“No, not a rat.” I sighed; he was just tormenting me. I hoped. “A pirate. Buccaneer. Sailor of the high seas.” Silver eyes stared blankly at me. “Have you ever been to an ocean?”
“Of course.”
“A pirate drives a boat on the ocean.”
“Sara, one does not drive a boat. One sails a ship.”
So he did know what I was talking about. “Can you start teaching me now? I don’t want your legs to get chilly,” I added, smiling sweetly.
Micah’s eyes narrowed, but he began my first real sword fighting lesson. First, he glided his hand along both of our blades, his palm flush to the edge. I shrieked when he did this with his own sword, but after he showed me he wasn’t bleeding, he explained that he’d added an enchantment to our weapons, to make them safe for our little practice session.
“Did you blunt the edges?” I asked, watching intently as he repeated the procedure with my sword.
“They are as sharp as ever,” he replied, to my relief. I wanted to have a sword for at least an entire day before it was wrecked. And I wanted to do the wrecking. “I merely asked the blades to harm neither me nor my consort.”
Magic just seemed to get cooler by the day. “And they agreed?”
“They did.”
“Huh.” I flicked the pad of my thumb against the edge; it still looked sharp, but it felt smooth, almost like the edge of a porcelain plate. “How long does the spell last?”
“Not a spell, love,” Micah clarified. “The metal has agreed to abide by our terms. Treat your sword well, and you will have an ally for life.”
“I like allies,” I murmured. I stroked my thumb against the not-sharp-to-me edge again, then I grinned at Micah. “Well? Let’s get started.”
After a few brief instructions about the proper way to hold a sword, and a few terrible (even for me) pirate jokes, I stood back and affected the stance Mom taught me. Based on Micah’s expression, it was quite an improvement from the yoga pose.
“En garde!” I waved my new sword with a flourish. At that, Micah shook his head and smiled, and our lesson began.
Perhaps it was because the sword was made for me, or maybe I really had inherited some of my mother’s warrior-queen blood, but swordplay seemed to come naturally. Before the wars, and our lives taking the express route to hell in a hand basket, I’d taken classical dance lessons. Swordplay turned out to be quite similar, with the feints and jabs like a graceful dance between opponents. Micah said as much, complimenting my fast learning after a successful parry that neither of us thought I’d make.
“It must be the skirt slowing you down,” I teased. “What have you got on under there, anyway?” I used my sword’s point to lift the edge of his makeshift kilt, but Micah knocked the blade away. “Oh, so you’re modest now?”
“I am nothing of the sort,” he snapped. “This is… unnatural.” He gestured at his decidedly unmanly getup.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! Really, Micah, this dress obsession of yours has got to go.”
“A wager, then?”
The man in the skirt wants to make a bet. Intriguing. “What sort of wager?”
“One more bout. If you win, I will never speak ill of your man’s clothing again.”
“And if you win?”
“You’ll wear that dress for each and every one of our lessons.” He was grinning as he spoke, and, being that I was panting like I’d just run a marathon, I couldn’t figure out why. Then I followed his gaze to my heaving, sweaty, pushed up by a corset bosom.
The poufy-haired bastard really was having a damsel in distress fantasy.
Oh, now I was mad.
I came at him in a flurry, swinging and striking like a madwoman. In fact, I was acting like such a madwoman that Micah had no trouble fending me off. He even laughed as he parried my ineffectual blows.
“If you could only see how lovely you look,” he said, executing another parry that left our hilts locked together.
I’ll show him what’s lovely. I dug my heels into the soft ground and braced myself, shifting the brunt of his force onto my shoulder. Grinning wickedly, I slipped my free hand underneath his skirt, grabbed him, and squeezed. Micah’s eyes went big as saucers, but he did not admit defeat. Instead, he ducked his head and bit my breast. Hard!
I yelped and hopped backwards, dropping my sword in the process. Being that I still had hold of Micah’s most valued possessions, he moved with me, and we hit the ground as a tangled knot of limbs, thankfully with neither of us accidentally injuring the other. Once we stopped laughing, talk turned to who had won the bout.