Page 81 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

Maybe word had spread that the blonde-haired anomaly their king had bound himself to had actually passed the Agon Ferr initiation.

I waited out there for long enough that I doubted my recollection of which building the main barracks hall sat in. But just as I pushed off the ledge and my boots thudded onto the earth, Jasper came sweeping around the corner. If a man with only the lower half of his face exposed could look exasperated, he certainly did.

“Can I help with any of that, or…?” I had to restrain my amusement as he sailed right past me, balancing an armload of training weapons and goddess knew what else.

“Just the first gate down there,” he called back with the strained addition of, “please.”

I kicked up a bit of dirt as I scrambled after him and around the back of the building to where a lengthy fence taller than myself stretched on, broken up by a handful of closed gates. The half-rusted metal latch only gave a slight protest as I flipped it over and pushed open the panels, clearing the way for Jasper and his bounty. At least the inside of a training arena was a welcome and familiar sight, even if I was used to ones hewn into dove-gray mountainsides.

After dumping everything rather unceremoniously to the side and re-latching the gate, Jasper approached me with two sets of bracers in his hands, extending one to me. “Get geared up, and we’ll start.”

I looked at the bracers—simple leather wraps with a reinforced piece that extended over the wrist and back of the hand—and my brows drew together. The mage was already putting his own on top of the gloves he was never without, and I couldn’t help but glance over at the pile of goods he’d brought.

Not a single breastplate or backplate.

No pauldrons or greaves, leather or not.

Not even a damned helmet.

What gearing up meant in Grimmoria was a world away from what it meant at home.

“So, what are we starting with then?” I asked as I slipped on the bracers and made quick work of the closure. “Does Maksym just want to see how quickly I can put you on your ass, or…?”

“Oh, I’m sure he’d love to see that.” Jasper shook his hooded head as he ambled back to the pile of weaponry. “Catch.”

I didn’t even blink, and a quarterstaff was hurtling in my direction.

A string of curses tumbled out of me, and I caught the projectile before it took my goddess-damned head off. It was a training staff, sure, but it still packed a considerable amount of weight.

“Oh,” I chuckled as I tossed the staff from hand to hand, “this is how it’s going to be?”

Jasper tossed me the widest smile I’d seen from him so far, gripping his own staff at an angle in front of him. “It is. Are you ready, Miss Wynn?”

Clearly to prove a point, I’d barely opened my mouth to goad him, and the mage came at me faster than my eyes could process. I had a split second to decide if I wanted to position my staff as protection and risk going down, or anchor my body and have a chance at staying upright.

Jasper’s staff collided with my fingers, just beyond where the reinforced bracer protected my first knuckles, and my damned face, but I held every inch of my hastily guarded ground.

“Fucker,” I hissed as I shoved him back.

Jasper sank back a lazy step, as if the force of my weight did nothing, and didn’t give me any reprieve before he came at me again.

The mage and I moved through a violent dance of blows, blocks, and dodges for a goddess-damned eternity, made infinitely more infuriating by how I couldn’t tell where he was looking. The bracers Jasper had equipped me with did little to stave off the misery that rattled through my bones every time his quarterstaff collided with my knuckles, either. Or my wrists. Or my knees, elbows, and shoulders. My face, too.

To my dismay, that was often the case with the unnatural speed the mage moved with.

I had spent my entire military service fighting other guards and Odessans who’d honed their bodies—and only their physical bodies—for the art of war, not whatever arcane influence was pumping through Jasper’s veins. No matter how confident I was in where he’d come at me next, the mage knew what I was thinking and changed his strategy twice over, all in the blink of an eye. Every fucking time.

Well, it was that, or I couldn’t spar to save my life anymore.

My body would be black and blue come morning, but I’d be damned if I didn’t hold my ground. To the mage’s credit, he seemed pleased with how I carried myself.

The first time he treated me to a breathless, almost mindless, mutter of, “Very good,” I found the ever-increasing temperature of my body impossible to manage. By the fifth or sixth round of somewhat breathy praise, I was glad we’d been embroiled in physical activity for as long as we had so I could blame that on the flushed state of my skin.

It turned out, old habits of feeling the need to fight or fuck—or both—my way through my problems died very, very hard. And my nonsensical bodily attraction to the shadow-cloaked, faceless mage compounded tenfold when he finally put me on my ass.

He came at me as he had dozens of times already, but I stumbled. My legs were struggling under the day’s effort, and they finally faltered. Jasper hooked my knee, locking our staffs, and drove his shoulder into mine.

“No,” I bit out, panting. “No. You. Fucking. Don’t⁠—”