless times before. It’s usually as easy as building a mental wall around the pulsing torment in my body, then telling myself the pain only exists in that box so I can’t feel it, but it isn’t working so well this time.
