Chapter 3: The Scent of Wildflowers
The cracked stones of the combat arena held the day’s heat like an oven. Silas stood in the center, the faint blue glow of the sand rising around his boots with each step. Dusk was a pool of liquid shadow at the edge of the ring, watching, his horn catching the twin moonlight in a dull gleam.
The first-years were a ragged line before him. They’d spent the morning trying to find their unicorns. Some looked exhilarated. Most looked hollowed out. The lanky, defiant boy from the courtyard—Kael, his name was—had a fresh scratch across his cheekbone. He stared back at Silas, waiting.
“Your unicorn isn’t a horse,” Silas said, his voice cutting through the dry, humming air. He began to pace, his movements economical. “It’s a mirror. It’s an echo. You are afraid, it will be skittish. You are angry, it will be volatile. You are unsure…” He stopped, looking at a girl whose hands were trembling. “It will throw you on the first turn.”
He gestured to Kael. “You. Center.”
The boy moved forward, his posture tight, ready for a fight.
“Your stance is wrong,” Silas said, circling him. “You’re standing like you’re on solid ground. You’re not. You’re on a living creature moving at speeds that will make your vision blur. Feet wider.” Kael adjusted. “No. You’re rigid. You’ll snap. Think of water. Your knees are shocks. Absorb. Flow.”
Silas moved behind him, placing his hands on Kael’s shoulders. He applied pressure. “I push, you yield. Don’t lock.” The boy resisted instinctively, muscles hardening. “Yield.” Silas pushed again, and this time Kael sank slightly, letting the force travel through him and into the ground. “Better.”
He was about to demonstrate a proper dismount roll when a subtle shift in the wind brought it to him: wildflowers and cool stone. Her scent.
It sliced through the arena’s smells of hot sand and sweat. His voice caught in his throat, the next instruction dying on his tongue. His alpha blood, usually a steady, low hum in his veins, spiked—a hot, possessive surge. Dusk stamped once, a hard clack of hoof on stone, mirroring the sudden, sharp hunger in Silas’s gut.
The students watched, confused by his sudden silence. Kael’s eyes flickered from Silas’s face to the arena entrance.
Verdia stood there, leaning against the stone archway. Phantom was nowhere seen, as usual. She had changed into worn training leathers, her braid slung over one shoulder. She was just observing, her expression unreadable, but her presence was a current in the arena, changing the pressure.
Silas forced a breath out through his nose. He focused on the grain of the sand, the rough texture of the stone beneath his boots. Anything but her.
“Again,” he said, his voice rougher than he intended. “The yield isn’t weakness. It’s control. You control the force by redirecting it, not by meeting it head-on.” He was talking to Kael, but the lesson felt suddenly, violently personal. He was teaching himself. Don’t lock up. Yield. Redirect.
He stepped back, putting space between himself and the student, between himself and the scent on the air. “Everyone, pair up. Practice the push and yield. Don’t think about winning. Think about not breaking.”
As the students awkwardly grappled with each other, Silas turned his back to them, ostensibly checking Dusk’s tack. His knuckles were white where he gripped the saddle. The ghostly echoes of old duels seemed to whisper louder in his ears, a taunt. He could feel Verdia’s gaze on the back of his neck like a physical touch.
He heard a scuffle and a yelp. He turned. One of the smaller students, a boy named Elian, was sprawled in the sand, his partner standing over him looking alarmed.
Before Silas could move, Verdia was there. She hadn’t walked; one moment she was by the arch, the next she was kneeling beside Elian, her hand on his shoulder. “You’re fine,” she said, her voice calm. “The sand is enchanted to cushion. It’s softer than your dormitory pallet.” She helped him up. “You pushed when you should have yielded. You saw a bigger opponent and met force with force.” She looked at the larger partner. “You saw a smaller opponent and used all your strength. You weren’t practicing. You were posturing. Both of you, useless.”
Her critique was colder, sharper than his had been. The students flushed.
She then positioned herself in front of the larger boy. “Push me.”
The boy, confused, placed his hands on her shoulders and shoved. Verdia didn’t move her feet. She simply rotated her torso, letting the shove slide past her, her hands coming up to guide his momentum. He stumbled forward, off-balance, and would have fallen if she hadn’t steadied him.
“Yield and redirect,” she said, looking at Silas for the first time since entering. Her green eyes were like chips of glass in the blue glow. “Wasn’t that the lesson, Instructor?”
The title, in her mouth, was a challenge.
“It was,” Silas acknowledged, his tone even. He walked back into the center. “Everyone saw it. Minimal movement. Maximum effect. Your unicorn, in a panic, will be that unbalanced opponent. Your job is not to match its panic. Your job is to stay centered, and guide it.”
Him teaching now was a performance, a demonstration of control he didn’t fully feel. He called Kael back out. “Again. Try to push me off this spot.” He planted his feet.
Kael, encouraged by Verdia’s display, came in harder this time. Silas absorbed the push, swayed with it, and used Kael’s own forward pitch to spin him around, ending with the boy’s arm loosely pinned behind his back. “See? You gave me your energy. I gave it back to you.” He released him. “Again.”
They drilled. The students began to get it, the simple mechanics of give and take. Silas moved among them, correcting a stance here, an angle there, his body operating on pure muscle memory while his mind was split. Half here, in the sun-bleached ring. Half across the space with her, behind the ancient oak on the ridge, their ragged breaths mingling.
As the session wound down, the students exhausted but buzzing with a new understanding, Silas dismissed them. They filed out, voices low with tired excitement. Verdia remained, watching them go.
Silas busied himself with Dusk’s reins. He could feel her approach more than hear it.
“You stopped mid-sentence,” she said, stopping a few feet away. “When I walked in.”
He didn’t look at her. “I lost my train of thought.”
“Your scent spiked.” Her voice was factual. “So did Dusk’s. The students felt it. Confused aggression. It muddies the lesson.”
Now he looked at her. The twin moons were rising fully behind her, casting her face in silver and deep shadow. “Noted.”
She held his gaze for a long moment. The thorns in the brambles seemed to lean in, whispering. “You still owe me that mucked stall,” she said, and the sudden shift in topic was as disorienting as her teleportation. “I’ll collect tonight. After the omega dormitory check.”
She turned to leave, then paused. “Your teaching… it was good. The redirect. It’s the only thing that works.”
Then she was gone, not even a shimmer in the air this time, just an absence where she had stood.
Silas stood alone in the glowing arena, the whispers of the thorns and the echoes of past failures settling around him like dust. He had taught them control. He had preached yield and redirect.
Every instinct in him was screaming to do the opposite.