a sun that never sets

CHAPTER SIX | DO YOU FEEL LIKE A YOUNG GOD?

DUELLING BEGAN ONCE more as we were all summoned by Coach to the sports hall after school. Cait, Theo, Christian, Adelina and I all clumped up together, though I graciously shared few words with Theo and mainly chatted away with the girls. Adelina was the only one among us who admitted to having trained over the summer, which was expected. Her entire family was filled with duellists. Of course she'd have trained.

Coach Penderson crossed his arms as he studied us. "I hope you haven't forgotten everything I'd taught you last year."

Christian said, with clear sarcasm in his voice, "We dare not, Coach. We'd never do such a thing."

Coach snorted. "Yeah, sure. Get stretching, then, and show me what you've retained over the holidays. It better be a lot."

Caitlyn and I exchanged a glance, but neither of us said anything as we began with our stretching and warm-up routine. It was relatively simple, nothing that really tired anyone out.

So we got over that quickly, and Coach began to work on our technique. I was paired with Adelina, and we were instructed to predict each other's footing and respond to it immediately. It was one of those things that few people actually managed to adapt into actual combat, but it somehow helped.

"Oh, fuck off," I growled as Adelina managed to feint left before darting right again. "How do you keep doing this?"

Adelina smirked. "I'm just better, what else can I say?"

I glared at her. She grinned back like a goddamned Cheshire Cat. With a roll of my eyes, I said, "Let's try that again."

"Alright, if you say so."

Five seconds later, she'd managed to dupe me again. But by now I was starting to get numb to it, so we simply continued again and again and again until I finally managed to predict her a couple times—she had a tell, I finally decided. Whichever side she was planning to duck to, her hand gave a little twitch. Once I noticed that, I could tell where she was going to go.

I was a bit harder to guess for Adelina. Problem was that she was far faster than me, and even when I could dupe her, she could quickly adjust so that I had no openings. But I was still managing to get her, which was all Coach cared about anyways.

I only had a single match against Christian that session. I lost, but it was far closer than I'd ever thought it'd be. Coach called us all together again at the end of the session, and said, "I'm considering recruiting two or three more people into the Club."

I snapped up. "Audrey. Audrey Chan. She's really good, you should definitely bring her in."

Cait raised her hand. "Tom Wyatt is actually really good too, he's just always too lazy during class to showcase his full ability."

"Not Tom Wyatt," Coach said with a shake of his head. "Like you said, too lazy. And he never takes anything seriously. It won't work."

"You could try...?"

"I'd prefer not to take any risks."

Coach wasn't much of a risk taker anyways. I'd noticed that. Which was why it still surprised me that he'd picked me out of a sea of people who were more or less my skill level, or even better. It showed how much he trusted Adelina. Or maybe I was here as Adelina's emotional support baggage, since I assumed Adelina's brothers would have told Coach about how competitive she was.

But that just seemed like a waste of space all around. So I assumed I had at least something to recommend myself with, and putting that with Adelina's support, Coach had decided I was the person to go with last year. It made sense.