Page 131 of To Scale the Emerald Mountain

The beautiful gift only temporarily tamed my anger with Alec for dragging me back here last night. My anger with him over learning about his previous engagement and trysts. My overall anger.

I’m just fucking angry.

Alec circles me slowly, raising his sword. “I have not had the pleasure of moving with you in some time. Indulge me.”

My face heats, but I smile cruelly at him, accepting his challenge. He returns it with a dark smirk that makes my insides clench.

Alec lunges, striking quickly in three swift swipes that I just manage to block.

The power of his blows rings through my arms, vibrating my bones. His demeanor is calm and cool, fueling my mounting rage.

“Come on, Elly. You can do better than that. Give me your fight.”

I strike hard, spinning and swinging my staff, but he meets me strike for strike.

The pitch sings with the deafening clang of metal on metal.

Lunging hard, I aim to jab him in the gut with the emerald, letting my emotions fuel my movements. Before I can make contact, his sword hooks into the nest of thorns, and he pivots his blade, effectively disarming me.

Alec cracks his neck—the sound and arrogant motion causing me to tremble with outrage.

He takes position again, holding the hilt of his sword in his left hand with a haughty expression across his face. It’s not lost on me that he has been fighting me one handed with ease, keeping the other pinned behind his back. The cockiness of his talent sends another shockwave of fiery heat through me.

“You’re not left-handed,” I sneer at him.

Alec offers a wide, pompous smile. “No, I am not.”

He takes a defensive stance and quirks a brow at me, challenging me to pick up my weapon and begin again.

I take the bait and snatch my staff off the pitch floor before quickly changing directions.

Rolling on the ground, I pop up swiftly behind him.

I swing my staff around hard, the edge of my spear connecting with his back with a resounding thud. I swipe, cutting a gruesome path across his shoulders.

Alec hisses before turning to me, his face stretched with a wild smile. “Yes, Ellya. Give me your pain.”

I roar and lunge for him again. Our fighting becomes faster, harder, more brutal.

The sounds of my grunts and groans echo around us as my poisonous bitterness courses through me.

“I don’t want to give you my pain,” I spit at him through our crossed weapons when he catches me on a block.

Alec pushes closer towards me, metal sliding against metal grating my ears. My staff lingers inches from my face; my arms shake with the effort to keep him back, knowing that he is barely giving me a hint of his strength.

“Perhaps I need to give you mine,” he grits through his teeth, his brown eyes holding fathomless fire.

Alec’s honesty takes me off guard. In the fraction of a second that I falter he comes up behind me and has his sword to my throat—the edge barely a cold breath against my delicate skin.

“Fight harder,” he hisses in my ear.

I scream and slam the end of my staff to the ground.

A deafening boom echoes across the sky on a whipping gust of wind that nearly knocks me off my feet, reverberating for miles. Alec’s arm around my waist tightens, holding me up.

Crackling golden-green spiderwebs of light extend from the crater I made at our feet.

Lights shimmer ethereally as they speed towards an outer wall of the pitch. When my power reaches the wall, it gathers into a solitary beam, electricity shooting through the thick bricks before a ring of green fire erupts from the center—devouring everything in a ten-foot radius.