I didn’t want to hear any more. I pushed from the wall, but he blocked my way.
“Move.”
“Ask yourself if you will be content living your life in his shadow. You know you were meant for greater things. Deep down he knows this, too. He knows he can’t hold you or he would’ve begged you to marry him. When a man wants to share his life with a woman, he offers her everything.”
“Move.” If he didn’t, I would move him.
“You need to blow off some steam. I have an exercise yard full of swords. Spar with me.”
“No.”
“If you’re too scared to try, just say you’re scared, and we’ll come back to it when you grow a backbone.”
Voron. That was what Voron used to say to me. He would critique my fights, he would batter me in practice, and when I came up short, he’d reprimand me. “Do better” was bad. “Sloppy” was worse. But nothing compared to “Say you’re scared.” There was no worse sin than to not try because you couldn’t scrape together enough courage.
The anger that had simmered boiled over. The ice cage cracked. I was so done. He wanted a fight, I would give him a fucking fight. “Fine. Lead the way.”
CHAPTER 15
I followed Hugh down the stairs. We emerged into the hallway and I nearly walked into George. She saw Hugh. Her smart eyes narrowed. “Hey, Kate.”
“Hey.”
“Where you going?”
“Out for a little exercise.”
George turned. “I’ll come with you.”
“Suit yourself.”
We walked through the hallways to a door. Hugh pushed it open and we emerged into the inner yard. Six large racks of weapons greeted me, spaced in a crescent along the nearest wall. Swords, axes, spears. He must’ve taken time to prepare. It wouldn’t help him.
I strolled along the racks. I recognized a few Japanese blades, but most were European, bastard swords, rapiers, sabers. An ancient falcata waited by the Greek kopis, a Roman gladius rested next to a hand-and-a-half, and a German messer next to its descendant, the saber. Falchions, claymores, tactical blades, every single one of them not only functional but beautiful, a kind of weapon that was a tool of war and a piece of art. Voron would’ve loved this. It had to be Hugh’s personal collection. It was beautiful, as long as one ignored the man in the cage slowly dying of thirst in the corner.
I glanced up. Christopher was watching us through the bars with haunted eyes. I had meant to bring him water this morning.
Hugh stalked on the other side, watching me.
“Kate,” George said. “What are you planning to do?”
“We’re planning to spar,” Hugh told her. “Just a friendly competition.”
“This is a really bad idea,” George said.
“What do I get if I win?” I asked.
Hugh nodded at his priceless swords. “You can have anything here.”
I surveyed the blades. I would be insane to turn one down. “Anything?”
“Anything in this courtyard. But if I win—”
“You won’t.”
“If I win,” Hugh said, “you’ll tell me how you killed Erra. What magic you did, what moves you used. You will re-create that fight for me, down to the last little detail.”
George shook her head. “Kate . . .”
“Deal.”
George sighed.
I shrugged off my sheath and set Slayer down by the closest rack. I needed a similar blade, something with the same reach, weight, and balance.
Hugh stalked along the racks, thinking.
Falchion . . . No. A saber would give me an advantage, but this had to be an even contest. He was stronger; I had no doubt of that. He was six inches taller, muscled like a gladiator, and outweighed me by sixty-five pounds at the very least. His shirt molded to him, and the muscle on his torso looked hard like body armor. But all that muscle mass came with a price. It would cost him in endurance and speed, and I had endurance coming out of my ears.
We stopped at the same rack. Two nearly identical swords waited before us, each thirty-two inches long. A deep bevel ran down the length of the double-edged blades. People called it the blood groove, because they imagined blood dramatically running down the bevel. In reality the groove wasn’t made to channel blood, but to lighten the weight of the sword without compromising its resilience. Despite its size, one of these twin swords would likely weigh only about two and a half pounds. Let’s see, a classic type six cross-guard, with widened flattened ends bent slightly toward the blade. A four-inch grip, wrapped with a leather cord. A plain round pommel. Not a work of art, but a brutally efficient tool, designed to take lives.
“Fate,” Hugh said.