by Emily Colin
“I’m waiting, Eva.” Ari’s voice darkens, the promise of violence lurking in its depths. “You’ll acknowledge me, or you’ll pay the price.”
There’s warning clear in his voice—but anticipation, too, carefully veiled and tempered. All of the bellators live to fight, coming to life only when they have a weapon in their hands and an opponent to defeat—and to my shame, I’m no different. The intense, expectant feeling I feel when I take my blade in hand, sizing up the man opposite me for weaknesses before I strike, the adrenaline-fueled rush I feel when I dodge a kick or land a blow—it must be how the act of sex felt to the craven people before the Fall. Only then am I truly present in my body, a physical creature without thoughts of sins or virtues, discipline or deprivation. There’s only the pure, animalistic joy of the fight, my body moving in tune to another’s, seeking completion.
It goes without saying that thinking like this is forbidden. But we all have our secrets, and Ari Westergaard is no exception.
I know what he wants—for me to recognize his superiority, to accept the chain of command and surrender to him. Do that, though, and this dance is over. He will have won, and it will only be a matter of time until I feel his blade against my throat. If I can delay a little bit longer, I’ll have a chance. And so I feint, and wait for him to parry.
“Bellator Westergaard,” I call back, eyes still closed. “What will you do if I say no?”
His only response is a low growl that vibrates through the air, augmented by the rising wind. Leaves whip around my feet, lashing my legs, rattling in the trees, and I suck in a lungful of air, holding it, letting it slip silently back into the gathering energy of the coming storm.
This is my last chance. Apprentices do not refuse their mentors. It isn’t done, and Ari cannot afford my insolence. Either I strike, or he will.
“Don’t tempt me, Eva.” His voice is closer, moving in for the kill. He’s set aside his misdirection, abandoned it as an unnecessary strategy. Which means only one thing: He is near enough that by the time I figure it out, it will be too late.
Desperate, I let the last of the air sift from my lungs, inhale one final time. Luck is with me: The wind shifts again, and then I have it—the rusty tang of blood, coming from directly overhead. He’s in the trees, moving from one to the next, using the coming storm to cover his approach. He plans to leap on me from above.
Now that I’ve found him, I let my eyes blink open, allowing all my senses to come alive. I am careful not to look upward, betraying myself. If I have any chance of catching him, it will depend on the element of surprise. I ready myself, muscles tensing, one hand dropping to my weapons belt, closing on the hilt of my dagur.
He must see me go for my blade, because I hear him laugh again. “Come, now,” he taunts, his tone light, teasing. “We can fight if you want, but you know I’ll win, and where’s the fun in that? You’re the prey and I’m the predator, plain and simple. I outweigh you. I have more training. You have no advantages, Apprentice Marteinn. Yield to me before the storm comes in and you can nurse your defeat in your nice warm bed.”
The use of my formal title—emphasizing my subordination to him—is a deliberate insult, a final dig before he finishes me off. I know him well enough to envision the sleepy grin spreading across his face, darkening his eyes with that false emotion that walks the line between humor and hubris, disguised just enough to deny. Infuriated, I yank the knife free.
“Have some sense, Eva. Say you yield. Give it up to me.”
The time for stealth has come and gone. Shoving my knife into its sheath, I launch myself into the branches overhead, pulling myself up hand over hand, chasing the ghost of his blood’s scent, heedless of scratches or commotion.
Overhead, I hear Ari’s startled gasp, feel the branches shake as he prepares to jump. We are ten feet above the ground; he won’t land easy. But that knowledge is cold comfort, not nearly satisfaction enough.
The wind gusts harder, just as the sky breaks open and the rain pours down. Perfect cover. I palm the dagur and lunge, getting my arms around him as he leaps into the air.
We fall together, through the slanting sheets of rain and the eddying swirl of leaves. Ari shifts in my grip, trying to break free, but I have my knife in my hand and he can’t afford to struggle. Still, neither can I direct my fall, protect myself the way I have been trained. We land hard, him twisting at the last minute so he comes down first, taking the weight of our landing.
The breath is driven out of me all the same, the world gone to streamers in the rain-soaked dusk. Ari’s arms are tight around me, his hands fisted in my shirt. His chest is heaving. The metallic pungency of blood fills the air, mingling with the ozone scent of lightning striking far away in the valley and the peppery reek of adrenaline.
Miraculously, I am still gripping the dagur, its handle slick. I press the dull edge to his throat, and his eyes blink open, the look in them wary. He doesn’t move.
“Who’s the prey now?” I say, the words a ragged gasp. “You may be my mentor, Bellator Westergaard, but I answer to myself.”
Ari draws one shallow, careful breath, then another. “You know,” he says, his tone conversational, “rumor has it wrath is a sin.”
“Hmmm. Well, so is pride, last I heard.” I shake my head, splattering water deliberately onto his face. “They do say pride goeth before a fall, Ari Westergaard. And rarely have I seen a proverb so neatly illustrated, if I do say so myself.”
He laughs soundlessly, so as not to disturb the trajectory of my blade. “Touché. I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“You’re hardly in a position to bargain,” I point out. “But not to worry. My lips are sealed.”
Even bloodied and breathless, my blade against his skin, he gives me that infuriating grin, quirking an eyebrow upward. “How did you figure out where I was?”
Despite myself, I feel a smile spreading across my face. “I did what you said. I closed my eyes. And—I smelled you. The blood, from where I cut you, before.”
“Ah.” He blinks up at me again, clearing the rainwater from his eyes. “You have a gift with edged weapons, Bellator Marteinn. I take back what I said.”
“What, in particular? You said a lot of things.” My fingers have begun to ache where they’re wrapped around the hilt of my knife, and I am beginning to feel foolish, holding it to his throat—but with Ari, I’m never sure where a lesson ends and life begins. It would be unfortunate to drop my guard, only to have him best me now.
“Well,” he says, his tone measured, “you do seem to have me at a disadvantage, after all. Training or no training.” His gaze travels over my face, drops to the dagur in my hand, then traces the lines of my body where it arches over his. My knees dig hard into the mud on either side of his hips, centering my weight, and his fists still grip my shirt, pulling me down against him. One of my hands rests on his chest, giving me the leverage I need to angle the blade. It is an oddly intimate position, closer than I have ever been to anyone unless we were actively fighting. Something sparks to life between us, coiling in my stomach with the sharp-edged sensation of fear, the charged intensity of impending battle. Suddenly it’s hard to breathe all over again, and I open my mouth, tasting rainwater, gasping for air.
Ari shifts beneath me, perhaps planning to roll me off him, blade or no blade—but then his eyes settle on my stomach, bared in the fall, and I see him swallow, the muscles of his throat moving beneath the pressure of my knife. His eyes drift upward, lingering everywhere my wet shirt clings to me, a second skin. His hands grip me tighter, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and he sucks in a sharp, pained breath. “Quite a disadvantage, actually,” he says, his voice hoarse, and when his eyes find mine again, they are hot, burning with emotion.
Even though I am on top of him with a knife at his throat, I feel horribly vulnerable—all the more so because I can feel heat in me responding, rising toward his unspoken call. It unnerves me, more than the darkness and the hunt and the heady scent of
blood. My knees are rooted to the ground, as solid beneath me as Ari himself—so why do I feel as if I am still falling?
I freeze in confusion and feel Ari do the same, his body moving in response to mine as it does when we are sparring. Reason comes to me then, borne on a tidal wave of relief: Perhaps we’re still playing the game, even now. Perhaps this is just another lesson.
That must be it. This is a test. Ari himself, a temptation. One among many tests, and I will not fail it.
Clarity floods me, and I lean a little harder against the blade. His expression flickers, but he does not wince. “I am Bellatorum Lucis,” I say, each word dropping slow and clear into the press of the storm. “I walk in the light. Do you walk with me, or no?”
Ari’s eyes are fixed on mine, his body still. I wait, unmoving, for the words that will set both of us free: Shadow passes, light remains. But he does not speak. Instead he searches my face—surely another test, this one of my emotional control. I school myself to impassivity as I have been taught, and give him nothing in return.
Finally he blinks, his eyes shuttering closed. When they open again, they are a study in inscrutability, his pupils blown wide to admit what little light remains. “Eva,” he says.
“Yes?” Under the palm braced on his chest, I feel the slow, studied pounding of his heart. It beats against me as surely as if I hold it in my hand, an unexpected intimacy that sends a shiver rippling through me, my muscles quivering from head to toe.
Ari shivers helplessly in return, his body shifting under mine, as if he has asked a question and I have answered. “Je me rends,” he says softly, and I feel his hands loosen, falling, palms open, into the mud at his sides. I surrender.
15
Ari
As soon as the words leave my lips, Eva rolls off me, blade still at my throat. “Get up,” she says.
I get to my knees in the mud, then rise to my feet. Standing, I could disarm her—but the last thing I want is to sever our connection, no matter how treacherous it might be. And it is treacherous, I know that well enough.
I’d intended to let go of her after we landed. But I couldn’t make myself, even though I knew we might not be alone in the woods…that other bellators, intent on a night-training exercise, might well come upon us unawares. To be Bellatorum means to control your impulses, to school your very heart rate into submission. But with Eva on top of me, her hand on my chest and her knife pressed to my throat, I couldn’t control a damn thing. My body had responded to hers as if it were an animal she’d called to heel. The knife she’s still holding to my throat is nothing compared to that.
I want to ask her if she feels the same, but I’m afraid to look at her. The way the moonlight illuminated the bare skin of her stomach, beaded with rainwater—the way her clothes mold to her body, outlining every curve—to think about these things is the greatest of sins. Worse still is what I want to do: I have to fight the urge to knock away the blade, take her face in my hands, and kiss her, the way the stories we’re told as children warn us against. I do my best to shove the image away, but it won’t go. The more I struggle against it, the more intense it becomes.
Thinking like this is wrong, I tell myself. Stop. Remember who you are. But when she holds the tip of her blade beneath my chin, I think not of blood and punishment but of how her skin would slide through my hands, rain-wet and slippery as a selkie, how much I would like to know whether her lips are as soft as they look. How she tastes.
By the Sins. I can’t do this. I can’t I can’t I won’t. If we are caught, it may well mean our lives. But I am not strong enough to resist, not alone with her in the woods, the rain coming down and Eva looking right at me, a challenge clear in those dark eyes. Worse still, I don’t want to. My heart races and inside me everything is falling and finally I speak.
“What do you want from me?” I say, my voice rough. “Do you want me to beg? I will, if that’s what you need. Just tell me, so I can get it over with and we can get the hell out of here.”
Her eyes flicker downward, the first indication of surrender—but then they sweep upward again, meeting mine. “That’s an interesting proposition,” she says, one side of her mouth curving upward. “Go ahead and beg, then. I’d like to see you try.”
It’s my first instinct to take offense at this. But where Eva is concerned, pride is the least of my problems. If she wants me to beg, then beg I will, and hang the consequences. “All right,” I say, and wrap my hand around the one of hers that holds the blade. I force it downward, gaze steady on her face, and flick the knife into the muck.
Eva takes a step backward, eyes wide with alarm. “I didn’t mean—”
“You wanted me to beg, yeah? Then come here.” The words come from everywhere and nowhere at once, but once I have said them, there is no taking them back. I tighten my grip, pull her toward me, and bend my head, brushing my lips against her cheek, then downward, along her neck to the sharp rise of her collarbone. The current between us rises and spikes and the last of my restraint shatters, washed away by the storm and the taste of Eva’s skin. She smells like the soap all of us use, like sweat and rainwater—and a scent all her own. It’s sweet, but with an edge to it—like the hot chocolate spiced with cayenne they give us on the eve of the Architect’s Arrival.
“I underestimated you,” I whisper against her skin. “Forgive me, please.”
She shivers. “Ari,” she says, warning clear in her voice, but—miracle of miracles—she doesn’t push me away. I wonder what, exactly, we are doing—how far both of us will allow this to go. Lust is forbidden—chastity, a virtue. But if I have already sinned by wanting her, then perhaps what happens between us now doesn’t matter.
Perhaps we are already damned.
The thought terrifies me—but it exhilarates me, too. I have never felt anything more powerful than the pull toward Eva, a wanting so strong my hands tremble with it—my hands, which never shake when I wield a blade.
“Forgive me,” I say again, the words barely audible—but this time I’m not sure whether the entreaty is meant for her, or whether it’s a plea to the brotherhood of the Bellatorum, to everything I have sworn to uphold.
Tentatively, she traces a finger along my cheekbone. Her touch leaves a line of heat behind, and it is my turn to shiver. I press my lips to the hollow at the base of her throat, and her breath catches once, then again. I can taste her, sweat and soap and that strange, spicy sweetness.
A moan vibrates through me, a hungry, eager sound I have never heard myself make, and she tenses in my arms. Attuned as I am to the smallest movement, trained to read deception in a smile, flight in the smallest shift of weight, still I have no idea what this means. She’s not fighting me, not trying to get away—but knowing Eva as I do, perhaps she is merely calculating the odds, determining the most effective method of escape. Or perhaps she is horrified by my forwardness, stunned into immobility. I have no way of telling.
“Eva,” I say, more breathless than I have ever felt after an hour of wind sprints or a bout of sparring. My heart is pounding, hard enough I am sure she can hear it. “Do you like this? Do you want me to stop?”
Her head jerks up, eyes wide, the expression in them unreadable. And then she stands on her tiptoes, leans into me, and presses her lips to mine.
For a moment I am so shocked I don’t move. Then her mouth opens and she nips at my lower lip with her teeth, tracing the sting with the tip of her tongue. I gasp, and she swallows the sound, her hands locked behind my neck, urging me down to her.
Something gives in me then, a final barrier, and I pull her tight against me, kissing her back, my hands roving over her body, all the places I have never allowed myself to touch. We stumble backward, not stopping until her back hits the trunk of a tree. My arms are braced around Eva, first to absorb the impact, then as a cage, framing our bodies. “Are you all right?” I say, my voice oddly breathless. “This—it’s okay?”
In response she reaches up and twines her fingers in my hair, shift
ing against me, forcing a growl from my throat and a sharp cry from hers. I lift her, letting the tree take most of her weight, and she wraps her legs around my hips, drawing me in. Then her lips are on my collarbone, her other hand sliding under my sodden shirt to press against bare skin, and a shudder ripples through me. I slide my palms down the rough bark, take her face in my hands, and claim her mouth again.
I have no idea what I am doing—how could I?—but instinct drives me forward, a primal urge for which I have no name. Or maybe I do. Lust, that’s what this is, the base desire the Priests have warned us against again and again. It has little to do with higher thought, with any of the virtues and behavioral codes drilled into us over the years. I feel myself moving against Eva, feel her body arch under mine, her heat burning into me even through the layers of our wet clothes. And I know that the High Priests are right—this is terribly dangerous. Because in this moment, I don’t care about the rules of the Commonwealth, about anything other than the girl in my arms. All I want is Eva. And being as close as we are right now—it is nowhere near enough.
Wanting like this must be a great sin.
The thought is a cold dose of reality, dousing my desire. If someone were to see us this way—it’s one thing to condemn myself to an eternity in hell, put to death or exiled and doomed to wander the Outside until I meet my final reckoning. It’s another to drag Eva down with me.
I pull back from her, panting, loosening her grip on me so she’s standing on the ground once again. The rain has slowed to a drizzle, but we are both too drenched for it to matter. “We have to stop,” I say, my voice uneven. “We can’t do this.”