Heading back to camp, it took her a moment to spot Caldon standing beyond the makeshift corral they’d set up to contain their mounts overnight. As she rounded the pen and the horses dozing within, she noticed he wasn’t alone: Jaren, Naari, and Eidran were already sparring together, and, to Kiva’s surprise, Torell was also there, facing off against Ashlyn.
It was easy for her to forget she was traveling with a group of veritable warriors. Royals, guards, generals, spies — her companions had spent years honing their bodies into weapons. Watching them practice unarmed combat was just as awe-inspiring as it was to witness them crossing blades. Even her brother had been given a sword, with it glinting in the weak early light as he and Ashlyn sparred at an alarming pace.
“I suppose it’s too much to assume you kept up with your exercises while you were in Zalindov?” Caldon asked, his arms crossed as he looked from the fighters to Kiva.
“She did,” came Cresta’s yawning voice as she approached. “And I joined her. So I’ll be joining you today, too.”
“I thought I was training my magic?” Kiva asked before Caldon could protest Cresta’s declaration.
“You’re doing both,” he said. “Magic requires strength, and strength requires endurance. Being physically fit will give you more energy and make you more powerful.” He shrugged, then admitted, “That’s how it works for elemental magic. I’m winging it with healing magic.”
Kiva glanced back at the camp, where Galdric and Tipp still slept. “Maybe we should wait until —”
“Start stretching, Sweet Cheeks,” Caldon said, before eyeing Cresta. “You too.”
“What, no degrading nickname for me?” Cresta asked, batting her eyelashes.
“I don’t think you want to hear my name for you,” Caldon replied, turning and striding toward Jaren, Naari, and Eidran.
A flare of interest hit Cresta’s hazel eyes, and Kiva groaned inwardly, but the redhead locked it down as Caldon returned with the sweaty Eidran.
“Have you had any combat training?” the spy asked Cresta, studying her solid build with a critical eye.
“Some,” she answered.
Kiva snorted, thinking of the fights the ex-quarrier had caused at Zalindov and doubting they counted.
But Cresta shocked the humor right out of Kiva when Caldon threw an assessing punch at her. Instead of ending up with a bruised sternum, Cresta darted to the side and grabbed his outstretched hand, yanking him forward while angling her boot behind his knee. It took some quick footwork on his part to escape her hold without toppling to the ground, after which he sent her an impressed grin and said, “Nice,” before jerking his chin at Eidran.
“Let’s go see what else you can do,” the spy told her, leading the way toward an open area beyond the sparring pairs.
“Five years, and someone can still find ways to surprise you,” Kiva mused, watching them walk off.
“She moves like a fighter,” Caldon said. “Haven’t you noticed?”
Kiva tried to remember everything Cresta had shared about her life before Zalindov, but she’d said nothing about having had any physical training. Although . . . she and her mother had traveled alone after losing their family, surviving day by day, so it made sense that she would have learned some self-defense moves.
“I don’t see you stretching,” Caldon said pointedly.
Kiva quickly began to loosen her muscles, after which he tested her fitness levels. By the time she was sweating and cursing at him, he acknowledged that she’d made at least some improvement from when they’d first started training at the River Palace.
“Small steps are still steps,” he said sagely.
But when it came to strengthening her magic, they hit a rock wall.
“I don’t understand why you’re struggling with this,” Caldon said after nearly half an hour of Kiva trying to summon her power. “I thought you said you’re not afraid of yourself anymore?”
“I’m not,” Kiva said. Everyone else had finished sparring, and while Eidran and Torell had gone to help pack up the camp, Jaren, Naari, Ashlyn, and Cresta were still cooling down and drinking water from leather skins, watching her fail over and over again. “Or — I don’t know. I probably always will be, in the back of my mind, but that’s not what’s stopping me now.”
“Then what is?” Caldon asked.
“You just told me to wave my hand and ‘do the shiny thing.’ That’s not how it works,” Kiva said, exasperated. “It’s not like your fire magic where you can throw it around or whatever you do.”
“Then what is it like?” Caldon pressed. “How does it work?”
Kiva threw out her arms. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t need training, would I?”
Caldon scowled at her, and she scowled right back.
“I’m sorry to add to the pressure,” said Galdric, who had joined them mid-training as soon as he’d awoken. He’d just begun explaining the basics of windfunneling to Ashlyn before Kiva’s lack of progress had caught all their attention. “But Prince Caldon is right — you should be able to throw your power in a similar manner to elemental magic. That’s what Tilda learned to do with her healing magic. And that’s what Zuleeka can do with her death magic, as you’ve seen for yourself. There’s no reason why the same isn’t true for you.”
Kiva transferred her scowl to him. “Telling me what I should be able to do and telling me how to do it are two very different things. So far, I’m hearing a lot of the former, and none of the latter.” Her glare shifted back to Caldon. “From everyone.”
The prince’s lips twitched. “You’re delightful when you’re cranky.”
“I’m not cranky,” Kiva said, barely keeping from stomping her foot. “I just have no idea what I’m doing, and you’re not helping to change that.”
“I —”
“For everworld’s sake,” Cresta cut Caldon off, causing everyone to look toward where she sat on a boulder beside Jaren. Before they could blink, she picked up the sword she’d been sparring with —
And stabbed it straight into Jaren’s thigh.
He roared with pain, and then three things happened at once:
The first was that Naari and Ashlyn both tackled Cresta, while Cresta yelled at Caldon, “Hold her back!”
The second was that Caldon wrapped his arms around Kiva like steel bands, stopping her from rushing to Jaren’s side.
The third was that, seeing the blood gushing from Jaren’s leg, seeing his pain, feeling his pain, Kiva didn’t think, she just acted. Magic erupted out of her and shot toward him, like a blinding comet streaking through the distance between them. Caldon hissed a shocked expletive into her ear, and even Naari, Ashlyn, and Cresta paused their scuffle to watch.
It was over in seconds, the light fading as quickly as it had come, the wound gone as if it had never existed, leaving behind wet bloodstains on black leather and a stunned but otherwise perfectly healthy Jaren.
“See?” Cresta said cockily, despite being on the ground with both Naari and Ashlyn holding her down. “She just needed the right motivation.”
Kiva turned furious eyes on the redhead. “What the hell was that?”