CHAPTER 55 — from Alex’s point of view

She looked at me with complete trust for what I knew was probably the last time.
Tomorrow she would hate me.
But she would be safer.
I’d prepared the storage room in the barracks for the lesson, clearing as much of
the floor area as I could and setting a pile of old straw mattresses in the middle.
They were musty and falling apart, so I’d covered them with a blanket to hold
them together. It wasn’t until I’d pulled off my jacket and turned her around that
the look on her face made me realize a large mat on the floor might have implied
a different purpose. When I told her I was going to teach her how to kill a man,
however, she didn’t even flinch.
I folded her fingers around the knife handle and pressed her thumb on the end
for the extra stability it gave. “Hold it like this.”
The light from the candles set in the walls was barely adequate to see, but it was
fear that made her eyes dilate. “I’m ready,” she whispered.
“Are you?”
She nodded, and I almost believed her.
Sage clutched the knife in one hand as I used the other to show her the best
spots to aim—the soft gut, the lower back, the side of the neck, the tendons at
the back of the thigh, the armpit. She flushed as I pressed her hand in each of
those places and flamed scarlet when I released her to jab my own fingers near
my groin and the artery that would make a man bleed out in under a minute.
“Any questions? Don’t be afraid to ask.”
She shook her head, and I moved to stand behind her. Her breath hitched as I
wrapped myself around her back, laying my arms along hers. Sweet Spirit, she
smelled good.
Focus, Soldier.
“With this grip you have control, and you’re unlikely to hurt yourself.” I said, “If
your blade only has one edge, keep the dull side to your forearm. Now—” I pulled
her arm back and used my body to direct her into a bit of a crouch— “Consider
this your starting point. Your opponent won’t have a clear view of your knife for a
longer time, and you can get momentum to swing—” I guided her wrist in an
upward arc, “To do more damage.”
Sage swallowed. “What am I aiming for first?”
I stepped back and walked around to face her. “You have three good options.
Here.” I moved her wrist from the front and dragged the covered blade
horizontally across my stomach. “Or here.” I made a diagonal line up and across
my torso. “Or here.” This time I cut my throat. “It all depends on my position and
armament. Now you try.”
She tensed her arm and took a deep breath.
I held up my hand. “Wait. Start from where I showed you.”
“Oh, right.” She took the proper position. Slowly and clumsily she repeated the
motions.
“Faster.” This time she was better, but still reluctant. “Again.”
Better. There wasn’t enough time to make it perfect; I had to build on it. “Cut low
this time and then stop at the end.” She followed my instructions. “Now what?” I
asked her.
“I feel vulnerable. My right side is exposed.”
I nodded. “Good. So reverse it now.” Her brow furrowed, and I grasped her wrist
and rotated it before pulling the knife back across my chest in an upward angle.
“See?”
“I think so.”
“Now do it.” She was faster, smoother, with just a hint of the fierceness I wanted.
I leaned over her a little. “Again.”
Sage slashed across my stomach, and I crumpled a little as a man would if he’d
been gutted. Her backslash, unable to take the diagonal as practiced, became a
stab to the throat. She’d improvised. Excellent.
But the ferocity was quickly replaced by fear. “I don’t know if I can do that for
real.”
“Because it’s me or because it means killing someone?”
She flinched. “Both. More because it’s you, I think. If someone wanted to hurt
me, I guess I would fight harder.”
Of that I had no doubt. The problem was she couldn’t see me as a threat, even
knowing how much blood was on my hands. Telling her the truth about myself
now might bring out the anger I wanted, but I couldn’t risk her leaving yet. I
needed her.
“Again,” I said. “Try to make it smooth and fast. Make me guess what you’re
going for.”
Sage took the starting position and swung her arm in a weak arc.
Enough.
I twisted the dagger from her grip and swept a foot behind her legs, knocking her
off her feet. To her credit, she knew how to fall, but it was no effort to bring her to
a controlled crash on the mat. With one leg I pinned her lower body down while
my arms trapped hers. I pushed the sheathed knife against her throat. The
panicked look of adrenaline flashed in her gray eyes and every muscle beneath
mine tensed. No, coiled like a spring. Yes.
I leaned back a little. “Did I frighten you?” She nodded wordlessly. “Good.” Sage
pushed herself to a sitting position, not taking her eyes from mine. I dropped the
knife in her lap, but made no effort to help her up, which went against every
instinct I had. “Get up and try again.”
She was swift to her feet and wary as she watched me. Better. Much better. She
progressed quickly after that, but I never let her rest on what she learned, always
moved on, shifted, changed, forced her to react.
The hours were too short. I was cramming years of training into minutes, and it
wasn’t all I needed to cover. Once I felt confident Sage knew how to inflict the
most damage, I moved on. “Your weapon is gone,” I barked, knocking the
weapon from her hand. “Now what?”
Sage was so tightly wound she reacted without hesitation, leaping straight at me.
I barely had time to tense my stomach muscles before her shoulder drove into
them. We tumbled to the floor, and my head hit the mat, knocking the barely
formed smile from my face.
Good, but now it was time to teach her something I’d learned the hard way.
I moaned and reached for my head, and just as I expected, she retreated and
dropped her guard. Her face appeared over mine, concern and regret etched in
her pale face. I grabbed her by the throat and pulled her closer.
“You’re dead,” I whispered.
The fury of betrayal in her face sent a jolt through me, but I held steady. She
punched my upper arm, trying to get me to let go. “That’s not fair!”
“Do you think this is a game?” I demanded. “Is there fairness in fighting a man
twice your size?”
I was right and Sage knew it. “No,” she whispered, stopping her struggle.
Before releasing, I squeezed a little tighter as a reminder I was being easy on
her. “Good. Again.”
She wasn’t weak, but she couldn’t help her size disadvantage. Fortunately I’d
trained since I was Charlie’s age, and I knew a few tricks she could use. Every
time I tossed her to the mat and she cried out in frustration, my heart seized a bit.
But I had to do this. She had to be able to protect herself.
As the hours wore on, her efforts became weaker, but she continued to push
herself. I’d not underestimated her pride or stubbornness.
Only two candles were still burning-and those barely-when she took a fall and did
not make an effort to get up. Her limbs were shaking with exhaustion and the
soreness that would be sinking in by now. I still had at least an hour until dawn,
though, and I would not waste it. “Again.” I forced a toe under her hip.
She wheezed with the effort of speaking. “I’m too tired.”
“I don’t care,” I said, nudging harder. “Again.”
Sage rolled with my prodding and pushed to her hands and knees. She was
nearing the end of her strength, but everyone always thinks they’re more spent
than they are. “I can’t,” she gasped.
“You can.” This was the difference between living and dying. “Get up.”
Her arm swung out, connecting with the back of the leg I was standing on, and
my knee buckled. Before I could catch myself, her hands were in my hair,
bringing me down faster. Given the choice between twisting my knees out or
properly taking the fall, I chose the latter. As soon as I was flat on my back,
though, I reached for her, but it was too late. She pressed her forearm across my
neck and leaned, forcing me back, down. There was hard gleam in her eyes as
her body shook with the control it took to keep her weight from crushing my
windpipe.
“You’re dead,” she whispered.
I smiled. “Very good.”
The fire in her extinguished, and she eased her weight off a fraction of a second
before her muscles gave out. She collapsed half over me, her face pressed into
my shoulder. “No more, please,” she mumbled almost incoherently.
I slipped my arm under and around her back to keep her from rolling off. “No
more,” I whispered into her hair. “We’re finished.”
The sound she made was suspiciously like a sob. Sage’s fingers tightened
around a fold in my shirt. “Why were you so hard on me?”
Why indeed. Because I needed her. I needed her to survive what was coming,
and not just for how she could help us..
I’d resisted her for so long, sworn that nothing would happen between us.
Somehow knowing Sage wasn’t a bride had been freeing; her motives of
friendship were pure—as were mine, or so I’d told myself. Lying to her grew
harder because every day was another stone in the wall she would build once
she knew the truth. My only defense was to keep her at arm’s length. If I didn’t let
her see me as more than a friend now, maybe she wouldn’t hate me later.
That plan was working until this morning.
The ruse in the armory was the only way we could justify being there. I thought
we could continue as though it hadn’t happened, yet nothing had prepared me for
seeing her so hurt. In that moment, the only thing that mattered was making her
feel better. And in the moments that followed, the only thing that mattered was
the way she kissed me back.
I caressed her cheek before tilting her face to mine. “Because if you die, it will be
my fault, and I can’t live with that.” Her smoky eyes widened, and her lips parted
in the invitation I no longer had the strength to resist. “Or without you.”
She tasted like honey. Like sunshine. Exhausted as I was from the past hours—
the past weeks—every fiber in my body roared to life with that kiss. I knew her
shape and her curves. I’d traced them with my eyes at every opportunity for
days—now I needed to know them with my hands. I moved them down her back
and around her waist, pressing my thumb into her belly. Again. I retraced the
contour of her lower back. She sighed and pulled me closer, telling me she
wanted more. This time my hand went lower, down to her backside.
I rolled onto my side to face her, holding her close with my other arm and sinking
deeper into our kiss. Sage turned to meet me and nestled against my body, fitting
perfectly, like she belonged there. I melted around her, unable to tell anymore
where I ended and she began. Her hand on my shirt dropped to my waist, fingers
brushing skin where it was exposed.
Oh. I must have said it out loud, because her cheek tightened against mine as
she smiled.
Sage slipped her hand under the shirt and around my body as I had done to her,
the feel of her skin on mine flowing out from the places she touched like warm
water. My own hand froze on her hip. Had she ever imagined this? I had, but I
hadn’t realized how overwhelming it would be. My breath came in gasps as her
exploring fingers made me aware of every square inch of my back. Her progress
stopped at my shoulder blade, on the long scar from the fight where I’d killed for
the first time. She didn’t recoil, though, but instead learned it with her fingers, as
though by her gentle touch she could heal it.
More. I wanted more. I wanted her to feel what she was doing to me. My mouth
found hers again, and my hand pulled her shirt from her trousers.
Sweet Spirit, she was smooth. I spread my fingers across her back, marveling
that such a small creature could bring me to my knees, reduce me to instincts I
didn’t know I had. My hands continued up, under the already loosened laces of
the band she wore across her chest.
I broke away from our kiss and turned my face down to her neck. Her skin was
salty from sweat, but still as sweet as I remembered. I dragged my mouth lower
until I reached the place her neck met her shoulder. Now the damn shirt was in
the way, though. I shifted to move the collar aside. Sage pressed her cheek to
my head, exhaling across my ear, and for a few seconds I was lost in the
sensation that rippled through my whole body.
“Ash,” she whispered.
No.
My arms locked around her like I was drowning and she was safety.
Damn the world, damn everything. Damn it all to hell.
Damn me.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered, pleading.
Don’t stop. She wanted me like I wanted her. She’d give me anything I asked for.
This morning had been a mistake, like faltering in the heat of battle, but this…
This was a war I’d just lost.
I pulled my hands from her shirt and leaned back to loosen her arms. “There are
things you don’t know, Sage.”
She gripped my elbow to keep me from going further away. “Then tell me.”
I couldn’t. Not now. “Soon, sweet Sage, I promise.” I shook my head and
wrapped my arms around her, pulling her close again. “Just not tonight.”
The candlelight flickered and died as I brought my mouth to hers one last time.
Sage tensed a little, but gradually relaxed. Then I held her in the darkness and
stroked her messy hair until she succumbed to her exhaustion and dozed off, her
breathing shallow and regular. She looked so fragile, and yet she had more
courage than most soldiers I commanded. More courage than me.
I’d never hesitated in battle, never avoided a fight. Never lied.
But when it came to Sage, those were the only things I’d done.
That’s not true, my mind whispered back. You laughed with her.
You told her things you’ve never told anyone.
Kissing her in the chapel had changed the way she thought of me, her trust, her
willingness to risk her life if I asked. But it also solidified my own unwillingness to
put her in danger, to use her as a spy. Everything was compromised now.
Muddled.
Sage sighed in her sleep, and I brushed my lips over her forehead, wishing I
could preserve this moment- her softness, her warmth, her trust—forever.
It was useless to pretend she didn’t matter to me.
She mattered more than anything.