CHAPTER NINE

  Winter gusts

  “Pick it up,” Roderic said for what felt like the hundredth time.

  The staff slipped from her frozen hands and thudded against the packed snow. Pain bloomed along her forearms where his last strike had landed. Elowen blew out a sharp breath and reached for the weapon again, her fingers slow and clumsy.

  A sword would have been too much; he’d said as much when they started. Not yet. Not until she could move without her own limbs betraying her.

  Roderic didn’t soften the blows. He never struck with his full strength—she could tell—but he didn’t treat her like something fragile either. His staff cracked against her shins, her ribs, her thighs, the impacts dulling into bruises that painted her skin in storm colors.

  “Again,” he said.

  “You’re enjoying this,” she gritted out.

  He met her gaze, unreadable. “Your opponents won’t hold back. I won’t train you to lose.”

  They crossed staffs again. Wood bit against wood, jarring her arms. On the first days she’d fought wild and flailing, all instinct and no form, burning herself out in minutes. Now, slowly, the wildness was learning to wear a shape.

  She began to see the pattern of his movement. The shift of his shoulder before a strike. The angle of his wrist before he swept low. The deliberate way he left openings that weren’t truly openings at all.

  Her legs shook with effort. Her breath rasped. But somewhere beneath the ache a small, unfamiliar thing settled: the sense that she was not just surviving the blows.

  She was meeting them.

  Northerners lingered near the practice field. At first with open mockery—whoops and catcalls when she fell, muttered commentary about girls from Central and soft hands. Later, something else crept in. A narrowing of eyes, a tilt of the head, a grunt that wasn’t quite approval.

  By the third week, Roderic lowered his staff and glanced toward the watching circle.

  “Thyra,” he called.

  A broad-shouldered woman with a ribald laugh and a scar across her chin shouldered her way forward, staff already in hand. “About time,” she said. “I was getting bored just watching you bruise her, prince.”

  Roderic’s mouth twitched. “Try not to knock her out cold this time.”

  “No promises.” Thyra swung the staff up to rest across her shoulders and grinned at Elowen. “Ready, princess?”

  Elowen fought back a flinch, remembering how Thyra had shown her—brutally—just how much Roderic had been holding back.

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  Then, defying every survival instinct, or maybe it was just the rush of adrenaline, Elowen lifted her chin and smiled at Thyra. There was something about the Northerner that dragged the wildness out of her.

  “Come on then,” Elowen said. “I’m warmed up now.”

  Thyra’s grin sharpened. “Are you now? Good. I like when they think they’re ready.”

  Thyra swung the staff off her shoulders and dropped into a fighting stance.

  They closed the distance fast; Thyra faster than anyone built like a fortress had any right to be. The first strike came low. Elowen caught it. Barely. The second came high. She blocked that too. Her arms screamed, but she held.

  “Good swing,” Thyra said, grinning. “Terrible follow-through. Charming effort, though.”

  Elowen blew a breath through her teeth. “You talk too much.”

  “Then stop giving me material.”

  Thyra lunged. Elowen pivoted, trying to mimic the movement Roderic drilled into her. But she stepped half a beat too slow. Thyra caught it. Exploited it.

  The staff slammed toward Elowen’s ribs.

  She raised her weapon just in time—but not fully squared. The impact staggered her sideways. Her foot skidded on the frost.

  Thyra didn’t wait.

  Another strike. Sharp. Controlled. Brutal.

  It cracked across Elowen’s cheek.

  A bright sting bloomed—then warmth. Blood.

  Elowen gasped, one hand flying to her lip. Red smeared across her thumb.

  Thyra froze for a breath. Not apologetic—assessing. “You’re favoring your left,” she said. “That’s why you keep opening your guard.”

  Elowen tasted iron. “Or maybe you just hit too damn hard.”

  “That too.”

  Before Elowen could regain her stance, Thyra swept the staff low. Elowen jumped but landed crooked, balance gone. Thyra moved in, fast, and hooked her ankle with the end of her staff.

  Elowen hit the snow flat on her back, breath bursting out of her.

  For a moment, all she saw was sky. Grey. Endless. Blurred.

  Thyra stepped over her, offered the butt of her staff.

  “Get up, princess.”

  Elowen stared at the offered hand, jaw tight, lip stinging. Then she grabbed the staff and hauled herself up.

  Thyra’s eyes flicked to the blood trailing from Elowen’s lip. She smirked. “There you go. Now you look like you’re from the North.”

  Elowen wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Again.”

  Thyra threw her head back and laughed. “You’re insane.”

  Then she raised her staff. “Good. The North likes insane.”

  They began to circle, boots crunching on frost. Thyra lunged first, staff whipping toward Elowen’s face. Elowen barely brought hers up in time. The crack rang through her bones.

  She almost dropped it. Almost.

  Thyra pressed, blow after blow, laughter booming as Elowen staggered, blocked, stumbled, blocked again. The Northerner fought like a blizzard—cold, relentless, full of sudden shifts.

  But blizzards had patterns too.

  Elowen felt something click—a thread between the drills with Roderic and the wild, real momentum before her. Thyra favored her right leg. Overcommitted on high strikes. Left her lower left side open just enough. Probably why she noticed Elowen’s in the first place.

  Roderic had drilled one particular sequence into her muscles until the bruises on her shins formed matching bands. Pivot, sweep, reset.

  Thyra swung high. Elowen met the staff, rolled with the impact instead of bracing against it, and let the force carry her sideways. In the same breath she dropped low, sweeping the butt of her staff in a clean arc across Thyra’s calves.

  The Northerner’s feet went out from under her. She hit the snow with a grunt that knocked steam from her breath.

  Elowen planted her boot on Thyra’s staff and slammed her own down beside the woman’s cheek, snow spraying up from the impact.

  She stood over her, chest heaving, a slow, disbelieving smile pulling at her lips. She tentatively extended her hand.

  For a heartbeat, silence.

  Then Thyra’s laugh split the air, bright and rough. She grabbed Elowen’s hand and let herself be hauled up.

  “Not bad,” she said, clapping Elowen on the shoulder hard enough to sting. “For a princess.”

  Elowen rolled her eyes, but the word didn’t cut the way it usually did. “Same time tomorrow?”

  “Oh, absolutely. I’m not finished knocking that smile off your pretty face yet.”