He stopped, his brow furrowed as his blue eyes darkened. I wasn’t sure what to make of his reaction. Had I insulted him? Had I pointed out an uncomfortable truth, perhaps?
“Nothing in this life is easy,” he replied and kicked the wooden dummy so hard, it bumped into me. I lost my balance and focus.
It was all it took for Kalon to move like a flash of lightning as he jumped over the fallen dummy and pushed me against the wall. Before I knew it, my swords were on the floor, and his forearm pressed into my throat, while the tip of his blunt sword poked me in the stomach.
For a moment, neither of us dared to move, paralyzed by what had just happened. His face was inches from mine, and I had a hard time making sense of anything. Sweat dripped from my eyebrow, forcing me to shut one eye. His breath brushed against my skin.
The face I made with one eye closed must’ve been funny, because Kalon laughed as he pulled back and offered a polite bow. “My apologies, Esme. I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
I wiped the sweat from my forehead and eyes with the back of my sleeve, my cheeks ablaze and my limbs trembling from the adrenaline. Kalon packed a solid punch, for sure. There was delightful danger lurking inside me, and I’d merely gotten a glimpse of it.
“I, for one, hope you didn’t go easy on me,” I said.
He shook his head. “Not at all. I wouldn’t have wanted to offend you.”
“Hah. That’s considerate. Thank you.”
“The offer stands,” he said, his eyes glimmering with anticipation. That black leather looked wicked on his athletic form. My mouth was dry. “I can train you. Help you improve certain skills. Your speed is exquisite, and your technique is certainly varied, but you need to tie it all into something more fluid.”
I thought about it for a moment. For as long as I was here, I could certainly spare an hour or two a day training with Kalon Visentis, one of the Blood Arena’s highly acclaimed champions. I had nothing to lose, only to gain from such an arrangement.
“Is there an endgame here?” I asked him, tired of all the guessing I’d done from the moment we’d met. If I was to trust him with my training, I had to be able to look at him and not see a potential enemy.
Kalon grunted, a shadow settling between his eyebrows. I’d made him angry, and I almost regretted raising the question, but it had to be done. Like a band-aid, it had to be removed quickly. The pain was sharp, but it would only last a split second before the benefits emerged.
“I resent the implication,” Kalon said, his voice rough and low.
Had I been paranoid this whole time? He was clearly offended, and the last thing I needed was Kalon Visentis holding a grudge against me.
“No offense intended,” I replied. “But, like I said, you make it difficult for me to trust you. After all, we’ve only just met, Kalon. If I’m to trust you with anything, my training included, I need to be able to… you know, trust you.”
As if suddenly enlightened, Kalon seemed to relax, his shoulders dropping slowly. His expression changed, and a faint smile danced across his face. “Sometimes, taking a chance on someone is all it takes to change your life for the better,” he said. “I made it clear last night that I value honor above anything else. I see potential in you as a fighter, and I wish to amplify it, that’s all. You can choose to say no, or you can pick up your swords and get ready for another round, Esme. It’s pretty simple.”
Kalon didn’t feel the need to justify himself. This was the best I would get out of him regarding his trustworthiness. Then again, what should I have expected? I had never trusted anyone outside my family who’d ever told me to “trust them.” Anyone who said that raised a red flag in my book. So what more did I want from Kalon, in this instance, in terms of reassurances?
Nothing. Settle for what you got.
And I did. With a brief nod, I picked the twin swords up and took my defense stance.
“All right, then. Show me what you’ve got, teacher,” I said.
Tristan
I lost track of time in the library. Having planned to only spend the first part of the day in here, I was quickly absorbed into the dozens of leather-bound volumes that documented the Black Fever and its devastating effects in painstaking detail. Derek and Sofia were busy with Amal in one of the study rooms, having collected enough Aeternae blood to begin their tests and analyses, while Nethissis was busy compiling a more comprehensive report of our first couple of days here.
Esme had mentioned something about the training halls, and I didn’t mind her keeping busy like this at all. I did appreciate the freedom we had as guests in the palace. Of course, I knew everyone was watching us—servants, valets, handmaidens, gold guards. They all had their eyes on us, as did the nobles living in the many other rooms of this enormous building. But we were respectful and didn’t bother anyone. From that angle, I didn’t see anything wrong with my scholarly endeavor. Besides, I needed something to wipe away the memory of the bloodshed I’d witnessed last night in the Black Square.
Everything in this place was meant to be read. I assumed the more delicate documents were kept separately, in a secure and secret location.
Reading about the Black Fever was more emotionally ravaging than I’d imagined. It was one thing to hear about it killing millions of Aeternae every ten thousand years, and something else entirely to take in the accounts of doctors and shamans who had fought tirelessly against the disease’s rapid spread.
It was late afternoon, and I’d reached the fifteenth such document, enclosed in a third volume surrounding the Black Fever. Its author, Merus Corinth, had been on the forefront of the outbreak five hundred thousand years ago—though, to be honest, I had already lost count of those before him. There were just too many.
Merus talked about the first symptoms, which he’d witnessed in his own daughter. The fever set in at first. The Aeternae girl’s skin had become pale, and she’d begun to lose weight while she burned on the inside. Eventually, she could no longer get out of bed.
By then, fifteen more cases had been identified in the capital city, and many more in the provinces and even in the principates, where thousands of Aeternae were stationed as part of the government forces and administrative personnel—the Aeternae might’ve conquered and subdued Rimia and Nalore, but that didn’t mean they could just let the locals handle their affairs. No, the Aeternae were deeply embedded in the core of each principate, approving laws and regulations, signing treaties and trade deals with Visio and on behalf of Visio. Personally, I found that a little shady, but it was still none of my business.
“By the third week of fever, Clara’s skin was almost translucent, the veins black as they spidered across,” I read from Merus’s account. “I put a needle in a thicker one. My daughter didn’t feel a thing, too weak to protest, anyway. Blood came out, but it was no longer of the crimson color. Instead, it was as black as ink, and as thick as oil.”
Flipping the page, I found an illustration in which Merus had done his best to describe the extraction process with a large, metallic syringe.
“In her fourth week, Clara could no longer consume blood. I’d barely managed to feed her a few ounces every day, but she couldn’t stomach that anymore. I tried giving her water, and, while she did take a few sips, it resulted in a violent fit of vomiting. Everything that came out of her was black and gooey.” I kept reading but was forced to take a pause, breathing deeply. “You poor thing.”
“Tristan?”
Valaine’s voice echoed through the library. For a moment, I thought I’d merely imagined it, though I would’ve welcomed her presence to soothe some of the gloom that had taken over. Reading about the effects of the Black Fever was downright heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, and everything in between.
It made the Aeternae’s decision to keep drinking Rimian and Nalorean blood all the more difficult to stomach, given the risks that they subjected themselves to. It dawned on me then that maybe part of the reason they allowed the consumption was knowing that the Black Fever would break out every ten millennia. Maybe they did it to prevent overpopulation? No, that didn’t make sense. The Aeternae’s birth rate was low, anyway.
“Tristan,” Valaine said, tearing my attention from the yellowed pages. She was standing next to my study table, watching me with a mixture of curiosity and concern. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying much attention to the world around me,” I replied, offering an apologetic half-smile. My mood was already elevated, merely upon seeing her.
She’d settled for a simple red dress with a black bow at the base of her neck. It softened the contrast between her pale skin and her dark-as-night hair. She pointed at the chair next to mine.
“Mind if I sit?” she asked.
“Not at all, please,” I said.
