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“I found an amphitheater.” Alaric didn’t look at her as he went over to his pack and rummaged through it for his gauntlets. “Let’s spar.”

The amphitheater was a perfect circle sunk into a stretch of overgrown wild grass, its sloping walls composed of sandstone steps and hundreds of carved seats. The floor at the bottom was covered in deep gouges, the remnants of Lightweaver duels past.

Amidst the marks of old battles, they faced each other from across a distance. Talasyn seemed a little tentative, a littleuncertain, fidgeting with the brown leather gloves and arm wraps that she’d donned for this session.

“I haven’t sparred in months,” she went on to explain. “Not since—that day.”

The day Sardovia fell.

She didn’t say it out loud. She didn’t need to. The unspoken weight of it darkened the air, another dose of reality piercing Alaric’s sun-drenched bubble just as much as his father’s summons had.

“Then it is all the more imperative that we do this,” he said, before the atmosphere could gettootense and accusing. “Sharpening old skills might allow you to tap into new ones. We’ve already tried everything else.”

Talasyn blew out a breath. She rolled her graceful neck and stretched her slender arms, a spark of that old familiar annoyance with him lurking behind freckled features that were making a valiant attempt to remain neutral.

It’s for the best,Alaric thought. She could channel those emotions into their duel, maybe even successfully shield because of it. This was all working out according to plan.

What Alaric hadn’t planned on was Talasyn shucking off her tunic, revealing her breastband and the upper half of thoseinfernaltight breeches. His gaze flickered over the hard plane of her bare midriff and the slight flare of her hips and all that lustrous olive skin, slicked with the beginnings of sweat in the merciless sunlight.

He was well aware that she only meant to move more freely in the tropical heat.

But there was a part of him that couldn’t help but think that she was tormenting him on purpose.

He opened the Shadowgate, shaping it into a curved sword in one gauntleted hand, a shield in the other. She spun her usual two daggers with a glare thatdaredhim to say something about it.

“You’re free to do whatever you wish, but at least try to transmute that”—he gestured at the blade in her left hand—“into a shield when you can. And keep it up. Now, since ithasbeen a while, shall I go easy on you, Your Grace?”

He’d added that last part for no reason other than to make her mad, and he would have felt vaguely ashamed of himself if she hadn’t risen to his challenge, sweeping her right foot back, arcing one dagger over her head and lifting the other in front of her, one side crackling toward him with lethal promise.

“Have at it, old man,” she spat.

He fought back a grin.

They lunged at the same time, Alaric swinging his sword to meet Talasyn’s dagger as she brought it down in an overhead strike. She turned on her left heel and he sprang away just in time to avoid her right leg smashing into his ribs, countering with a thrust that she blocked with her other dagger.

“Bit rusty,” he quipped, meeting her gaze through the sheen of light and shadow.

“Yes, you are,” she loftily agreed without missing a beat. She used their blade-lock as leverage to launch away and then assaulted him with a barrage of strikes so quick and ferocious that he was soon left with no other option but to shove her from him with a shapeless blast of shadow magic.

She skidded backwards several feet.

“You could have fended that off with a shield,” he smugly informed her.

“Noted,” she said through clenched teeth, before charging at him once more.

For Alaric, it was a beautiful, terrible thing, he and Talasyn dancing around each other and meeting in the middle, again and again and again, fiery little charges of static exploding between them every time their bodies brushed. His veins were alight with a wild exhilaration that he saw mirrored on herface beneath the brilliant sun of afternoon. They anticipated each other’s every move and they pushed each other to the limit, the ancient amphitheater reverberating with the roar of magic, the raw power that came bursting in from aetherspace.

Now he understood why she fought as she did—after the life she’d had. In his mind’s eye she was a child, scrappy and defiant, stealing out the door with a kitchen knife under her threadbare coat that offered poor protection from the howling ice-winds of the Great Steppe. Here and now, amidst the ruins, she was a war goddess, moving to the beat of a primal hymn.

You’re just like me,Alaric thought, uncertain whether the revelation soothed or unsettled him.We’re both hungry.

We both want to prove ourselves.

Talasyn felt happy.

No—happycouldn’t evenbeginto describe it. This wasecstasy, pure and unbridled, light screaming against shadow, her body falling into all the old forms as she was pitted against another aethermancer after so,solong.

At some point down the line, she and Alaric had abandoned chasing each other all over the amphitheater. Now they were fighting in close quarters, loath to separate, the combined heat from their magic within millimeters of singeing her skin. His gray eyes blazed silver and his smirk was wicked; he was taking a twisted delight in this, just as she was. She knew that she should at leastattemptto shield, but what if it faltered again and the shadows hurt her? And besides, there was some yawning abyss in her soul that insisted she could overpower him if she just moved a little faster, struck a little harder—