Sweat trickled down Ivy’s back, making the thin cotton shirt stick to her skin. Autumn in Iceland was colder than she had expected, and relentlessly dark. Blink and you miss the sunlight, Echo had said. But here, in this room, there was nothing but the overbearing heat of the fire and the foreign weight of the blade in Ivy’s hand. She tightened her grip on the hilt and stared down the blade at Helios’s grinning face. A stray feather escaped from the loose ponytail she had put her hair-feathers into, but she wouldn’t risk bringing her free hand up to push it from her forehead. One wrong move and Helios would exploit the distraction and bring her down. She would not let him disarm her. Not again.
His grin turned feral and he leaped at her. His movements were so quick, so efficient – not a single one was telegraphed. He was in one place and then, all of a sudden, he was someplace else. Ivy barely had time to react. She pivoted on the balls of her feet, keeping her weight light, remembering everything Helios had taught her about balance. A hand shot out to grab the wrist of her knife hand, but she twisted away just in time. Fingers brushed against her skin without finding purchase. She basked in a brief moment of elation before realizing the move hadn’t been an honest attempt at disarming her. It was a feint.
Her back collided with a broad chest as arms came up to encircle her, pinning both her arms to her sides. She still had a firm grasp on the knife, but it was useless. She fought against the hold, but she might as well have been trying to break free from a cage of solid steel, for all Helios budged. Warm breath ghosted over her ear as he chuckled, low and dangerous, his chest rumbling with laughter.
“Got you,” he said. “Again.”
Ivy spat a curse in the most wicked Avicet she knew. It didn’t have a direct English translation, it was so vile. Helios laughed again. “Such language,” he said. “Wouldn’t have expected something so filthy from the mouth of a dove.”
That’s it.
Ivy slammed her heel down on his instep. His arms loosened but didn’t release her. It was just enough slack for her to maneuver one arm forward and drive her elbow, with all the force as she could muster, into his solar plexus. She felt as much as heard the air rush out of Helios. In the fraction of a second it took for him to recover, Ivy had dropped down, knees bent, and slipped out of the prison of his arms.
Momentum propelled her around to face him. She rose, the knife in her hand pointing up, up, up until she felt the tip of it press against his sternum. One good hard push would plunge it through his flesh and into a vital organ.
Helios stilled. They stood frozen like that, the only movement the rise and fall of their chests. His golden eyes locked on Ivy’s, warm with pride.
“Very good,” he said. “You could have killed me had you wanted to.”
Ivy kept her blade pressed to his sternum. It took some effort to keep her voice as free of strain as his; he was a trained fighter and in much better shape than she was. “You goaded me on purpose, didn’t you?”
His smile widened. “Maybe.” He raised his eyebrows and dropped his gaze to the hand holding the knife. “Do you plan to eviscerate me?”
“Not today.” Ivy lowered the weapon and took two very deliberate steps back. She felt more confident in her footing than she had the day before. It was progress, certainly, but though she was loath to admit it, she knew there was no way she had bested a Firedrake in fair combat. “You let me win.”
“I did no such thing,” Helios said. With a flick of his wrist, he pushed the hair off his forehead. He’d barely broken a sweat. Ivy tried not to hate him for it.
She gave him her best dubious glare.
His expression turned momentarily bashful. “All right, I may have gone a little easy on you.”
“I’m never going to learn how to defend myself if you don’t take this seriously.”
“I do.” He held out one hand and, after a brief staring contest, Ivy placed the knife in his upturned palm hilt-first. It disappeared into the sheath on his belt with practiced ease. “But you also wouldn’t learn if I trounced you every time. You need to know what it feels like to succeed.” Helios winked at her, and despite her annoyance, it sent her heart aflutter. “Even if I have to help you along sometimes.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment,” Ivy said, “but is that really the best way to impart your wisdom? Cheating?”
“It isn’t cheating. I’m teaching you a valuable skill. I’m not trying to break your spirit.”
Ivy remained unconvinced. It must have shown on her face – which was probably an embarrassing shade of red from exertion – because Helios’s expression softened. He toyed with the chain at his neck as if it was bothering him. Maybe sweat was making it chafe. “Do you trust me?” he asked.
Her answer came without a pause. “Of course I do.”
“Then accept that I know what I’m doing. You’re not the first person I’ve trained. I used to work with fresh recruits, and trust me, you’re a far better pupil than a great many of them.” He offered her his hand just as he did at the end of every lesson. “Good fight.”
His skin was unbelievably warm against her own. Echo had mentioned that increased body heat was a Drakharin thing – a biological quirk, nothing more – but the heat of Helios’s hand in Ivy’s made her cheeks flush. Hopefully, the blush blended with the exercise-induced one already staining her skin. She had logged several shameful defeats during their lesson – excepting her most recent, assisted victory – and quite frankly, she didn’t need any more humiliation in her life.
“Thanks.” Ivy extricated her hand from his and made her way to the corner of the room, where she’d left two water bottles. She handed one to Helios and downed the other in short order. The camp had no electric light, so they relied strictly on lanterns and fireplaces for illumination. It would have been cozy if she hadn’t spent the past hour sweating her brains out.
She caught her breath while she watched Helios carefully put away the weapons they’d been using. In the absence of proper training equipment, he’d gone straight for the real deal. There were no blunted tips on the swords and knives available at the camp. They had to travel light, and that meant bringing only what was essential. Practice weapons didn’t make the cut. At first, Ivy had been wary of handling a blade sharp enough to kill, but she soon realized the only way she would ever land a fatal blow on Helios was if he let her.
“Thanks,” she said when he’d finished tidying up. There was a small stack of steel blades in one corner. The room had been designated as a training area, but Ivy hadn’t seen anyone use it besides Helios and herself. She probably needed more practice than anyone. Avicen healers rarely fought. While they would wade into battle alongside their warrior counterparts, they carried no weapons, only the tools of their vocation. Some had rudimentary combat training, but most eschewed such things in favor of pursuing further knowledge of their craft. Ivy had never truly entertained the idea of learning to fight – not until she knew what it felt like to be helpless. She didn’t relish the thought of feeling that way again. Ivy didn’t know what awaited them at the location of the next seal on the map. It could be nothing. It could be a very dangerous something. All she knew was that if someone wanted to hurt her, she would make them earn it.
“It’s no trouble.” Helios raked a hand through his black hair. He didn’t appear to be as out of breath as Ivy, but she enjoyed the fact that she’d managed to make him look at least a little disheveled. “Training you is the least I can do. I have much to make up for, after all.”
Ivy went to take another sip from her water bottle before remembering she’d finished it. Helios offered her his. She accepted it. “Thanks,” she said. “But what do you mean, you’ve got a lot to make up for?”
An inscrutable look flickered across his face. “I pledged my loyalty to Tanith, even though I knew what she was capable of. The Dragon Prince – Caius – wasn’t always popular with the nobility, but I knew why they elected him. He’s a good man. Tanith … well, no one ever said anything like that about Tanith. And still, I followed her.”
Ivy reached for him without thinking. Touching while sparring was one thing. Casual touch was something else altogether. Helios’s gaze bounced from the hand she’d placed on his arm to her face. Whatever he saw in her expression made him smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “But you’re here now,” Ivy said. “Whatever you did before – whatever you were before – none of that matters. Your past doesn’t define you.”
“If only that were true,” he said sadly. “Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment.” He smiled again as he delivered her own words back to her. “It’s just … being around people like Dorian and Caius has reminded me of what we should be, of what the Drakharin could be. For so long, we’ve prided ourselves on being strong and ruthless and vicious, and where has that gotten us? We live on an isolated patch of land in the middle of nowhere, and the ones not lucky enough to be granted residency at Wyvern’s Keep or any of our other strongholds live like rats scurrying away whenever humans get too close.”
“You’re starting to sound like Tanith,” said Ivy. She regretted it when Helios’s expression turned sour. “I didn’t mean —”
“No,” he interjected. “You’re right. A part of me – a very small part – understands her motivation, but I don’t agree with what she’s doing.” His brow furrowed. “It’s important to me that you know that.”
Ivy gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “I do. And it’s important to me that you know that you’re a good person, too. I don’t like watching my friends beat themselves up.”
Helios canted his head to the side, studying her. “Is that what we are? Friends?”
The question disarmed Ivy as effectively as Helios did during their lessons. Of course they were friends. They hadn’t known each other very long, but extraordinary circumstances such as theirs had a tendency to bring people together. When life-and-death situations trimmed the fat off one’s interactions, friendships had a way of forging themselves in the fire.
“Yes,” Ivy said with absolute certainty.
Helios huffed a little laugh. “Well then, I will try my utmost to be worthy of your friendship.”
Ivy started to draw back the hand that still rested on Helios’s arm, but he caught it with both of his own. His gaze dropped. Dark lashes fanned across his cheeks, a stark contrast to his pale skin. It was not quite as white as Ivy’s, which could be described without hyperbole as snowy, but almost human-pale. Even his scales were faint, practically invisible against his slightly flushed cheeks. Maybe she’d given him a better workout than she realized.
“It means more to me than you know,” Helios said, “that you offer someone like me your friendship so readily. Especially when I don’t deserve it.”
Ivy didn’t know where this bout of self-flagellation was coming from, but she’d heard enough. “Hey, you saved my life. If it hadn’t been for you, I never would have made it out of Wyvern’s Keep alive. Tanith would have burned me at the stake and roasted marshmallows on my smoking corpse.”
Helios grimaced. “Not a visual I needed.”
Ivy forged on. “I believe in you. Even if you don’t, I do.”
He didn’t look comforted, but a little lost, as if her words had unmoored him. With her free hand, Ivy reached up to cup his cheek. Her touch startled him out of his daze, and his eyes shot up to meet hers. Ivy didn’t remember stepping closer, into his space, but she must have. Helios breathed in deeply and his chest brushed hers ever so slightly.
“Why?” His voice was soft, the word more breath than sound.
Ivy shrugged. “I just do.”
He shook his head, covering her hand with one of his. “I never thought I’d meet someone like you.”
“And I never thought I’d have a Drakharin teaching me how to fight with knives.”
Helios smiled, his tongue darting out to lick his bottom lip. The fire dried out the air, chapping his lips in the process. Ivy was riveted by the sight. Her brain felt sluggish in a way that was not even remotely related to her physical fatigue.
They were so close. Close enough to kiss.
Ivy had never kissed a boy before. Or a girl. Well, Echo, once, but that was more of a peck, and it was during a game of spin the bottle, so she wasn’t sure that really counted.
Helios was looking at her lips. Perhaps he had noticed her looking at his and was reacting accordingly. Perhaps she had something on her face and he was looking at that. A dozen possibilities to explain the way he was gazing at Ivy flurried through her mind.
Maybe he wanted to kiss her. Maybe this was a good moment. Maybe the more she stood there, silent and still, the further away the moment got. Ivy knew, distantly, that something in her brain had short-circuited.
“We shouldn’t,” Helios said, making absolutely no attempt to move away. Ivy’s heart didn’t plummet, it only sank a little.
“Yeah,” she agreed, not meaning it at all. “Probably not.”
With painful slowness, Helios began extricating himself from her. She tightened her grip on his hand as she spoke. “Except …”
“Yes?”
“We could die tomorrow.”
He nodded. “Very true.”
Ivy swallowed. Her throat was very dry. As if she hadn’t just drunk one and a half bottles of water. “Please.”
Another nod. “As you wish.”
Helios inclined his head as Ivy rose up on her toes. He brought their clasped hands up between them so that he was supporting her weight against his chest. When his lips brushed hers, she thought she might explode in a fury of feathers and flame.
Ivy had always wondered what the big deal was. Now she knew.
Kissing Helios was nothing like what she had imagined. And, oh, how she had imagined it. It wasn’t passionate and demanding, as it had been in her fantasies. It was sweet. And soft. And she never, ever wanted it to stop.
His hands came to rest on her hips, tentatively, as if unsure of their welcome. She took a tiny step forward, closing the already slim distance between their bodies. Helios was warm, like the comforting heat of a roaring fire.
Ivy didn’t know what to do with her hands. They fluttered at her sides before moving of their own accord, first to skim the fine bones of Helios’s wrists, then over the corded muscles of his forearms, around the curves of his elbows. Her hands paused on the swell of his biceps. That was a fine place to leave them.
His mouth slid away from hers. He placed a light kiss against the corner of her lips, then another one on her cheek, right below her eye. When she blinked, she could feel her eyelashes brushing against his skin. She had never been more aware of her body than at that moment.
Teeth scraped her bottom lip, and all rational thought fled.
Far too soon, Helios pulled away, his golden eyes glazed over.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” Ivy replied, blinking away her stupor.
So that was what all the fuss was about.
He smiled, and it was such a lovely smile Ivy wanted to smack it off his face. No one should smile like that. It should be illegal.
“I’m going to go find a shower,” he said.
Oh. That wasn’t a visual she was going to complain about. Ever.
She watched him leave, her heart drumming an irregular beat inside her chest. She was finally beginning to understand why people got so stupid around people they liked. Wiping the sweat from her brow, she left the room, pointedly choosing the opposite direction from the one Helios had taken. If she followed him, she couldn’t trust what she might do. If they lived through this, there would be time enough for that nonsense. If they lived through this. It was a sobering thought, but not even the notion that death might find them tomorrow was enough to dispel the effervescent cloud of joy that enveloped Ivy all the way to her room.