Heir of the Gods

Ch. 26: Words Unspoken

Cassia parried, then parried again. An opening. Lunged. Danced backwards with a hiss. Vestarin gave her a slash of a grin as he battered at her left side. She twisted and blocked and dove under strike after strike.

Clang!

Breathing hard, Cassia glared at the sword resting once more on the ground. 

Vestarin backed away, running a hand through his hair. "You last longer—your stamina has grown. But you expose your left every time you begin to tire."

This she knew, but all she did was nod. It wasn't Vestarin's fault that she continued to make the same mistakes, lesson after lesson. Of which there had been many since the general had left.

With a sigh, she bent to retrieve the sword.

She winced as the torn blisters on her palm burned against the metal and straightened reluctantly. 

Vestarin had told her she was pushing too hard. She had retorted that time was too short to worry about things like soft hands.

Cassia had taken to wearing gowns with long, heavy sleeves that covered her hands as much as possible. Eating and writing had become exercises in the control of pain.

Time grew short indeed.

The past nearly two months had been nothing short of dreadful. 

Cairna—a celebration paying respects to the four underworld gods near the end of the year—was creeping steadily closer, and with it the possibility that she'd never see the general again.

A thought that was far more dreadful than she should allow it to be. 

Her mother continued to fuss over every suitor she turned down. Her father had become nearly insufferable as the end of the year approached. Weekly arguments had turned to almost daily discussions that inevitably devolved into shouted tirades that left her fuming the rest of the day.

Those days were perhaps the reason she practiced so hard with Vestarin that the skin of her hands tore and she was left aching and exhausted.

With gritted teeth she raised her sword, but Vestarin didn't follow suit. Instead, he let out a long sigh, watching the tip of Cassia's sword tremble and sway. 

His coal-black eyes lifted to hers as he stepped back. "That's enough for today, Princess."

Cassia considered arguing, but her muscles were crying for relief. They'd been here for at least an hour before sunrise, like they had nearly every day for the past three weeks since Julianus had left. 

She honestly didn't know where Vestarin got his vast reserve of patience. 

Never once had he snapped at her—he'd barely even looked irritated—no matter how foul her mood was. No matter that she had knocked on his door no less than thirteen times in the past month just to blush when he politely asked if she would wait in the adjoining hall as he dismissed that night's company. 

With a sigh of defeat, Cassia let him take the practice sword. His eyes glanced over her hands, but he didn't say anything. Didn't offer to clean or wrap them, and for that she was grateful.

He never did anything like that. Vestarin was a patient teacher and more than competent, but he never stepped beyond that sphere. He was friendly, but had never tried to be her friend. Cassia had never asked if that was for her benefit, or simply because of his loyalty to Julianus.

The reasoning hardly mattered. He kept his distance and she tried—often in vain—to keep from comparing him to the general.

Her mood instantly darkened again. More than her mother's disappointment, more than her father's temper, he was the reason these months had been so terrible.