Chapter 11: The Sleeping Fury
The gardens were a silent world. The only sounds were the crunch of our boots on the frost-rimed gravel and the sharp, clean ring of steel. The ice fountains were unnerving, water frozen in mid-arc, catching the dying violet light in impossible sculptures. It felt like practicing in a tomb.
Which was why we were here. To burn off the restlessness.
Mary came at me, her blade a silver streak in the twilight. I parried, the impact jolting up my arm. We’d shed our heavy tunics, moving in just our shirts and trousers, sweat already plastering the linen to our backs despite the cold.
“You’re slow,” Mary said, not taunting, just stating a fact. Her breath plumed.
“I’m sore,” I grunted, pivoting and sweeping my leg at hers.
She jumped back, nimble. “Whose fault is that?”
“Your mother’s.”
A flicker of a smile. “And yours.”
We broke apart, circled. The air between us crackled. This wasn’t training; it was a conversation. Each clash of metal was a sentence. The envoy’s words, the unspoken threat in her flinty eyes, it all fueled the fire in our muscles. We were translating anxiety into motion.
I feinted high, went low. She anticipated it, her block so solid it numbed my fingers. We were matched, always had been. Her style was like mine: efficient, direct, a product of shared logic. But today, there was a rawness to it. A need to prove something, to ourselves, to the watching walls.
In the distance, on a sheltered balcony woven from living, ice-laced willow branches, I saw them. Two shadows against the golden light of a brazier. Ellie and Nancy. Watching.
“Gods, look at them,” Nancy murmured, her cheek resting against her mother’s shoulder. The wool of Ellie’s shawl was soft against her skin.
Ellie’s gaze was fixed on the two figures in the garden, their movements a lethal dance in the fading light. “I am.”
Every impact, every shift of muscle under damp linen, was clearly visible. My red hair was a dark smudge against my pale neck. Mary’s short blonde crop was beaded with moisture.
“They’re like clockwork,” Nancy said, her voice husky. “All that focused energy. All that control.” She let out a slow breath. “Makes you want to see them come undone, doesn’t it?”
Ellie’s hand stroked Nancy’s curls. “It does.”
Below, Mary drove Amy back three quick steps, a relentless combination. Amy yielded, then twisted, using the momentum to spin inside Mary’s guard, their bodies colliding for a breath before shoving apart.
“The way Mary holds her sword,” Nancy mused, her fingers idly tracing patterns on Ellie’s arm. “Firm.Certain. Imagine those hands elsewhere. After all that tension… they wouldn’t be gentle.”
“Amy’s are worse,” Ellie replied, her own breath catching as I landed a flat-handed slap on Mary’s shoulder with my free hand, a dirty move that made Mary laugh, sharp and surprised. “She’s all precision. She’d take you apart like a complex mechanism. Every catch and release calculated.” She tilted her head. “Looks like today, watching from afar won’t be enough. I might have to interrupt their little game.”
Nancy laughed, low and warm. “Watching these two… all that fierce practicality… it does something to me. Makes the whole… genteel queen act feel like a costume.”
“It is a costume, my love.” Ellie pressed a kiss to Nancy’s temple, but her eyes never left the garden. “This is what’s real.The sweat. The grit. The way they move together.” Her grip on Nancy tightened slightly. “It’s making the cold feel very far away.”
Back on the gravel, the world had narrowed to Mary’s eyes, the arc of her blade, the burn in my lungs. We were both panting now, the elegant forms breaking down into something more personal, more desperate.
“She’s watching,” Mary gasped, deflecting a thrust aimed at her ribs.
“I know.”
“Nancy too.”
“I know.”
A sudden, reckless energy took hold of me. I dropped my guard entirely for a split second. Mary’s eyes widened, her instinct to strike warring with her knowledge it was a trap. In that hesitation, I stepped in, not with the sword, but with my body. I hooked my foot behind her calf and drove my shoulder into her chest.
We went down in a tangle of limbs and clattering steel, skidding on the gravel. The impact knocked the wind from us both. For a moment, we just lay there, weapons out of reach, the cold ground seeping through our clothes.
I was on top, pinning her wrists. Her chest heaved beneath mine. Her lips were parted, her pupils blown wide. A scrape glistened on her cheekbone.
We were a mess. We were glorious.
The sound of slow, deliberate applause echoed from the balcony. We both looked up.
Ellie leaned over the icy railing, Nancy just behind her, both their faces shadowed and illuminated by the brazier’s glow. Ellie’s smile was a blade of its own.
“A draw, it seems,” she called down, her voice carrying effortlessly in the crisp air.
Mary bucked her hips, trying to dislodge me. I held firm, feeling the solid strength of her, the rapid beat of her heart against mine.
“Get off,” she muttered, but there was no heat in it.
“You yield?” I asked, my voice rough.
She held my gaze. The flicker of defiance. Then, the subtle, surrendering relaxation of her muscles. A different kind of communication. “I yield.”
I rolled off, sitting up in the gravel. We both looked a wreck—dirty, sweaty, breathing hard. I felt more alive than I had since the envoy’s cold words in the throne room.
Ellie and Nancy were gone from the balcony. A moment later, a side door to the gardens opened, and they emerged, wrapped in furs, walking toward us with a purposeful grace.
Ellie stopped a few feet away, looking down at us. Her expression was unreadable. Then she shook her head, a faint, possessive smile touching her lips. “My brave, stupid warriors.” She extended a hand to help me up. Her grip was warm and shockingly strong.
Nancy did the same for Mary, her fingers lingering on Mary’s wrist, thumb brushing over the racing pulse there. “You’re both going to be bruised tomorrow,” she said softly.
“We’ll survive,” Mary said, her eyes locked on Nancy’s.
Ellie’s gaze swept over the frozen fountains, the jagged palace walls, the darkening sky. The moment of intimacy folded back into the larger, colder world. “See that you do,” she said, her voice quieter now, meant just for the four of us. “The northern lord is watching. And he’s not the only one.”
She turned, her fur brushing my arm. “Come inside. The cold is winning.”
We gathered our swords, the metal now shockingly cold to the touch. As we followed them back toward the glowing palace, a single, dark shape detached itself from the shadows near the outer wall. A crow, or something like it. It watched us for three long beats of its wings before turning and flying north, into the gathering night.