Crescent (Book 1)

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Sleep calls for me. It calls, unanswered, and leaves me with bags under my eyes so dark they might as well be drawn on. My reflection in the small sliver of my blade distracts me long enough that Saren's blade slices cleanly across my shoulder as I fail to dodge her attack.

Saren smiles as she pulls back, brandishing her blade. "Are you going to keep looking at your reflection or are you going to stand up straight and fight?"

"I- I can't anymore."

Her blade hurtles toward me, and I narrowly avoid being impaled by dropping to my knees. Her blade embeds in the trunk of a tree behind me, and her boots crunch in the snow as she strolls past me to wedge it out of the wood. I stand again- or try to. My knees collapse, legs aching from standing in the same contracted positions for hours now. My head spins, the result of another breakfast I've thrown up.

"Stand up," she instructs. I shake my head, no. Blood drips down my arms in tendrils, and Saren's blade is red from each cut. The wound on my shoulder hasn't even begun to heal. Every breath is an effort. Blinking is a chore. The blades feel like weights in my hands, and my arms are jelly. "Stand up and fight. Or else you'll be the target next round."

I laugh, but the sound dies off somewhere between my chest and my mouth. Instead, I choke over the words: "Am I not now?"

"Do you think an assailant will stop because you're tired? You think they'll show you mercy?"

My head drops to my chest in defeat. Without any sleep the past few nights, this day seems more and more like a battle. One I'm not able to fight. "I'll be dead anyways."

Saren's hands drop. She's shown me all different numbers of defensive positions to get the most force, the best angles. They all involve my core and require a stamina I've yet to build. The first few days, I learned the best grips for different kinds of blades. I learned which blades were best for throwing, cutting, sawing, fileting flesh from bone. More than my dad ever taught me. A blessing and a goddamn curse.

"If someone attacked you, you'd just give up?"

"It's like you said," I rub the base of my temples, hoping the aching in my skull subsides. I want to glare at her. I want to flash her every obnoxious gesture that flashes in my head, but my body gives way, and I'm content to let the snow numb my muscles. "Other lords and ladies have been training for this since birth. What chance do I really have if it comes down to it?"

She lodges her blade in the snow, picking up discarded daggers and various sheaths from where we tossed them. "That's why we train."

My eyes drift to the barren trees overhead. The light from the moon peers out from behind the gray clouds, dancing with the shadows around us. Piles of snow are snug against tree branches, and blue flakes of snow dance ever so slowly in the easy wind. It would be beautiful if everything weren't dead. The only signs of life are the nests of snow birds burrowed in the trunks of a few birches. Even they look long-abandoned. "You think any of this really matters?" I wonder aloud.

Saren scoffs, disdain clear in her voice as she pulls her hair out of the neat plait she'd braided it into. "This, here, right now... This could be the difference between life and death one day. So, yes. I'd like to think that my time, and your own, matter."

I've offended her. I will myself to sit up, to look at her and apologize. But, she looks at me like we both know that's not going to happen. At least, not without help. She offers a hand with a sigh, and I take it gratefully. My legs wobble under my weight. "I just don't... think I'm strong enough to do this."

Her eyes are the brightest blue in stark comparison to the paleness of her skin. She shakes my hand off, shoving the sheaths against my chest and holding them there. "If we don't do the things we think we can't, what would be the point of learning anything at all?" My eyes follow after her as she turns on her heel toward the castle. She calls back to me. "If you don't get sleep tonight, you'll be right. You'll die just as quickly as the rest of them."