In Kuroinu

Her sword caught the morning light on the downswing and I got my blade up in time to deflect but the impact rang through my arms and into my shoulders and my boots skidded on the platform wood.

Leonora didn't pause. She followed the deflection with a lateral cut that came from a different angle than the first and I turned it aside and the opening was there, the gap she'd left between her third and fourth move, and I lunged for it.

She stepped inside the lunge. Turned her hip. My blade passed her by an inch and her elbow caught my chest and I staggered back and she was already swinging and I blocked and blocked and blocked and the sounds of steel on steel scattered birds from the branches above.

Third spar this week. She'd insisted on daily practice after the cave. "Readiness maintenance," she called it. Like she was filing a report.

The first spar, I'd lasted forty seconds. Filia's muscle memory and absorbed reflexes against the strongest knight in Lesdea, and forty seconds was the ceiling. She'd disarmed me and pinned me in the dirt and her knee had been on my spine and the debrief afterward had been clinical.

The second spar, I'd lasted a minute. She'd noticed. Her eyebrows had done a thing.

This one was different. I was faster. The threesome with Filia and Llusse had compounded the Blessing's absorbed attributes and my body knew things it hadn't known three days ago.

She swung. I parried. She feinted low, struck high, and I caught it on the flat of my blade and redirected and she had to adjust her footwork and for one second her weight was wrong and I pressed forward and drove her back a step.

One step.

Her eyes widened a fraction.

I pressed. A combination I'd been drilling with Filia, adapted for the longer reach of Leonora's stance. Two cuts and a thrust and she blocked all three but the third one made her work for it and the platform shook under our boots.

She came back hard. Three strikes in succession that blurred and I parried the first, ducked the second, and the third caught the edge of my blade and twisted and my grip slipped and my sword went wide and she was inside my guard and her boot swept my legs and I was on my back and she was on top of me.

Straddling my chest. Her knees on either side of my ribs. One hand pinning my right wrist to the wood, her grip like iron. Her sword at her side, tip touching the platform. Her face above mine. Breathing hard. Red hair falling around her face where it had come loose from the tie. Sweat on her forehead and her jaw and the notch of her throat.

She didn't get up.

One second. Two. Three.

Her weight on my chest and her hand on my wrist and her face above mine and she was looking down at me and her pupils were wide and her lips were parted and she was breathing through her mouth and neither of us was talking.

Four seconds. Five.

"You're getting slower, Commander."

Her eyes flashed. Her grip on my wrist tightened. I could feel the calluses on her palm through the leather of her training gloves.

"You're getting faster," she said. Low.

Neither of us blinked.

Six seconds. Her weight was warm. Her thighs pressed against my sides through the fabric of her training trousers and her breathing was hot on my face and we were both still breathing hard from the spar and the adrenaline hadn't burned off and her hand on my wrist wasn't loosening and she wasn't getting up and I wasn't asking her to.

Her eyes dropped.

To my shoulders. My training shirt was loose and the collar had pulled aside during the spar and the skin of my upper chest and shoulders was visible and on the left shoulder, just below the collarbone, there were marks. Thin red lines, parallel, already fading. Fingernail scratches from two nights ago. Filia's nails, during the threesome, during the moment she'd orgasmed and her free hand had clawed my stomach. They'd ended up on my shoulder from how she'd gripped me in her sleep.

Leonora's eyes were on the marks.

Her grip on my wrist went tight enough to hurt.

Her jaw worked. Her mouth opened. Closed. The muscle below her eye twitched. She looked at the scratches for a long time and her breathing had stopped being from the spar and started being from something else.

She let go of my wrist. Got up. The weight lifting from my chest was abrupt and the cool morning air replaced the heat of her body. She picked up her sword. Slid it into the sheath. Turned her back.

Her hands were shaking.

She walked to the edge of the platform. Stopped. Stood there with her back to me and her shoulders rigid and she didn't look back.

I sat up. Rubbed my wrist where her grip had left white marks.

She left. Down the staircase. Her boots precise on each step even though her hands were still trembling when she gripped the railing.

Filia was leaning against a tree at the edge of the training platform, eating an apple. She'd been watching the entire spar. Llusse was perched on a low branch beside her, one leg dangling, her bow across her lap.

I walked over. My shirt was soaked through and my arms were sore and the scratches on my shoulder were itching.

"Those are showing," Filia said. Looking at my shoulder. She took a bite of the apple.

"I know."

"You could wear a higher collar."

"I could."

She didn't say anything about whether I should. Another bite.

Llusse was looking in the direction Leonora had gone. Her ears were forward, tracking.

"Think she knows she's doing it?" Llusse said.

Filia chewed. Swallowed. "No."

"The sparring."

"It's her version of finding excuses to be in the same room." Filia examined the apple. "She did the same thing at the capital before we left. Kept scheduling formation drills that required her to correct his stance. Hands on his hips, hands on his shoulders. Professional contact."

"How long?"

Filia took another bite. Chewed. Looked at the staircase where Leonora had disappeared.

"Three days," she said. "Maybe four."

"Until she does something about it?"

"Until she can't pretend she isn't."

Llusse's ear twitched. She looked at me. At the scratches on my shoulder. At Filia, who was responsible for the scratches and was eating an apple about it.

"You could talk to her," Llusse said. To me.

"And say what? 'I noticed you've been sitting on my chest for longer than the spar requires'?"

"I mean about the-" She gestured at my shoulder. At the scratches. "About all of it. The arrangement. What it is. What it means."

"What does it mean?"

Llusse's ears went pink. "I'm not- that's not what I- shut up."

Filia finished the apple. Tossed the core into the undergrowth below the platform. A bird landed on it before it hit the ground.

"She'll come to you," Filia said. "When she's ready. Leonora doesn't do anything she hasn't decided to do. The decision is what's killing her right now."

"And the scratches?"

Filia looked at my shoulder. At the marks her own nails had made. Her mouth twitched.

"The scratches are doing their own work," she said.

Tianne appeared on the staircase below us. She climbed up, her golden-tipped hands dimming as she left the living wood she'd been communing with. She looked at me. At my soaked shirt. At the red mark on my wrist where Leonora's grip had been.

"Did she win?" Tianne asked.

"She always wins."

"You lasted longer this time."

"How did you know?"

"The birds came back slower." She sat on the platform edge beside Filia. Her hands pulsed gold against the wood. "The roots say the corruption hasn't returned. Lucie checked the southern junction this morning. Clean."

"Good."

"For now." Tianne's eyes were on the canopy. The gold rings in her irises caught the morning light. "The channels are still there. Whoever built them will try again."

Mila arrived with breakfast. She'd somehow found or made flatbread from elf flour and there was honey and fruit and she distributed it without being asked and her tail was wagging at the medium speed that meant she was content and busy.

She looked at my shoulder. At the scratches. Her nose twitched.

"Those smell like Filia," she said.

Llusse choked on her bread.

"Mila," I said.

"What? They do. Her scent is on the edges." Mila sniffed again. "Two days old. Roughly."

"You can SMELL the age of scratches?"

"I can smell the healing. Fresh wounds smell different from-" She stopped. Looked around. Filia was eating bread with perfect composure. Llusse was red from the ears down. Tianne was studying the canopy with tremendous focus. "Did I say the wrong thing?"

"No," I said. "You said the exact right thing at the exact wrong time."

Her tail tucked for a second. Then wagged again. "I do that."

She did.

We ate breakfast on the platform. The settlement moved around us, elves on the bridges and platforms doing their morning work. The fungi lanterns had burned out with the dawn and the forest was lit by the canopy's filtered green-gold. Somewhere below, Lucie was singing. Somewhere above, Firis was probably watching from a high treehouse with those red eyes and her aristocratic frown, cataloging my breakfast posture for future inspection.

Leonora didn't come back for breakfast.

Filia noticed. Llusse noticed. Tianne noticed. Mila did too, but she didn't say anything. She was learning when to notice things quietly.

I looked at the staircase where Leonora had gone. Rubbed my wrist. The white marks from her grip were already fading.

Her hands had been shaking.