Jade Halvern's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The papers were done, but Jade's hands were not ready. Her first bout came at dawn. She had fought a hundred duels, yet never one by this world's rules. One wrong move would mark her as foreign. So before dawn she stepped through her folded doorframe and left the tournament town behind. She needed a place no eye could find her. She practiced in a ruin far from any road. Broken stone pillars leaned around her, carved with symbols older than any living house. Her drake crouched among the rubble, watching, its armored tail sweeping grit. She drew the two curved parrying blades the local fighters used. She lunged. She parried air. Her body kept reaching for the moves she knew at home, the quick spins and backhand throws her people called honest fighting. Here those moves would scream alien. She stopped, breathing hard. She could not learn a lifetime of custom alone in one night. Then the air burned. Light split the ruin. A woman stepped out of nothing, purple-skinned, eyes like two lit coals, armored in red and gold. The drake lowered its head and went still. Jade knew the face. Xalyra Vex. The war goddess who had followed her across worlds, who wanted her and would not be refused. "You hold them wrong," Xalyra said. She did not ask why Jade was here. She never asked. She only watched Jade with that hungry, patient stare. "Let me teach you. For a smile. For nothing. For the chance to stand near you." Jade hated needing her. But dawn was coming. "Teach me their rules," she said. "Nothing more." Xalyra moved behind her and set cold hands over Jade's wrists. "Their style is slow. Showy. They salute before they strike. They never turn their backs. They never throw a blade." She guided Jade's arms through the forms, again and again. Each time Jade's old instinct rose, Xalyra pressed it down. "No spin. Keep your face to them. Here, honor is a cage. Wear it." They drilled until the sky went gray. Jade's movements turned stiff and formal and local. She saluted a broken pillar. She stepped forward without turning. It felt like wearing another woman's skin. But it looked right. "You will pass," Xalyra said. Her hand lingered on Jade's shoulder. "And when you tire of hiding, I will still be here." Jade pulled free and stepped back through her doorframe. At dawn she walked onto the tournament floor. Her opponent saluted. She saluted back, slow and correct. She fought by the cage of rules. She never spun. She never turned her back. She won on points, clean, with no one whispering. Her secret held. But Xalyra knew now where Jade practiced, and what Jade feared. The goddess had traded the lesson for a debt. Jade had bought one clean bout by letting her obsessive hunter back inside her life.