Page 34 of Fate’s Sweetest Curse (Mirrors of Fate #2)

Dangers Be Damned

Hattie

A blade swung at my head, sunlight glinting on steel. I twisted sideways, feeling a whoosh of air as the sword’s tip passed by my ear. I raised my own sword, blocking the second attempted blow. The strike jolted up through my weapon and into my arm in a way that made my teeth chatter.

“Remember your core,” Oderin said, lowering his practice blade and stepping back. “You’re still absorbing the strikes with your arms instead of your torso. You’re not bracing enough.”

When I’d asked Phina to ask her brother about sparring lessons, I hadn’t expected the Major Knight of the Order of the Mighty to train me himself —I’d thought he’d introduce me to a subordinate with some free time or allow me to attend training with new recruits.

But apparently, Phina had told Oderin about my friendship with Anya and Idris.

“Any friend of Idris’s is a friend of mine,” Oderin had told me when we met in the Castle Might training yard on our first day.

“Seeing as he fell in love with my best friend, I’d say Idris is a solid judge of character,” I’d replied.

“I said he was my friend , I didn’t say he liked my character ,” Oderin had joked, and so our regular sparring sessions had begun.

That was two weeks ago, and now, my entire body hurt .

I was no stranger to sword wielding. When I was a girl, self-defense and weapon training had been mandatory among all the children at Castle Wynhaim—a long-standing tradition that had begun out of necessity during Wynhaim City’s war-torn beginning and had endured as a hypothetically practical custom.

I had never been good with a blade, mostly because I hadn’t cared about the skill back then, but under Oderin’s patient tutelage, I’d come to look forward to our sessions in the training yard.

I still had a long way to go before I was capable enough to defend myself, but the sore muscles and whole-body exhaustion had helped me get over my insomnia in the nights following Viren’s stabbing.

Oderin reset his stance and lifted his training sword. I mirrored his pose, crossing my dull blade with his. Together, we recited the words of the Order of the Mighty—a phrase I’d heard Noble and his father utter to one another when they sparred: “Fate, Fortune, Death.”

We began again. Me, clumsily striking and blocking; Oderin, matching my turtle-pace with a patient smile on his face. Occasionally, he made a suggestion about my body’s positioning—my hips, my core, my elbows.

It was midday, the sun intense on my brow; sweat beaded along my hairline, pooled inside my sleeveless tunic, chafed in the waistband of my trousers.

But because I spent the rest of my days pouring over books that detailed complex concepts about disturbing subject matter, it felt good to move and sweat in the sunshine.

The stretch and flex of my muscles reminded me that I was more than a brain absorbing information like a bar rag; I was a body, fluid and powerful.

Or at least, I was getting there.

“Good,” Oderin said, wiping his brow with his rolled-up sleeve. He was wearing a loose-fitting white shirt and tight-fitting black trousers, his skin and hair so golden he seemed to glow. “Let’s end the session with a speed sequence, shall we? ”

That’s when we performed a combination of moves together on repeat, practicing accuracy and quickness until I collapsed. He’d phrased it like a question, but this was how Oderin liked to end all his sparring sessions.

My arms and legs were already shaking from the exertion of the past hour, but over the past couple weeks, I had begun to crave this kind of punishment.

For every tremor of exhaustion, I could feel my body becoming stronger.

I could already jog twice as long during our warm-ups than I had when we’d started.

“Yes?” the Mighty Knight prompted.

“Yes,” I agreed.

After Oderin relayed the combination of moves, we reset our stances, said the words, and began again.

Lunge, high strike, block, duck, low strike, evade—and repeat.

I performed the sequence slowly at first, finding my rhythm; Oderin matched my moves with his own counters, blocking when I struck, swinging when I was supposed to duck.

Then we picked up speed, flowing through our deadly dance.

Fighting with Oderin reminded me of watching Noble spar with his father.

I’d hated hearing the way Kalden shouted at him and had done my best to avoid the training yard.

But now, as I moved through my own blocks and strikes, I found myself imaging Noble’s dark features before me instead of Oderin’s.

Black hair instead of gold. Lean muscle instead of bulk.

Once, a few months after we’d turned eighteen, I’d happened upon Noble training alone.

I’d been on my way to the gardens with a handled basket hooked over one arm and had paused on the balcony overlooking the dusty yard.

I had been immobilized by the sight of him.

Shirtless in the muggy midsummer morning.

His rich skin sweat-slicked and glistening.

He’d been repeating rounds of sprints and strength training, racing across the yard, only to halt and burst through a set of sit-ups, push-ups, or lunges .

I was no stranger to Noble’s body—I had watched it grow from weedy prepubescence to sturdy new adulthood—but most of my interactions with him were reading together, walking alongside one another, the occasional summer swim. I rarely saw him move like that. Graceful, decisive brawn. Pure vigor.

“Faster!” Oderin encouraged, startling me back into the present.

But with the distraction of memory, I’d lost track of where we were in our sequence.

I lunged—realizing in the midst of pitching my body forward that I had been supposed to duck.

The mistake put my torso directly in line with Oderin’s swing.

His dull sword collided with the cap of my shoulder, and I went down, landing hard.

Dust swirled and settled. The taste of stone and ash coated my tongue. Pain pulsed where I’d been struck, radiating down through my arm and up into my neck, making me wince.

Oderin dropped his sword with a clatter and sank to his knees in the dirt beside me, placing a strong hand on my leg—a respectable, comforting touch. “ Fates , are you alright?”

I sat up with a groan. An angry red line was already forming on my shoulder, tingling with hurt, but otherwise: “Fine, I think,” I said.

“Dizzy?”

I shook my head and was relieved when the movement didn’t send my equilibrium spinning.

“Do you remember your name?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not your name.”

I rolled my eyes.

“You’re cogent enough to be irritated by me, so you must be alright.” Oderin rose to his feet and held out a hand.

I grasped his forearm, allowing him to haul me up. I swayed a little, but the moment passed quickly. Letting go of Oderin, I dusted off my trousers. Pain lanced through my upper arm, but the ache was dull and tolerable.

“I think we’re done for the day,” Oderin declared.

I chuckled. “And here I thought you were going easy on me.”

His obscenely plush mouth pulled into a rather haughty smirk. “I was.”

I placed a hand on his chest and shoved, laughing.

He laughed too, but sobered when his eyes snagged on where he’d struck me. “I am terribly sorry, Hattie. I saw you were changing the sequence but didn’t adjust in time.”

“I would’ve expected more control from a Mighty Knight,” I teased, walking with him over to a refreshment table.

He poured two cups of water and handed one to me. “Why do you think I opted to train with you? I need the practice, myself.”

I tilted the cup to my lips, drinking the water in three thirsty gulps. It tasted of mountain snow and granite—refreshing. When I’d first moved to Fenrir, I’d been surprised by how much better the water tasted. “Is that so?”

“It’s the curse of a high-raking knight,” Oderin said, raking his hair back with his fingers. “I spend most of my days either at a desk or ordering people around.”

“Sounds dreadful,” I deadpanned.

Oderin’s features scrunched in a sassy pout. “It really is.”

I set down my cup. “I think you just wanted to train with someone against whom you were guaranteed to win,” I joked. “It’s shameful, really, knocking down small and bookish apprentices just to feel superior.”

“ Fates , and I thought Anya was mouthy,” Oderin said on a chuckle.

Together we walked over to a patch of lawn at the opposite end of the yard, where we liked to do our cool-down stretches. Sitting cross-legged in the grass, I started with a few spinal twists, keeping my movements slow .

When I glanced over at Oderin again, he was watching me—clearly waiting to see if I grew woozy. “Still fine,” I assured him.

“Phina will never let me hear the end of it, injuring one of her researchers like this.”

I chuckled at the image of Phina—petite, but strong-willed—standing up to her hulking Mighty Knight of a brother. “Are you two close?”

“We are now,” Oderin said. “When we were children, however…” He trailed off, snorted, shook his head. “We were in constant battle. It was ugly.”

I extended one leg and leaned forward, relishing the deep stretch in my hamstring. “What changed?”

“We aged,” Oderin said with a shrug. “Took on more responsibilities. Got serious about our respective Orders. My friendship with Idris mellowed me, too.”

“ This is you mellow?”

“You should’ve seen me in my early twenties. I was unstoppable .”

I giggled and switched my position, stretching the other leg. “You know, Idris didn’t mention how funny you are.”

“Didn’t he?”

I shook my head.

“What did Idris say?”

“He said you were soft.”

Oderin’s laugh was immediate, harsh, and loud. “Of course, he did.”