Chapter 46

“You need a ride back?” Noah asks.

I shake my head. “I’ll take the bus,” I say. “My sister Laura’s still at school.”

Noah scrunches his nose in distaste. “You sure?”

I bob my head. “It’s fine, really. What time will your party start?”

Noah shrugs. “Sunset? That’s usually when people start showing up. Logan’s good about getting the word out.”

I start for the bus, and Noah waves and heads for Logan’s dad’s car. I wait until they’re buckled in and driving away before I change course and beeline toward Alora’s car. I’m totally unprepared to find Edam already sitting inside.

“Uh, hi there,” I say dumbly.

He half smiles at me.

“Don’t you need to take the bus back to school, Coach?”

Alora laughs from the front seat. “He had Lisa’s nanny fill in for him. Any approved parent can act as an official chaperone. After that blazing success, the school won’t fault him for missing the full day instead of returning for the last period.”

I shrug.

“You’re really going to some human party?” Edam asks.

“You didn’t seem to think it was a bad idea earlier.” I gulp, remembering how my blood rushed to my face when he smiled at me. I’m an idiot. He only offered to be my Consort so he can kill Judica and move into the number two position for the entire Alamecha family. It’s not like he likes me.

“I don’t think taking the rest of the day off from your training is a good idea. We’re running out of time.”

Alora clears her throat. “Have you decided to fight her, then?”

I shake my head. “I haven’t decided anything.”

“You’re not even considering your best option,” Edam says stiffly.

“You don’t get to decide what my best option is,” I say. “You’re not my dad.”

Edam practically roars. “I should hope not.”

“Sounds like you two have some things to talk about.” Alora presses the button to raise the partition between the front and back seats of the car.

Edam scowls at the raising divider as if it offends him that she’s giving us privacy to yell at each other. With evian hearing being what it is, it’s faux privacy anyway. We both know they’ll still be able to hear every word.

Edam shifts toward me on the seat and I scoot back, hating myself for doing it. I’m not scared of him. I’m not. But he makes me nervous, like a cat around a Doberman. Or a cupcake on the counter in front of a greedy child. Only, I can’t decide whether I want to be eaten.

“I didn’t mean that I think of you like my dad,” I say quietly.

“I’m not that much older than you,” he says. “Your mother was hundreds of years older than your father, for heaven’s sake.”

I clench my fists at my side. “This conversation has veered way off course. The point is that, I make my own decisions. You’re not my war general or my boss, or even my advisor, so—”

“I’m not even your boyfriend. That’s the point.”

Blood rushes to my cheeks. I hate that he can make me blush so easily.

“Right, and actually you were my sister’s boyfriend last week.”

He speaks so quietly I can barely make out the words. “Not by choice.”

I take a moment to process what he’s said. I think about the video where he’s standing utterly still in front of Judica. I thought he was respectful, or maybe in awe of her interest. But now, hearing what he’s said, maybe he was uninterested, or worse, disgusted. Maybe he never liked her, but he didn’t think he could turn her down.

Did Judica force him to be her boyfriend? I shudder. “Look, the point is, I’ll never require you to do anything you don’t want to do, up to and including being my Consort. Bending others to her will may be what a good ruler does, but I’ve never claimed to be that. I’m far more victim than...” I trail off. What did Noah say? A conqueror? No, he said a Viking. “I’m more like a victim than a Viking, and I won’t make anyone else my victim, especially not you.”

“Judica has no such qualms. She’s a Viking until the end of days, whenever that is. Look, if you insist on attending this party, I won’t try and stop you. But I do insist we train, at least a little, before you go.”

“Fine.”

“Fine?” Edam leans back in his chair, stretching his legs out in front of him. His eyes snap and mine are drawn toward them. Which is a mistake. Never meet the predator’s eyes. Everyone knows that. But once I look at them, I can’t look away. He’s so... intense.

I almost forget he asked me a question, and I’m staring at him dumbly. What was it? He threw my word back at me. Fine. Fine? Ugh. I wish looking at him directly didn’t reduce me to human-level stupidity.

“What’s wrong with agreeing with you?”

He rolls his eyes toward the ceiling, like a drama queen in a high school movie.

I almost snort at him.

“Nothing’s wrong with agreeing with me. It’s that I’m having to drag you toward what you should already be focused on doing. You need to stop wasting your time playing make-believe with a bunch of human teenagers you have nothing in common with and appreciate the time you’ve been given. Buckle down and train in earnest, because in less than a week, Judica’s going to try to take you apart.” He looks out the window. Almost like the idea of Judica decapitating me upsets him. Almost.

“What do you care?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” he says.

“Maybe I don’t need to train. Because if I’m being honest, I don’t even want to go back,” I say.

Edam’s eyes flash. “You were born to rule Alamecha.”

I shake my head. “I was born,” I pause. “If we’re being honest, I was born to die. Mom should have killed me the second I cried my first pitiful wail. Or before that, even. But she didn’t. Every single day since then has been borrowed time. And now I have to decide whether to let my sister wear the crown she was always supposed to have or fight her for it. I hate fighting, but I like my borrowed time. I like my never-supposed-to-happen life.”

“You don’t have to risk it.”

“You’re right. I don’t. I can abdicate. I really think Judica will let me walk away.” If my conscience will allow it.

“I don’t mean abdication. Leaving your people would be a half-life for you at best.”

Which means Edam thinks he’s my only good option. He thinks I’m helpless. Bubbles of anger float up inside me and burst, one by one. “Maybe it wouldn’t be a risk. Because when I was watching videos this morning before school, I heard her. Judica’s melodic line was clear and strong.”

“Oh?” he asks. “Then show me.”

I glance around the car in shock. We’ve stopped in front of Alora’s brownstone.

Edam steps out and waves me ahead of him with a flourish. I want to slap his face for being snarky, but I save my irritation for the fight. As I jog up the stairs, I think back on our last few fights, focusing on Edam this time and not Judica. What does he do, and how can I counter him? Hearing Judica won’t help me defeat him, which means I can’t show him what I’ve learned. Melodics feels kind of person-specific in that way.

To buy myself some time to think, I select the same sword I used last time and lift it up slowly, as if I’m trying to decide whether to use it. I envision the way Edam moved, the way he slices, chops, and spins. I close my eyes and envision his movements and his melody sings in the distance, at least part of it. I don’t really know Edam perfectly yet, but I can read a part of his song. It’s alpha, dominant and abrasive. All the things male evians aren’t really allowed to be in our society, except as directed by their monarch. I raise my well-balanced sword. “What are you going to use?”

“I’ll use these.” He unsheathes two short swords.

“They’re too short,” I say.

He shrugs casually. “Try me.”

I quirk my eyebrow. “But I’ll destroy you if you fight with those, and I really want to show you what I’ve figured out.”

He raises his eyebrows and then gestures for me to proceed. I spin once, twice, hearing my own chords, my own runs, my own intervals. He pulls back and flips his short sword around and punches me right in the face with the hilt.

Blood pours from my nose. “Edam!” I spray him with red when I shout. “Be serious!”

“I am. Look, I know you think you can hear me now, and you can feel the music behind my movements or whatever, but you can’t just flow. You have to think smart, too. You need to apply what I’ve taught you. As much as you want to believe it, fighting isn’t some puzzle you can unlock. You can’t drop a piece into place and then magically dominate. People are more complex than that. Melodics may have clicked for you and there may be moves that are intuitive, sure, but people can always surprise you. That’s the beauty of life, and the danger in it as well.”

I nod, wipe my face angrily, and resume the ready position, legs apart, arms relaxed, sword pointed toward him. “Fine. Fine!”

He comes after me and I realize the pacing for the melodic line I thought I heard with him was off. I’ve fought him dozens of times now, and I’ve seen him fight Judica at the same pace, the same speed, but now I can see that he was always holding back. Edam unleashed is faster than I can follow. He practically moves at the speed of light as I try, without success, to anticipate his moves. A new line, a new pace, a new melody, surges at the edge of my consciousness, but it dances away. He destroys me like a tiger playing with his food, smirking infuriatingly the entire time. After an hour or so, I slump to the ground and toss my sword to the ground. “I yield, okay, I yield.”

He bows and says, “You’ve improved. A tremendous amount. But you’re still not there yet. Now, let’s try this again with hand-to-hand and focus on the basics.”

I pretend I haven’t sunk into the depths of despair, but I doubt I convince Edam, much less myself.