Luscia bent to seize the weapon, traditionally used by children on Viridis, and vaulted herself at Kasim, bypassing him to slide behind and knock his legs out in one swing. As he fell to the mat, she seized the curved baton from his grasp, claiming the complete set of beginner wraiths.

“But you’re slower, heavier, and still unbalanced.” Luscia scoffed as he grimaced but returned to his position. “Your ears are indifferent. They haven’t listened to a thing I—”

A leather cord lashed her side, and she cried out at the unexpected pain. Taking advantage of her surprise, he tossed the feidierdanns aside and scrambled to the corner of the mat, grabbing the Boreali staff. Fearlessly, he ran toward her and, in midair, used both feet to kick her in the middle, launching Luscia across the room—a move he’d witnessed the day he spied on her and her five.

Aggravation spilled from her throat as Luscia rolled, reclaimed the batons, and made impact with the staff. He kept pace with her until she smashed a set of his fingers, though he refused to drop the weapon.

“You’re holding back,” he taunted. “Is the witchling too tired to play after a night under another yancy?”

“If you don’t hold your tongue, I might just cut it out!” She struck his thigh with one baton and the side of his head with the other, then stepped back to calm herself.

“I was taught y’siti never grew tired.” His eyes sparkled viciously as he blinked the pain aside. “Is it the heart or the lungs your mother eats after you’re born?”

Her jaw clamped shut, veins filling with fire. She cracked her neck and stepped away. “These lessons are over.”

When her boot met the stone, she turned her back to Kasim, eager to shake off his insults, but he only chuckled. It was a cruel sound, like that of his father when they’d met on her first night in the city.

“You’re getting flushed, you know. I hear Boreali flesh isn’t so corpselike when it’s flushed. They say it burns quite beautifully in the heat of passion. Uni, like a yaya between some yancy’s legs.”

Lusica froze. The horrific scar tissue on her neck throbbed as she thought about Ambrose and his body pressed against Mila. The pulsing changed to a scald as her mind flooded with images she’d ached to forget and a sensation she’d strived to wash away.

“Ah, is papyon what makes your kind come alive, little y’siti?” She heard Kasim’s poison over the rushing in her ears. “A pair of soft, Unitarian hands all over your b—”

Luscia screamed with a waking wrath that consumed her entire being. She spun in place, pulled her mother’s consort dagger from its sheath strapped across her thigh. Nearly jolted by an outbreak of light, she threw Ferocity along the threads of lumin, aiming straight for Kasim’s skull.

With a clatter, the dagger hit the wall and jangled against the floor. The threads shuddered at the sound and coiled in a makeshift fence surrounding them.

She tasted iron on her tongue when his fingers wiped blood away from a cut near his temple. To her shock and dismay, he grinned at the sight.

“There you are.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Zaethan

   He recoiled from the taste of the words as they leaked off his lips. While Zaethan suspected them to be true, each turned sour when his voice evolved, emulating someone he’d always known to be much colder and crueler than himself.

As the witch neared the door, Zaethan’s gaze burned a hole in her back. Suddenly his need for an advantage over Wekesa waned and submitted under the weight of Dmitri’s disbelief in Zaethan’s claims; the ache of his dismissal six years ago, and ever since.

The recent night on the docks had reminded his pryde of her true nature. Zaethan wasn’t operating on absurdity, and in that moment, he resolved once and for all to make her prove it. Trapped in this wretched city, he seemed to have lost every personal battle since her arrival.

And Zaethan Kasim was done losing.

“Ah, is papyon what makes your kind come alive, little y’siti?” He heard his tone drop low and callous like his father. Halting, her steely demeanor began to unwind at its sound, and her fingers twitched. “A pair of soft, Unitarian hands all over your b—”

Zaethan felt a braided loc rip from the side of his head before he ever saw her turn. An invisible charge filled the room. The witch faced him on the other side of the mat near the door but, impossibly, it felt as if they were only feet apart. A chill coursed through his limbs at the terror before him.

The past resurrecting, the witch’s eyes blazed unnaturally. Zaethan’s heart skipped wildly when her lashes shuddered, increasing their glow. Her hair, ghostly and unpigmented, wafted around her small frame.

This. Zaethan’s stomach tightened. This is y’siti.

A breeze passed over the tingling wound across his temple. He absently touched the wetness, disturbed by a static shock when he pulled away. Zaethan rubbed the blood between his fingertips.

“There you are,” he said, grinning broadly. Vindication soothed the sting in his flesh.

The y’siti crouched low and roared. It was an unearthly sound, almost animalistic as it harmonized with itself. Springing from her position, she sprinted across the mat, seizing the whip he’d discarded moments prior. Like a tidal wave, she flipped forward and twisted in the space. The tail of the whip slashed violently through the air and snaked around Zaethan’s neck. He had only a moment to clutch the northern staff within reach.

Gagged by the leather cable around his windpipe, Zaethan jerked the staff with him as he was pulled to the center of the mat and angled it, connecting with her jaw. He heard a satisfying crack at the impact. Breathless, he yanked the cord away, imagining the mark he’d left on her, but his victory was short-lived. Without hesitation, the y’siti stole the staff and used it to vault the distance to her dagger against the wall. She moved too quickly, practically in a blur, and Zaethan scolded himself for not taking his own advice to Kumo.

“Even as a cub, you were a y’siti demon,” Zaethan choked out, voice hoarse. “You just,” he stretched for the grip of the whip, “hide it better now.”

She ran from the wall to seize a curved baton with her open hand, dropping low before flipping to strike it down upon his back just as he struggled to his feet. Zaethan’s chin smashed into the mat. Turning over, he let the whip fly. A thrill of dominance rippled through his arm as he wrenched it back when it licked her ankle, causing the witch to tumble to the floor.

They both rose to circle each other defensively. She rotated the baton in her grasp, eerily mirroring the silhouette of the witchiron dagger in her opposite. A chunk of his loc still hung from the blade. Without warning, she spun. Zaethan ducked away, but not before the baton bruised his rib. In the same motion, her dagger skimmed his upper arm. Warm blood dripped on the mat.