Chapter 217: Won and Lost
The Frostmoon Lance came at his throat as a spear of blue-white light, twice the reach of her actual blade, and Xuan met it the only way worth meeting it.
He didn’t dodge. He stepped into it on the diagonal, Awakening Dragon rising to catch the shaft of frozen Qi and turn it a hand’s width wide of his neck, close enough that the cold of it seared his jaw and the vapour of his own breath crackled into ice as it passed. The lance blew apart against the stone behind him in a fan of shattered crystal.
And in the half-beat while her lunge had her committed and extended, he was already inside it.
Twin Dragon Strike. The first cut came flat from the right, and she got her blade up to read it, exactly as he’d wanted, and the wrist rolled and the second cut swept back the other way before the first had finished telling its story. The flat of Marrow Dragon tapped her ribs on the undefended side.
"Two," he said. "That’s the fight, by your rules. A live blade ends it there."
Qingyue went motionless, chest heaving, snow melting in her dark hair, and for a heartbeat he thought she’d concede.
He should have known better.
"By my rules," she agreed, breathless. "A live blade ends it there. But you used a training blade, Lin Xuan." Her frost-blue eyes came up, and there was pure mischief in them now, the winter cracked wide open. "So it doesn’t."
She moved before he’d parsed it.
Not a technique he could name, because it wasn’t in any manual. She dropped, spun on the ball of one foot, and swept a low arc of ice across the flagstones directly under his front foot, a slick of frost laid exactly where his weight was about to come down. He’d braced for a blade. He hadn’t braced for the ground itself to betray him.
His boot found ice where it expected stone, shot out from under him, and Lin Xuan of Skyedge, freshly minted Foundation cultivator, wielder of an awakened Dragonvein blade, terror of the Redthroat gorge, went down flat on his backside on the frozen sparring ground with all the dignity of a dropped sack of rice.
Marrow Dragon clattered away across the stone, the blue-green line flashing once in the dawn light before it came to rest a full three feet beyond his reach.
’What,’ he said, inside, with feeling. ’What just happened.’
[ You got got, ] Mira supplied, wheezing. [ Oh, that was beautiful. She read that you’d read her lance, let you win the sword fight, and took your legs out with a puddle. No qi, no technique, no realm advantage in the world saves you from a well-placed patch of ice. I’m going to remember that forever. ]
’I broke into Foundation two nights ago.’
[ And you got dropped by a girl in Qi Gathering with a wet floor. Both things are true. Cultivation’s humbling like that. ]
He was blinking up at the greying sky when Qingyue’s face appeared over his, flushed, snow-dusted, wearing a grin he’d never once seen her let anyone else see.
"You forgot the first thing you ever taught me," she said, dropping to her knees astride him, planting a hand flat on his chest to keep him down, though he’d stopped trying to get up somewhere around the word beautiful. "Never assume the fight ends where the swords do." Her hair fell around them both like a curtain, shutting out the mountain, the cold, the war. "You’re brilliant with that blade. Genuinely. Realm above me and a sword that cheats, and you had me anyway. It was close, and you earned it."
"And yet," Xuan said, acutely aware of her weight resting warm over him and the mad drum of his own heart, "I appear to be on the ground."
"And yet you’re on the ground." Her grin softened into something warmer, and the challenge in her eyes changed into a different kind entirely. "So allow me."
She kissed him.
Not the careful, stolen kind from behind an inn door with the world listening. This was full and unhurried and thoroughly pleased with itself, her cold hands framing his jaw, the frost of the ring clinging to both of them and neither of them caring in the least, a kiss with a laugh living somewhere underneath it.
He forgot the sparring ground. He forgot the sword three feet away. He got a hand into her snow-damp hair and kissed her back like a man who had, in fact, lost something and found it entirely worth losing.
When she finally drew back, her forehead rested against his, both of them breathing hard for reasons that had nothing to do with the spar, and her voice came low and warm and insufferably smug.
"I win."
"You cheated."
"I improvised. You’d have done the same, and you’d have been proud of yourself for it." She kissed the corner of his mouth once more, lighter, and stayed exactly where she was, in no rush at all to let him up.
"Foundation Establishment. A war-summons with your name on it. An awakened blade. And you ended up flat on your back with frost in your hair anyway because you underestimated a girl a whole realm beneath you." Her smile was the softest weapon she owned. "Don’t ever stop underestimating me. It’s the only edge I’ve got left."
[ So, ] Mira observed, dry as old paper. [ You lost. ]
’I didn’t lose. I won myself something.’
[ You won the spar. Not the final battle - that one just knocked you on your ass and kissed you and is sitting on you yet, in case you’d lost track. ] A pause, and the humour cooled into something businesslike. [ Right. Get up, lover boy, before you both freeze to the stone. And listen, because this part actually matters. Before you go meet your princess, I strongly recommend you spend those Origin Points you’ve been hoarding. All forty-four thousand of them. Walking into whatever she wants from you at full strength is a very good idea, and right now you’re carrying a fortune you haven’t touched. ]