Chapter 22

I’m training with Edam alone.

Which is totally no big deal. Even though Judica doesn’t begin to deserve him, I’d never do anything to ruin whatever weird thing they have. I walk through the door to my room, Cookie Crisp trailing behind me slowly for some reason. Probably because she isn’t about to train with the hottest dog in Ni’ihau.

If I’m fast, I can change clothes. After all, if I’m practicing bladework, I need tighter pants and a fitted shirt. Obviously. And if I choose my nicest jeans and my favorite shirt, well, that doesn’t mean anything.

I signal Cookie to stay in the room, but instead of lying down like usual, she whimpers. I crouch down and rub her ears. “It’s been a rough few days, I know.” Instead of calming down, she licks my hand and whines piteously, which is not at all like her. She must be anxious about all the party guests, or maybe she can feel my tension since Lyssa’s execution, or Lark’s departure, or the ring incident.

It’s been an awful twenty-four hours.

I relent and let her come with me. It’s not like Judica will be there trying to saw me in two again. What could it hurt to have Cookie curled up in the corner while I train? I glance at the clock. It’s two minutes before the hour, and yesterday Edam came looking for me when I was late. I rush out the door and toward the arena.

He’s sitting in the chair in front of the room’s computer interface. He looks up at me when I walk in, then glances at the large, round clock mounted on the back wall. “Right on time this morning.”

He’s alone in the room, a room that holds six training rings, one of which is raised for formal duels. I’m dozens of yards away, but I try my best to calm my heartbeat before moving closer. Did I mention that I hate evian senses? No human girl has to worry that her pulse will give her feelings away to her crush. Every one of them can pine away without her heart betraying her. Plus, human high schools might be small, but the sheer volume of guys a human girl encounters dwarfs the tiny pool of available men when you’re evian. Especially an evian in the line of succession like me. I’ve got a pool of three dozen guys from whom to choose any future mate, in case something happens to the current Heir and I have to step up, a pool I share with Judica. Which leaves me constantly trying to make sure the one guy my stupid sister is dating doesn’t realize I think he’s yummier than a stack of chocolate truffle pancakes.

“Sorry about being late yesterday,” I say. “I’m not accustomed to training with anyone other than my mom, and we just train whenever she has time.”

Edam crosses the room and stops directly in front of me. “Never apologize, Your Highness. Not to me or to anyone else.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re second in line to the throne of the First Family of the Six. You should never apologize.”

I raise one eyebrow. “I appreciate the advice, but I always apologize when I’m wrong. I’m not my sister.”

He bows. “You most certainly are not.” I listen to his tone for any evidence that he’s mocking me, but I can’t find any.

He looks so serious for someone so young, at least, young in evian terms. He can’t be much older than I am, not more than a decade anyway. How has he advanced so fast? “You’re taking over for Balthasar when he retires as Chief of Security, right?”

“If he ever retires, you mean?” He smiles. “Even if I do take over, you’ll still outrank me. Don’t apologize.”

My heart melts. Until a little voice in my head screams, ‘He’s the demon-spawn’s boyfriend!’ I repeat it over and over to remind myself that even if he’s beautiful and kind and impressive, he’s still the enemy.

Out loud I say, “I’d take your advice if I agreed that I should only apologize to people who rank above me, but I think people should apologize whenever harm has been done. I’m sorry for a lot of things that aren’t my fault. It’s called empathy, and evians in general need to find a little more of it. Even if it makes people perceive me as weak, I won’t forsake common courtesy.”

“You aren’t common. It doesn’t apply to you.”

“Changing my behavior because you tell me to would be worse than apologizing for a slight. As you pointed out, I outrank you, so even if I’m not as strong and impressive as your girlfriend, you’ll have to deal with it. I am who I am.”

“She’s not,” he says.

“Huh?” She may be a horrible person, but even I admit Judica is both strong and impressive.

Edam coughs and takes a step back, then turns toward the weapons rack. “Judica’s not my...you know.”

“Not your what?” I ask, because I need to hear him say it. Even so, I’m suddenly very interested in the weapons in front of me.

“We aren’t together anymore.”

My jaw drops. “Whoa, she dumped you?”

Edam’s head snaps around toward me so fast it practically blurs. “No, she didn’t end things.”

“So you’re still together? I’m confused.”

“None of this impacts our training.” Edam reaches for a long sword and I imagine it swinging down toward my neck. I suppress a shudder. His hand pauses. “What do you want to work on today?”

I shrug. “You’re the one who brought it up.”

He reaches for a scimitar.

“Not that,” I say.

He pulls his hand back and looks at me expectantly.

“Mom says I should practice my aim. Other than that, I dunno.”

“I wasn’t trained in melodics, but I know a few drills. Should we start with some of those?”

“Mom and I usually do.”

He walks to a cabinet and pulls out a flute case.

I laugh. “I haven’t used a flute in a decade.”

“Oh.” He looks sheepish. “What do you do, then?”

I walk over to the computer screen he was sitting at moments before and tap a few things. “The flute is for basic runs. Triads, scales, and so on. I mastered all the variations of those by age seven.” I tap the screen again. I put my selection on time delay.

“Beethoven’s Fifth?” He’s standing right behind me, and when he speaks, his breath warms the back of my neck. Steady, heart, steady.

“Beethoven was the last great melodics composer.”

I untie my shoes and pull them off. I peel off my socks and set them on the floor by Cookie, who has curled up in a ball, fast asleep. At least she’s calmed down. Her heart’s barely beating. I could use some of that zen myself.

I walk to the middle of the room before inhaling and exhaling deeply a few times. Then the music begins. Melodics ties a sequence of notes to each body motion. You learn to flow from one movement to the next, following an established method. Turn, strike down, pull back, drop, strike up, crouch, leap, kick, spin. I move from one form to another, following the pattern of the music. The great dance, that’s what Mom sometimes calls it.

The song ends and Edam claps. “Graceful, but perhaps not so useful.”

“Mock me if you will, but there’s a reason evians have trained with melodics for thousands of years.”

“Science hadn’t invented guns, yet?”

“Funny. And that’ll be a good argument against it when the evians update their duels and use guns or bombs. For now, we still fight it out in arenas, up close.”

“But even as hand-to-hand or weapons training,” Edam says, “it’s outdated.”

I shake my head. “It isn’t. The body learns certain movements and how they connect, and it helps you read your opponent and respond without thinking about it. You feel it.”

“Were you feeling it yesterday?” His eyes are kind, but the criticism still annoys me.

“Look, you don’t drop the external music until you reach a certain point in your training. It’s hard to hear the music in your head, to feel the movements and see the patterns without actually having music playing. They call hearing the music around you ‘sensing the score of all things’ and when you can hear it, you go ‘off book.’ I haven’t reached that point yet, and yesterday I wasn’t feeling much of anything.” Except for a brief moment, maybe. But the euphoria from that blinded me to Judica’s hidden blade. Not exactly a winning endorsement.

He taps his lip thoughtfully, probably to help him focus, but it has the opposite effect on me. “You improved dramatically the second time. Were you hearing it then, this score?”

I blush. “I finally did, a little, but it wasn’t enough.” The sympathy in Edam’s eyes pisses me off. It’s not like I’m delusional. I know Judica destroyed me. “So, I’m warm now. What’s next?”