Chapter 204. I Told Her the Only Expectation That Mattered Was Mine
The first hour of training was not a lesson in technique; it was a lesson in humiliation. The air in the training courtyard grew thick with the smell of kicked-up dust and the sour tang of Lia’s escalating frustration.
William watched with keen, unblinking eyes as she struggled to bridge the gap between her refined instincts and this new, brutal reality.
Every time she initiated an attack, the consequences were immediate and punishing. Her old habits, the muscle memory that had made her a prodigy with the rapier, were now her greatest enemies.
She would attempt a precise, corrective flick of the wrist mid-swing to adjust her aim, but the greatsword refused to obey. Instead of a graceful correction, the massive blade would jerk violently, its inertia dragging her off balance.
The third time she overcommitted, she swung wide, the tip of the practice blade whistling past William’s shoulder with terrifying force.
The momentum carried her forward, her boots skidding uselessly across the dirt as she stumbled, nearly eating the ground. Her breathing was ragged now, coming in sharp, panicked gasps.
"Stop," William commanded, his voice cutting through her labored breathing like a blade. "You’re fighting yourself, Lia!"
Lia planted the tip of the sword in the dirt to steady herself, her arms visibly quaking. "I can’t..."
"I can’t find the center," she hissed through clenched teeth, sweat dripping from her chin onto the scorched earth. "Every time I try to correct the path, the sword rebels..."
"It’s like trying to steer a landslide with a toothpick."
"That’s because you’re still trying to steer it," William said, stepping closer. His shadow fell over her, imposing and absolute. "Your instinct is to control the blade the way you’d control a lighter weapon: constant, precise micro adjustments throughout the entire motion."
"You’re trying to micromanage physics that simply won’t allow it."
Lia looked up at him, her eyes bright with a mix of exhaustion and anger. "Then how am I supposed to hit anything?"
"If I can’t adjust mid-swing, I’m just swinging a guillotine blindfolded."
"You don’t adjust mid-swing... You commit to the arc before you even begin," William explained, his tone dropping into something more primal. "You decide where the killing blow lands, you initiate the motion, and then you trust your body to ride that momentum through to the end."
"You stop trying to redirect the blade mid-swing and start redirecting your entire body along with it."
Lia’s grip tightened on the hilt until her knuckles turned white. "That feels dangerously close to losing control entirely, Instructor Wade..."
"You’re asking me to surrender my agency to a piece of metal."
"It is dangerous," William admitted without hesitation.
There was no comfort in his words, only honesty. "That is the trade-off... With a lighter blade, you have infinite moment-to-moment correction."
"With a heavier blade, you have less opportunity to fix a mistake, but you gain devastating power."
"It’s uncomfortable because you’re used to being the master of every fraction of a millimeter..." William crossed his arms. "Now, you have to become the master of the entire trajectory."
Lia stared at the weapon, her inner monologue a storm of doubt. ’Surrender control? To a weapon?’
’That’s how you die... That’s how you get your ribs shattered because you miscalculated a half-inch swing.’
’If I lose control of the blade, I lose control of my life.’ But she looked at William’s face, calm, unflinching, and utterly certain, and she knew he wasn’t asking her to be reckless.
He was asking her to be decisive.
She wiped the sweat from her eyes with her shoulder, resetting her stance with obvious difficulty. Her legs felt heavy, her muscles screaming from the strain of holding the weapon’s dead weight.
"I hate this," she muttered, a flash of her old defiance sparking in her eyes. "I don’t like feeling like I’m not fully in control of my own strike..."
Lia’s eyes start to lock in. "It feels like I’m gambling with every swing."
William raised Aetherion again, the weapon’s presence filling the space between them with a sense of impending violence. "I know you don’t like it."
"But feeling safe is what keeps you alive in a spar..."
"Feeling uncomfortable is what keeps you alive in a war." His eyes narrowed, challenging her. "Try it anyway."
Lia gritted her teeth and attempted to follow his instruction. She threw her weight into a deliberate horizontal slash, attempting to commit to the arc before the blade left its resting position.
But the ghost of her old training screamed at her to correct, to pull back, to microadjust. That split-second hesitation proved catastrophic.
The greatsword’s momentum didn’t just carry her forward; it yanked her off balance like an anchor dropped from a ship.
Her boots scraped violently against the stone, sending sparks flying as she stumbled, the tip of the massive weapon gouging a deep furrow into the training ground.
She caught herself just before a full collapse, bracing the hilt against her thigh with a sharp, frustrated exhale that sounded more like a wounded animal than a disciplined student.
"This is... considerably harder than I expected," she admitted quietly.
The words hung between them, heavy and raw. For William, it was startling.
Lia was a fortress of composure, a woman whose discipline was so absolute it often bordered on mechanical. To hear her voice crack with genuine admission was like seeing a hairline fracture appear in flawless marble.
"That’s fine," William said, keeping his tone easy, deliberately unbothered to avoid adding to her shame. "Nobody’s good at something the first hour they try it, Lia."
"That’s the fundamental truth of practice... If you were good at it already, you wouldn’t need me."
"I don’t usually struggle this visibly," Lia snapped back.
The edge in her voice wasn’t anger toward him but a genuine, corrosive discomfort, a vulnerability that cut deeper than any training injury. Her breathing remained shallow, her chest heaving.
"I’m supposed to master new techniques quickly. That’s... that’s what I do. That is my entire identity."
William lowered Aetherion, the hum of the weapon fading to a low murmur as he set it aside. He stepped into her space, studying her not as an instructor evaluating a student’s form, but as a man reading the bruises beneath the surface.
’Here goes nothing...’
"Says who?"
Lia froze. Her eyes darted away, focusing on some distant point on the horizon as if the answer might be written in the clouds.
For a heartbeat, William thought she would retreat into her usual fortress of deflection, offering a witty remark or a cold dismissal to shut the conversation down. But the exhaustion of the last hour had stripped away her defenses.
"Everyone," she whispered, the word carrying a weight that seemed to physically bow her shoulders. "My family, mostly... It’s... it’s expected."
"Expected by whom, though?" William pressed gently, his voice steady and grounding. "Because I’m not expecting that from you right now."
"I’m not expecting any kind of perfection from this training other than... I’m expecting you to struggle with a brand new weapon for exactly as long as it takes to actually learn it properly."
"And for most people, Lia, that takes weeks, months, maybe years... not a single afternoon."
Lia finally met his gaze. Her eyes were glassy with unshed frustration, something ancient and unreadable swirling behind them.
"My family isn’t most people," she said, each syllable clipped and precise, as if she were trying to force herself back into her disciplined persona.
The implications hung in the air: the pressure of lineage, the crushing expectation of bloodlines that demanded nothing less than effortless mastery. William could almost see the invisible chains she carried, each one forged from years of being told she couldn’t afford to fail.
He chose his next words with surgical care. He knew that pushing too hard now would cause her to bolt, to retreat behind the mask and refuse to learn anything else.
But if he didn’t give her permission to be human, she would break under the weight of the sword long before she mastered it.
"No," William said, his voice softening into something rare and genuine. "I don’t think they are."
"But right now, in this training ground, the only expectation that matters is mine." He stepped closer, meeting her eyes with an intensity that demanded she believe him. "And mine is simple enough for everyone."
"Take as long as you need."