The blade responded instantly. It flew out like a silver rope, loping up and back with a scream of steel to hook the Heart’s blade. Josef grunted as the Heart of War jerked in his hands. Had he been standing, he could have held the blow on course, but striking up from the ground and on one injured shoulder, he simply didn’t have the strength. Adela’s sword pulled the Heart’s trajectory off at the last second, flipping the black blade and Josef with it.
Josef cried out as he slammed into the tiled roof for the third time, rolling as he hit in a desperate effort to save his injured shoulder. He ended up on his stomach, but just as he kicked his legs under to get up, Adela’s boot landed on his neck and slammed him down again.
Adela leaned over him, panting wildly as she ground her boot down with all her weight. Josef gritted his teeth and shifted, turning his head so he could see her face. She was glaring down at him with pure, righteous fury. One hand held her sword, its flexible blade still wrapped around the Heart, but her other hand was pressed against her neck, staunching a shallow wound half an inch from her windpipe. Despite the boot grinding into his neck, Josef grinned. She wasn’t quite as fast as she liked to think.
“How are you still alive?” Adela whispered, her voice shaking with rage. “You should be bleeding to death.” Her dark eyes darted to his hands, still gripping the Heart of War with all their might. “I wonder.”
She jerked her fingers along her sword’s hilt. The flexible blade followed the motion, slinging down in a flashing arc. Josef’s eyes widened, and he dropped the Heart a second before the whipped blade would have sliced off his fingers. Adela laughed above him, but Josef had both hands free now. He reached up with his free arm, fingers closing around her boot before he threw her as hard as he could. Adela’s laughter cut off with a strangled cry as she fell, but Josef had already put her out of his mind. Every sense he had was focused on the black blade lying crooked on the tiles. He’d been separated from his sword for only a few seconds, but already the pain was threatening to knock him out. The Heart was all that mattered. If he couldn’t reach it, he was down for good. But as his fingers brushed the hilt, a flash of silver cut him off.
Adela’s sword whistled over his head, landing on the Heart with a whine of cutting metal. Josef snatched his fingers back with a curse as the flexible blade wrapped itself around the Heart like thread around a spindle, and as it wrapped, the blade began to spin, surrounding the Heart in an impenetrable cocoon of whirling steel. The moment the sword was completely covered, Adela flicked her hand like she was cracking a whip and the blade of her sword snapped off, freeing her from the tangle of whirling metal she’d woven around the Heart.
“There,” she said, smiling as the broken length of sword in her hand folded and re-formed until it was a slender, curved blade once again. “Let’s see how well you fight now, Thereson.”
Josef’s eyes flicked back to the Heart. Despite Adela seemingly snapping her blade in two, the cocoon of spinning steel around the Heart was going strong, grinding into the tile below with a whining scream. He crouched on his knees, considering his options. It didn’t take long, since there was only one. Blood soaked his arm, back, and chest, and he was starting to feel light-headed even through the pain. If he was going to do anything other than sit here and bleed to death, he needed the Heart, but there was no way through the spinning coil of Adela’s blade. Not without losing a hand, or worse.
Josef gritted his teeth with a growl of frustration. “That’s a very annoying weapon you have there, Dela. Does your Empress fight all her battles so cheaply, or am I the exception?”
“The Empress fights for victory,” Adela said. “Anything else is merely the conceit of prideful swordsmen.” She tapped his shoulder with her blade, forcing him to turn and face her. “You are defeated, Prince Thereson,” she crowed, beaming down at him. “Your wound is bleeding as it should now that I’ve separated you from that hunk of iron you call a sword. Give up. As it stands, I can still save your life, but you will be dead for certain if you persist in fighting.”
“Why should I give up?” Josef said, sitting back on his heels as he pressed both palms against the hole in his shoulder in a futile attempt to hold in the blood. “You think I believe you’ll let me live? After everything you’ve admitted to me?”
“Of course,” Adela said. “With the duke dead and your mother soon to follow, you are next in line for the throne. If you die here, the succession will be broken completely.”