After Tybalt had finished communicating with Hieron and Baldwin and fixing his broken fingerbones, he rose to his feet and made eye contact with Mariella.

  “Thank you for being patient,” he said.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Never better. Let’s resume.”

  “You sure? It looked like you broke your hand and had to put it back together. I’m sure that… didn’t feel good. Maybe you want a break first?”

  All of the communication that had gone back and forth while he was repairing his hand had taken place at the speed of thought. Only a few minutes had passed in real time.

  “I just had a break,” Tybalt replied coolly. “Like I said, thank you for being patient.”

  Mariella gave him a respectful nod and a tiny smile.

  “You’re just as tough as I took you for,” she said softly.

  Without saying anything else, she resumed a fighting stance.

  Tybalt charged.

  The pair sparred for what must have been a few hours, counting two breaks to restore mana and another break to eat. Tybalt had no way of telling time, except that toward the end, he noticed the lighting outside had turned orange. They had spent a large chunk of the day fighting, and the sun was close to setting.

  By the end, he was covered in sweat, and even Mariella was perspiring freely, though Tybalt was at least three times as soaked as she was.

  “One more time?” she asked, panting slightly. Her face was flushed, her eyes gleaming. She had clearly enjoyed this experience at least as much as he had.

  “You’re insatiable,” he said, shaking his head and smiling.

  The effect of sparring had been everything he had hoped for. He felt more comfortable with this unnamed new technique he was developing, the pain in his hand was all but forgotten, and he was much less worried about the plan failing to come together exactly as envisioned. As his dialogues with Baldwin and Hieron had proven, he was competent at making adjustments, and he even had some pretty good assistants in his corner. Those were the real keys to success in a game like this, not making sure everything about the plan happened perfectly.

  Plans almost never survived contact with real life.

  As Mariella suggested a final round, Tybalt was almost totally exhausted. But the exercise had been more than worth it. Perhaps, in this last bout, he would win. Somehow.

  He took up the fighting stance again, and Mariella did the same opposite him.

  But he noticed something this time. Her stance was a little bit looser, and she leaned forward slightly. Mariella had kept herself on the defensive the entire time. Now, from the way she had shifted, Tybalt guessed she was ready to go on the attack. If he hadn’t seen her focused completely on defense so many times, he wouldn’t have noticed the way her posture had changed.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Let’s go.”

  Mariella moved first, throwing herself forward, into close range. Tybalt, having expected that she was going to do something like that, pivoted to the side at the same instant she started moving. This placed the cave wall to his back and his body perpendicular to her direction of travel. Her eyes widened, and she tried to stop her forward motion. Her feet scraped the ground, arms pinwheeling.

  But even though she was faster and stronger than him, she couldn’t react as quickly as she needed to in that moment. Her momentum carried her forward, almost to where he had just been standing, and before she could change direction, he lunged.

  This is how I could beat someone who’s objectively better than me, he had time to think. Remember this moment.

  A single mana-clad fist struck her left shoulder, and he saw her teeth clench from just inches away. Was that a look of pain?

  Then an open palm slapped him in the face, and Tybalt was thrown backward. He struck the cave wall harder than he had that entire afternoon, and for a moment, he saw stars.

  He blinked and found himself on the ground. An alert appeared before his eyes.

  Whoa. I guess I achieved something after all. Did I win this round, then? That would be a first as far as he was concerned, though they had not been keeping score. Their sparring wasn’t exactly like conventional fighting.

  He felt sleepy for a moment, but the giddiness from level up overpowered the drowsiness and even the slight taste of blood in his mouth—apparently the product of a bite he hadn’t felt on either his cheek or his tongue, which seemed to have healed with the new level.

  A wave of satisfaction followed.

  He had not had a level that felt as earned as this one since he acquired his classes.

  Plus, this would bring him into the second tier of skills, which should be a step up from abilities like Scrimshaw.

  It’s a good day after all, regardless of what happens with the squad. All thanks to Mariella. I couldn’t have done it without her.

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  He dismissed the text for the moment. He wanted to see Mariella’s reaction before he chose his next skill.

  She was looking down at him, biting down lightly on her lower lip and gently massaging her shoulder. She had to be in a little pain, but the only thing he read on her face was a slight, stunned surprise. And… wait, was she pleased?

  Of course she is. She genuinely wanted to see me improve…

  “How did you know?” she finally asked.

  “Your stance was different,” he said.

  It had been subtle, but the shift was definitely there.

  “My martial arts teacher in officer training used to say I was an open book,” Mariella muttered. “I wonder if you’d be able to do that again.”

  Tybalt took that as a demand for another round, and he obligingly rose to his feet, ignoring how the muscles all throughout his body protested. Now that he moved, he also realized his face was incredibly sore where she had slapped him. He would probably have a bruise on that cheek.

  And he consciously recognized the fact that a slap had been her defensive move. Even when she had felt he might injure her shoulder, might break bone, she had still managed to limit herself to an open palm strike. She had clearly lost a bit of control over her strength—that was by far the hardest she had hit him—but an open palm was a relatively feeble weapon.

  If she had punched me with that amount of force… The thought was a bit horrifying. A closed fist hitting that hard probably would have obliterated his cheekbone. Perhaps he would be unconscious, despite her not using her full strength. Perhaps he would be talking through a hole in the side of his face.

  “Um, let’s stop for the day,” Mariella said, perhaps seeing that he was barely standing.

  “If you insist.”

  Tybalt allowed himself to drop to his knees.

  Thank the gods. I thought she was going to spar me to death…

  “You have so much potential,” she added. She spoke the words in the same tone that women in the past had once said “You have such pretty eyes,” or “You’re so smart, Tybalt.”

  “Yeah, that was what my old tutor used to say before he skipped town,” he said.

  “Seriously, you don’t understand.” She was grinning at him now. Tybalt had to admit he liked this new way the Lieutenant had of looking at him, like he was someone important. It was a sensation he hadn’t experienced much since joining the Army.

  I guess potential is sexy for noble girls. He shook his head lightly. No, I’m not giving her credit. It’s hot to Mariella specifically… She’s really not like any other noblewoman I’ve met. The proper young lady archetype is much more the norm than this woman who could put my head through a wall. Maybe what she really wants is to see me get strong enough to kick her ass. And if I’m reading that right… I kind of want to see what would happen if I won a fight with her.

  His mind began envisioning such a scenario, but then she started talking again.

  “I’m pretty sure you almost broke my arm just now,” Mariella said. “Even though I was using mana to reinforce it. You’re learning more quickly than anyone I’ve ever seen. You’re… really good at this. I was trying not to distract you with praise while we were sparring, but I think you’re a naturally gifted magical fighter. I had already figured you had more raw potential than me. If you improved this much in a day, you’re going to be a deadlier fighter than me in a year. Two years at the most.”

  “I bet I could out-wrestle you right now.”

  “You…” Mariella rolled her eyes. She was still smiling, her cheeks red from their recent exertions.

  Wordlessly, she stepped closer to him, crouched down, and pecked him on the lips. Tybalt found himself reddening and growing slightly aroused at the unexpected contact. His blood had already been rushing through his veins before that, and his mind had been on how he would have behaved if he had actually won a spar with her.

  He had pictured pushing her to the ground, holding her arms over her head… making her admit that he was stronger. Among other things.

  “What was that for?” Tybalt asked, slightly flustered.

  “Well, you’re pretty sweaty,” she replied. “I didn’t want to get too close.”

  “So you don’t want to wrestle, then.” He sighed.

  Mariella’s forehead creased, and she frowned slightly and looked away.

  “Look, now you’re being too direct,” she said. “I liked it when you said you were interested in me, straight to my face. That felt special, I was pretty emotional… You picked the perfect moment to confess. But I am a lady, and… look, if you’re trying to sleep with me… well, asking me to wrestle sounds a little too much like the way the other men in the squad used to come on. You already know how I felt about that. I mean, my little brothers used to try and wrestle me. Don’t make me think back to being a teenager dealing with a ten-year-old brother. It’s not… you. I know you’re better than that. More sophisticated.”

  Tybalt took a moment to think before he responded.

  A very diplomatic way of telling me that line about wrestling makes her drier than the Salt Waste…

  “How did noble boys approach you?” he finally asked, fully expecting to be annoyed by her answer. She would compare him unfavorably, and—

  “Poorly,” she admitted, smiling sarcastically. “With engraved letters, romantic ballads, or unendurable poetry.”

  Tybalt decided that he was very glad he hadn’t mentioned all the shitty poems he’d written for his half-sister Miranda.

  But at least I burned those poems. I didn’t try to give them to her…

  “Or trying to go through my family, which was technically the appropriate method,” she continued. “But my family is indulgent with me. I’m not that important in the scheme of my parents’ ambitions. So they would gently convey that the proper approach was to try to court me directly. In our house, it’s my choice. When I marry, I will belong to my husband’s house. That gives noble parents reason to give their daughter a bit of leeway in choosing, although most of them are not as open-minded as mine…”

  That is unusual, yes. How grand are her parents’ ambitions that a beautiful and talented daughter is “not that important” for them?

  “I want to be clear that I’m not saying that you should be like anyone else,” Mariella said, looking him steadily in the eyes. “Once the noble boys who wanted to do it the right way were told to go through me instead, they basically disappeared. They had no recourse besides basically trying to buy me off of my parents. You struck a middle ground. Between the crass common soldiers and the noble boys too timid to pick up a handkerchief if I dropped one. It was a happy medium.”

  The two shared a smile.

  There I was, thinking that being a bastard would never be an advantage in my life. But maybe it’s not so bad, being neither one thing nor the other…

  “I understand,” Tybalt said. “You don’t want me to catcall you, but you don’t want me to write you an epic poem either.”

  Mariella started to nod.

  “Maybe something more like a dirty limerick?”

  She groaned.

  “A saucy rhyming couplet?”

  “Please don’t.”

  “What if I—”

  “Time for the next part of your training!”

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