Chapter 214: The Last One Standing
The training ground around Orion's small ring had gone inexplicably quiet; the clatter of earlier sparring, the muttered advice and restless laughter, had folded into something close and watchful. Only a thin track of scuffed earth marked the boundary he'd drawn with his boot. Inside it, he stood loose-shouldered and steady, the picture of a man who trusted both the ground and the wolf beneath him.
Laia and Nia stepped forward first.
They moved like partners who had practiced the same steps until the motion lived in their bones. Laia whose footwork had now developed into something like a dance, like Orion suggested, moved first.
She spun into the circle with a bright, breathless arc. Nia's twin short swords cut low and quick; she attacked the spaces Laia created. Together they tried to braid pressure around him: Laia's wider, sweeping rhythm forcing an opening; Nia's tight strikes aiming at it.
