Chapter 127: No Room to Breathe
Arthur woke the next morning feeling as though he had been used for target practice by an angry troll.
His ribs ached, his left shoulder throbbed, and his legs protested all the way downstairs. By the time he reached breakfast, he was considerably more interested in food than Darius Venn.
Kael was smiling when Arthur reached the breakfast table.
That was usually a bad sign.
Arthur lowered himself carefully into the chair beside Emily, ignoring the complaint from his ribs, and reached for the nearest plate.
Kael’s smile widened. "So," he said. "What is your plan?"
Arthur started eating. "Avoid getting hit."
"Excellent strategy. Did you invent it yourself?"
Arthur looked at the breakfast knife.
Kael noticed. "Violence before coffee seems excessive."
"I’m considering my options."
Emily’s knee rested against his beneath the table. Arthur dropped a hand onto her thigh while reaching for his coffee. A few minutes later, his fingers started creeping higher. Emily caught his wrist without interrupting her conversation with Adrian.
Arthur looked at her. Emily kept talking, her grip like iron.
When they finished eating, Arthur returned to the guest room for his jacket before they left. He buckled on his empty dagger sheath, grabbed Whisperwind from beside the table, and made it halfway to the door.
Emily, standing in the corridor, looked at the bow.
Arthur stopped. He looked down at Whisperwind. Then he walked back inside and quietly leaned it against the wall.
Kael laughed from somewhere behind Emily.
"Nothing happened," Arthur said.
The carriage ride to the arena was loud. More of the Thorne family was traveling to the venue today, and the confined space was filled with overlapping conversations, Kael’s predictions, and Adrian’s dry corrections. Arthur was dragged into the middle of the family arguments, trading insults with Kael while the city streets rolled past the windows.
Once they reached the massive civic arena, the atmosphere shifted.
The background noise faded into a steady, competitive hum. Arthur checked in at the competitor’s desk and received his approved, blunted tournament dagger. He parted ways with the rest of the family near the viewing stairs, walking with Emily toward the fighters’ entrance.
Before he could step through the heavy wooden doors, Emily caught the front of his jacket and pulled him in for a short, firm kiss.
"Try not to let him sit on you," Emily advised, stepping back.
Arthur looked at her. "That’s your technique."
He turned and walked through the doors before she could hit him.
"Arthur Vance. Darius Venn. Ring Two."
Arthur stepped onto the mat. Darius Venn was already waiting. The Ironwood Hall fighter held a single competition short sword, his stance wide and his expression completely focused.
The referee blew the whistle.
Darius advanced with steady pressure. Arthur gave ground just enough to read the first entry, waited for the sword to commit, and then caught the weapon arm with a clean Silent Knife redirect.
Instead of freezing after the defense, Arthur stepped smoothly inside. His dagger followed the new angle perfectly. The blunt steel cracked hard against Darius’s ribs.
A murmur ran through the surrounding crowd. Darius reset his feet, adjusted his grip, and came again.
Arthur slipped the second strike, stepped off the line, and forced Darius to break away before the dagger could reach him again.
For about ten seconds, Arthur started thinking yesterday might actually have fixed this problem.
Then Darius stopped giving him room.
When Arthur redirected the next strike and started his follow-up, Darius didn’t pull away. He accepted the bad angle, shouldered his way through the gap, jammed Arthur’s dagger arm with his forearm before Arthur could complete the transition, and immediately attacked again.
Arthur slipped away, breathing hard. Darius followed instantly. Arthur rapidly created two steps of space. Darius ate one of them before Arthur had even fully reset his footing.
Darius wasn’t faster. He just refused to let one successful escape become distance.
Arthur’s body kept searching for the retreat that normally ended with Whisperwind back in his hands. There was no bow waiting for him here.
Darius stepped inside a sloppy parry, and the heavy, blunted edge of his short sword caught Arthur’s bruised ribs hard enough that his breath vanished for a second.
Arthur swore under his breath, forced air back into his lungs, and kept moving.
Darius deliberately exposed his sword wrist. Arthur saw the route immediately: redirect, step inside, attack the hand.
Arthur committed. Darius rotated with him and drove a shoulder into Arthur’s chest before the dagger reached his wrist.
Arthur stumbled backward. Darius was already swinging again.
I definitely preferred the spear, Arthur thought grimly.
Arthur stopped trying to make it pretty.
When Darius lunged and successfully caught his dagger wrist, Arthur didn’t try to use the proper Silent Knife release. He twisted out using Morwenna’s nasty, joint-wrenching escape instead, dragged his forearm across Darius’s sword arm to disrupt his balance, bumped him with a shoulder check, and kept his dagger moving from there.
Darius blocked the strike, but for the first time in several grueling exchanges, Arthur wasn’t being driven backward.
The next time Darius crowded him, Arthur didn’t retreat.
Darius stepped in.
Arthur stepped closer.
Suddenly, the short sword had almost no room to maneuver either. They ended up chest-to-chest for a messy, grinding second, both men fighting brutally for weapon control. Arthur caught Darius’s sword wrist with his free hand. Darius grabbed Arthur’s dagger arm. Their boots scraped across the ring, and their shoulders slammed together.
Darius was noticeably stronger. Arthur could feel his own arm giving way, losing the contest of leverage.
So Arthur attacked Darius’s balance.
He hooked a foot sharply behind Darius’s ankle and shifted his hip position.
Darius stumbled exactly one step. It wasn’t enough to make him fall, but it was enough.
Arthur ripped his dagger hand free and landed a clean, solid strike against Darius’s side.
Darius staggered away and recovered his balance. He reset his stance and stared at Arthur for a second longer than before.
Then he raised his sword again.
Darius slowed down.
Somehow, that was worse. Half-steps. Small shifts of the shoulder. Tiny movements that forced Arthur to decide whether an attack was actually coming.
Arthur bit on one feint and took a hard strike across the thigh. He reacted to another and barely twisted away before the sword reached his ribs.
Arthur gritted his teeth and stopped reacting to everything. He waited.
Darius edged closer, trying to draw him out. Arthur let him.
Darius finally committed to a sweeping strike.
Arthur moved.
He caught the sword against the outside of his dagger and stepped across instead of retreating. Darius adjusted. Arthur’s dagger started along the familiar follow-up, then changed direction with him.
Darius drove his shoulder forward to jam the attack again.
Arthur dipped under it.
His dagger stopped against Darius’s throat guard.
The whistle shrieked.
The referee waved his hand and called the match.
Darius lowered his sword, his chest heaving as he stared at Arthur. "You’re annoying."
Arthur lowered his dagger, still fighting to catch his own breath. "I’ve been told."
Darius offered his hand. Arthur took it in a firm grip, and the match was done.
Emily was waiting outside the competitors’ corridor.
She walked straight up and pressed her fingers against his left ribs.
"I’m fine," Arthur told her.
Emily pressed harder.
Arthur flinched. "Traitor."
"Liar," Emily countered.
She grabbed the collar of his uniform jacket and pulled him into a proper, heavy kiss. Arthur’s hand dropped to her waist, then slid lower, gripping her ass firmly as he kissed her back.
Before Arthur could get ambitious, footsteps echoed down the corridor.
"I would appreciate it if you waited until I wasn’t standing right here," Kael’s voice announced.
Arthur didn’t remove his hand from Emily’s ass. He merely looked over Emily’s shoulder at her brother.
Kael sighed, regretting speaking, and looked at the ceiling.
They stayed for Adrian’s match later that afternoon. Arthur found food, a seat beside Emily, and the considerable pleasure of watching someone else enter the ring.
Adrian’s match was considerably less dramatic. His opponent came out aggressively with a long practice saber. Adrian gave him nothing useful. He blocked, shifted, let the man waste two increasingly ambitious attacks, and caught the third with a clean turn of his weapon. A few seconds later, the saber hit the mat, and Adrian’s blade was resting against the man’s chest guard.
The referee called it.
Kael leaned back in his seat. "Show-off."
Emily glanced at him. "You say that every time he wins."
"Because he keeps doing it like that," Kael replied.
"He nearly folded you in half," Kael said a few minutes later, watching Arthur shift in his seat.
Arthur took another bite of his food. "You seem very relaxed for someone still on my side of the bracket."
Kael stopped chewing.
Arthur smiled. "There we go."
On the carriage ride back to the compound, exhaustion caught up with all of them. Emily’s hand rested casually on Arthur’s thigh as the carriage rocked over the cobblestones.
Arthur let his hand drop, resting it lightly over hers.
A few minutes later, his fingers started slowly moving hers higher up his thigh.
Emily noticed. She turned her head, fixing him with a flat stare.
Arthur looked completely innocent, staring mildly out the window.
Emily squeezed the deeply bruised muscle of his thigh.
Arthur winced and immediately stopped moving her hand.
Seraphina hadn’t been able to attend the afternoon matches, so she asked about the results as they ate dinner. Kael immediately provided an exaggerated version where Arthur spent half the fight being beaten aimlessly around the ring. Emily corrected the narrative with actual details.
Adrian looked across the table at Arthur. "You stopped trying to escape him."
Arthur looked at him. Adrian simply nodded and went back to eating his dinner.
Gareth gave him one approving nod from the head of the table.
Kael unfolded the updated tournament slip beside his plate.
Arthur leaned over to read it. His next match wasn’t until the day after tomorrow. Kael’s name was still sitting farther down his half of the bracket. On the other side, Adrian remained.
So did Corwin Vale.
Arthur took another bite of dinner.
The bracket was getting considerably less friendly.
Arthur reached his guest room late that night. He was tired enough that he didn’t even bother taking the training dagger out of its sheath. He stripped off his jacket and dropped heavily onto the mattress.
His ribs hurt. His shoulder hurt. His legs hurt.
A moment later, his phone buzzed on the nightstand.
He reached over and checked the screen.
Alive? Emily had written.
Arthur stared at the message, considering the fact that she had literally been sitting downstairs with him five minutes ago.
’No,’ Arthur typed back.
’Darius killed me. Please avenge me.’
Three dots appeared on the screen for a moment before her reply arrived.
Sleep.
Arthur dropped the phone beside his pillow. He was asleep before the screen went dark.