“Some words should not make sound.” She flexed her jaw, a bluish shadow creeping toward her lips. “And I am so tired of hearing that disgusting term.”

Zaethan backed up and nearly tripped over the staff. “It’s what you are.” He stomped on the end, flinging it into the air, and caught it with his left hand. “Do you deny it now?”

Raising the staff, he thwarted her attempts to strike him. He saw her swallow.

“I am not at all what you say, and yet so much more.”

She fell to her knees, slicing his calf.

Zaethan stumbled at the sear of the witchiron. He knew he’d feel its burn for days to come. She rotated to the side when he cracked the whip, barely missing her with its tail. He moved forward, but she flipped out of range.

“Maybe,” Zaethan tested, inching closer as she skirted around the mat. “But like all men, even a witch has a weakness. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

He’d picked up on her routine deflection during that last week of their morning trainings. The witch always seemed to avoid close combat, likely due to her small stature—coming body-to-body in a fight with a larger, physically stronger opponent would almost always put her at a disadvantage.

Her thick brows furrowed as she matched his footsteps backward, maintaining the distance of her baton, like always. Timing his strike with her next step, Zaethan whirled the staff brazenly at her middle, imitating her own tactics. Falling to the mat, he heard a snap as her wrist bent the wrong way and the dagger dropped. Zaethan kicked the blade aside and hovered over her.

A cry escaped her lips when he stepped on her injured wrist. He felt the disfigurement of the bone through the soles of his bare foot. Zaethan trapped her free arm with the other.

“What lacking could a Darakaian swine ever find in me?” she panted.

The witch virtually stood on her neck and shoulders as her legs hooked around his thighs and tugged. Zaethan’s backside hit the mat forcefully. As she tried to free her ankle, crushed beneath his leg, he thrust the staff upward against her chest with the strength of both arms. They rolled as she again attempted to dislodge her ankle. Pinning him, they landed with her legs wrapped around his torso. The tip of the witchiron dagger cut into the first layers of skin at his throat. He didn’t know when or how she’d retrieved it.

Zaethan smelled his flesh burning as it sizzled under the touch of the corrosive Boreali blade. He gulped cautiously. The brightness of her eyes flickered as they stared down at the metal. One bluer than Thoarne Bay, the other transformed into an eerie kaleidoscope, like those sold to wealthy children on the streets of Marketown.

“Weakness belongs to the Ethnicam,” she struggled to say. Her hand shook as the blade pressed further into his skin. “Such weakness lives inside you all.”

Zaethan stopped fighting. His fingers released the staff, letting it fall to the ground. Keeping his eyes locked on the orbs of light in her face, he brought his hands to her knees, suspecting the altered tactic would disarm her, given her usual prudishness and their sudden proximity. Slowly, languorously, he dragged his palms up the curve of her thighs over the men’s breeches she wore.

Confused, possibly in horror, her eyes darkened, then shimmered with unexpected moisture. The blade subtly eased off his throat.

“What are you doing?” Her voice cracked.

His resolve faltered momentarily at that look in her eyes, but Zaethan had long since learned to press any advantage he found in battle. Hesitation could have fatal consequences, and the witch still held her dagger.

Newly determined, Zaethan’s fingers found her hips and gripped them firmly, driving them into his own. “I told you I found your weakness.”

Her face contorted, as if with pain, and she dropped her eyes to the shallow cut on his neck. Then to her hips. A look of terror filled her gaze, and she hurriedly crawled off his body, retreating onto the mat. The northern dagger trembled between them, clutched in her shaking hands.

“All of you,” she whispered, scrambling to her feet. “You’re the real monsters.”

Zaethan stared after her in shock as she fled the training room. He lay there motionless on the floor long after the door clamored on its hinges, replaying those final moments in his mind. He’d thought her avoidance of close combat was merely tactical; he’d never imagined it might have been due to some other, unspoken trauma.

An uncomfortable sense of shame settled into his bones. Bleeding onto the dirtied floor, Zaethan suddenly itched to wash—and for the first time, not because of her.

Zaethan ignored the debased laughter from a nearby table as his retraced a line drawn across a map of the Proper. He moved another empty glass to flatten the corner of the parchment where it curled. It wasn’t the most effective solution, but neither was studying his maps in the belly of The Veiled Lady.

“Owàamo, Alpha Zà.” Beautifully sun-kissed arms encircled his chest from behind. “Àla’maia shines for us tonight, uni?”

A knowing chuckle teased the back of his throat as he guided the sound of home to stand in front of his chair. Zaethan didn’t like anyone at his back, especially a woman so adept at accessing men’s coin.

“Not brightly enough, ano.”

“The best papyon happens in the dark, Alpha Zà. I should know.” Her black curls bounced as she leaned forward, her parted lips brushing his ear. “Would you like to?”

Zaethan reached for her hand, nearly the exact shade of his own, and stroked the crevices of her open palm. She purred at his attention, a rehearsed sound.

“I would like—” He picked up a glass off a corner of the map and placed it in her hand. “—a refill.”

Insulted, the night-caller sputtered and threw the glass on the floor. “I am not a barmaid!”

“Ah, but yaya, there’s still time, yeah?” He patted her arm. “Bwoloa, and none of that yancy spittle Salma’s peddling. The good stuff.” Zaethan grimaced at the pain in his calf. He could certainly use it.

The southern night-caller sidestepped some broken shards of glass and stalked off, assuredly cursing him in Andwele as she disappeared into the crowd of patrons surrounding the bar. Hoping her return would be swift, Zaethan rubbed his leg, trying not to draw attention to his injury. While the liquor would help him forget the sting, he wished it could help him forget who he’d become in that training room. Though Zaethan hadn’t known what haunted the Boreali al’Haidren—and still didn’t, truth be told—he was ultimately responsible for having taken things too far. And that didn’t sit well with him, despite his differences with the witch.

There was only one man he knew who would knowingly exploit such a thing, and unfortunately, no amount of bwoloa could rinse the taint of Nyack Kasim from his veins.