He scuffs the dirt beneath his feet. Testing the terrain. “We already fought.”
“Under the influence of a whisper. Someone else pulled the strings. That’s not the same.”
At the edge of the circle, a bit of a crowd gathers to watch. When Cal and I step onto the same sparring ground, word travels quickly. I think Kilorn might even be taking bets, weaving through the dozen or so newbloods with a shifty grin. One of them is Reese, the healer I struck when I was first rescued. He lies in wait like the skin healers used to when I trained with Silvers. Ready to fix whatever we break.
My fingers drum against my arms, each one ticking. In my bones, I call to lightning. It rises at my command, and I feel the clouds gather overhead. “Are you going to keep wasting my time so you can strategize, or can we get started?”
He just winks and continues his stretches. “Almost done.”
“Fine.” Stooping, I brush the finely ground dirt over my hands, wiping away any sweat. Cal taught me that. He grins and does the same. Then, to the surprise and delight of more than a few people, he pulls his shirt clean off and tosses it to the side.
Better food and hard training have made us both more muscular, but where I am lean and agile, smoothly curved, he is all hard angles and cut lines of definition. I’ve seen him undressed many times and still it gives me pause, sending a flush from my cheeks all the way down to my toes. I swallow forcibly. At the edge of my vision, both Ella and Rafe look him over with interest.
“Trying to distract me?” I pretend to shrug it off, ignoring the heat all over my face.
He cocks his head to side, a picture of innocence. He even claps his hand to his chest, forcing a false gasp as if to say Who, me? “You’ll just fry the shirt anyway. I’m saving supplies. But,” he adds, beginning to circle, “a good soldier uses every advantage at his disposal.”
Above me, the sky continues to darken. Now I can definitely hear Kilorn taking bets. “Oh, you think you have the advantage? That’s cute.” I match his movements, circling in the opposite direction. My feet move of their own accord. I trust them. The adrenaline feels familiar, born of the Stilts, the training arena, every battle I’ve ever been in. It takes hold in my nerves.
I hear Cal’s voice in my head, even as he tenses, settling into an all-too-familiar stance. Burner. Ten yards. My hands fall to my sides, fingers swirling as purple-white sparks jump in and out of my skin. Across the circle, he flicks his wrists—and searing heat blazes across my palms.
I yelp, jumping back to see my sparks are red flame. He took them from me. With a burst of energy, I thrust them back into lightning. They ripple, wanting to become fire, but I hold my concentration, keeping the sparks from bursting out of control.
“First blow to Calore!” Kilorn yells at the edge of the circle. A mix of groans and cheers runs through the still-growing crowd. He claps and thumps his feet. It reminds me of the arena, the Stilts, when he yelled for Silver champions. “Let’s go, Mare, pick it up!”
A good lesson, I realize. Cal didn’t have to open our spar by revealing something I wasn’t prepared for. He could have held it back. Waited to use that unseen advantage. Instead, he played that piece first. He’s going easy on me.
First mistake.
Ten yards away, Cal beckons, indicating for me to continue. A taunt as much as anything. He’s best on the defense. He wants me to come to him. Fine.
At the edge of the circle, Ella mutters a warning to the crowd. “I’d step back if I were you.”
My fist clenches, and lightning strikes. It rips down with blinding force, hitting the circle dead center, like an arrow to a bull’s-eye. But it doesn’t dig into the ground, cracking the earth as it should. Instead, I use a combination of storm and web. The purple-white bolt flares across the sparring circle, racing over the dirt at knee height. Cal throws up an arm to protect his eyes from the bright flash, using the other hand to ripple the sparks around him, morphing them to blazing blue flame. I sprint and burst from the lightning he can’t bear to look at. With a roar, I slide into his legs, knocking him down. He hits the sparks and flops, seizing from the shock as I pop back to my feet.
Red-hot heat brushes my face, but I push it back with a shield of electricity. Then I’m on the ground too, legs swept out from under me. My face hits the ground hard and I taste dirt. A hand grabs my shoulder, a hand that burns, and I swing out with an elbow, catching his jaw. That burns too. His entire body is aflame. Red and orange, yellow and blue. Waves of heat distortion pulse from him, making the entire world sway and undulate.