7 Deadly Instincts (The Sinfire Chronicles Book 1)

After the late night of partying and other pleasures, things were quiet on First Day, which Midj said was normal. Generally, most families started the new year eating leftovers and just spending time together.

Ames avoided Lilian, but the princess didn’t seem at all bothered by what had happened. She sat chatting with Midj in the kitchen, while the goblin girls took the various leftover food and created new dishes. The various components of the Yullolly House was added to a cake, which the goblin said was her favorite recipe, and so, that night, they had desert.

The next day, they were back at First Field, eating breakfast in the canteen.

Afterwards, it was too cold to meditate outside, but Settie took them into a room in the pink palace, where they sat on pillows, to quiet their minds and focus their mana on their cores.

Settie had Gray channel mana into each of the cores of his squadmates, focusing particularly on giving Lilian magic, which wasn’t an issue. No more visions of her fire burning up the world. As for Pinch, her core was as hungry as ever, even when it was filled to the top.

After that practice, Settie suggested sparring in the cold. For the spectators, it might not be comfortable, but for the combatants, it would be good practice, especially for Lilian.

Immediately, Ames spoke up. “I want to fight her. I will not pull my punches. We are both going to be fighting in the Redemption Midnight. We should learn how to work together.”

Lilian laughed uneasily. “If we need to work as a team, shouldn’t we fight someone else?”

“No,” Ames said. “We fight each other. Or perhaps you are frightened. You used mana when you sparred with Gray before because you couldn’t beat him without cheating. If you use mana with me, you’ll regret it. I will hurt you.”

At first, Gray was surprised to hear the malice in the Quelling girl’s voice. Then he remembered how Ames had hated Pinch—she’d been so jealous of the fae girl. That had changed. He hoped this would be different as well.

Lilian didn’t seem to care. “Hurt me like you did at the dance? It was so strange. You said all that nonsense about fire and whatever else. Does anyone ever understand what you say?” The princess answered her own question. “Probably not. That’s sad. You must feel lonely, all the time. Maybe it’s why Gray let you marry him and Rynn. Because you were sad lonely. Who knows? Maybe you still are.”

Tomi reached out with her hand and made a growling sound. “So catty, Princess. I’m the cat on the squad.”

Lilian giggled. “Maybe you’re right. But it did hurt. And I didn’t mean to throw Gray across the market. It just, well, I’m still learning to control my magic.”

Midj looked uncomfortable. “It might not be a good idea for them to spar. I mean, we can’t have bad blood—”

“They will fight,” Settie announced.

Tomi snorted. “And oh how the fur will fly. Maybe, for this, we’d want the Magistrate to proctor the fight. You know, a third party, get him out of his office, let him get some fresh air.”

Gray knew what she was thinking. If Tomi could get into the Magistrate’s office, she might figure out the events of Redemption Midnight. It had given them an edge before.

Settie smiled. “Yes, Tomika Ka. I think that would be wise. I will meet you out on the training field. You can get the fires lit. Maybe you could find a book in the library on conflict resolution, Tomi. Midj can help.”

Midj squinted. “Me? I’m not a very bookish girl. Rynn might—”

“You’ll do fine, short stuff,” Tomi said. “You and I work well together. And do you really want to spend more time with Malcon Crewel?”

The goblin girl grimaced. “Good point.”

It wasn’t long before Gray was standing with a good portion of his squad in their pavilion. Yes, it was covered, and there was a wooden floor, but that didn’t help much with the wind. It was bitter cold and not even the lust rocks burning the braziers around them helped. They had gloves on, so their hands weren’t cold, but they would still be able to channel mana into their bloodless blades.

Pinch stood scowling at one end, arms crossed, near where Lilian stood with her sword in her hand. The two muttered something to each other, and Gray had to wonder what the pair had to talk about. They’d literally come from two different worlds.

Ames stood at the other end with Gray and Rynn nearby.

Lilian smiled warmly at the Quelling elf. “Thank you for helping me fight better. You’re very sweet. It’s just going to be just me and you against the world. Well, and Gray, but he’s only there to give us mana.”

Ames charged her sword—the sudden buzz and golden gleam was jarring. “Honey, but with knives, always a hidden knife, in every sentence. It’s poison in cake. It’s a scorpion sting on a nice summer day.”

Lilian giggled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. See? We’re going to have to be able to communicate clearly. Do you want to try again, sweetie?” The princess then charged her sword. Now both blades were buzzing.

Rynn raised a hand. “Wait. We shouldn’t do anything until the Magistrate and Settie—”

“Fine!” Ames growled. “You say nice things, but then, you hurt us. You hurt Gray in particular. Don’t think I’m stupid. I’m not stupid.”

Lilian faked a pout. “Oh, you’re not stupid. Strange, yes, but to be honest—and I think that’s what you want from me but who can tell with all the things you say—I did think you were stupid at first. Sorry. I was wrong.”

“Again. You keep doing it. Do you know you’re doing it? Are you stupid?”

Lilian never lost her smile. “Stupid is as stupid does. Pamalee told me how you attacked her for no reason and—"

“I had a reason!” Ames charged her, raising her sword.

Lilian didn’t need to block it—she danced to the side, avoiding the blow, and changing sides, so she was now near Gray and Rynn.

Gray called out to her. “Lilian, we should—”

“No!” Pinch shouted. “No mana. First blood finishes the fight.”

“No!” Rynn shouted back. “First touch. We don’t need to cut each other.”

Ames charged Lilian striking at her, over and over, and Lilian deflected the attacks, sparks flying as the blades met. When they first started sparring as a squad, Gray had pulled Ames aside to tell her not to pull her punches. That wasn’t a problem now.

“I want her blood,” Ames hissed. “I know what she is.”

Lilian laughed like she was at a tea party and not fighting for her life in a sparring pavilion. “Oh, this ought to be rich. What am I?”

“Weak. Empty. Dangerous.” With each other word, Ames swung her sword, and Lilian blocked the attacks but flinched at each word. It was clear they hurt her far more than Ames’s sword ever could.

They seemed to echo. Weak. Empty. Dangerous.

But something strange happened. That blood-red mana glowed in Lilian’s core—she was getting magic from how the words made her feel.

Rynn grabbed his arm. “Should we stop them? We needed the Magistrate to proctor the fight for this very reason. They are going to kill each other.”

“I don’t think so,” Gray whispered. “I think it might be almost over.”

He was right.

With Lilian still reeling from the three words, Ames leapt to the side, and raked her fingernails across Lilian’s face. Causing the pain gave Ames mana.

The princess shrieked and stumbled backward and fell. Her sword went clattering across the wood, the charge vanishing instantly.

She touched her bleeding face and looked at her fingers. “You fucking bitch!”

Gray knew what was coming.

Lilian charged her meridians—every single one of them. She moved with blistering speed, like a shark striking. She had her fingernails ready to rend flesh. She looked like she wanted to rip open Ames’s throat and drink her blood.

Gray sped forward to get between them.

Pinch, though, was faster. Wings erupting from her back, she flew across the pavilion and tackled Ames. They both went flying out of the pavilion and onto the snow.

Lilian soon joined them since she was unable to stop herself from careening off the edge of the wooden platform. She ended up sliding on her belly across the slick snowy landscape about fifty feet where Pinch and Ames were together in a pile of tangled limbs.

Gray was already running, so it was easy to pivot and check on Ames. He pulled her up and the Quelling elf smiled, then laughed, then threw her arms around Gray and started to cry. “I don’t want to rain on anyone. But I like it. I don’t want to like it.”

He held her as she wept.

It was because of her cruelty resonance, he knew. He wasn’t sure how she could have both kindness and cruelty, but he wasn’t the first. According to legend, the goddess of kindness had become the goddess of cruelty at the end of the Second God War.

Pinch ambled over to where Lilian was, helping her to stand. The pair talked in low voices.

Rynn approached them and gently rubbed the Ames’s back until she stopped crying. Ames looked up into Gray’s face. “Someone should heal her. I can’t…I won, but maybe it wasn’t about winning. I was scared.”

“Of what?” Gray asked.

“Of her,” Ames whispered.

“I’ll go,” Rynn said.

But Gray stopped her. “No, let me try and heal her. I need the practice.”

He wasn’t sure if it was a good time to try it, but at least one of them needed to be friendly with the troubled princess.

Those three words continued to plague him—weak, empty, and dangerous.

And the fact that Ames was terrified of Lilian put a bad feeling in his belly.

He walked up to where Lilian and Pinch stood, even as the princess swiped snow off her chest and belly. Three long scratches cut across the right side of her face. Blood welled in the gashes, but they hadn’t started to drip just yet.

The princess laughed and it sounded hollow…empty. “Come to apologize for your insane wife? You don’t need to. It’s just fine. It was to first blood, and she won, but that’s fine. I’ve only been fighting other people for like five minutes. I’ll get better. Might as well fuck up the rest of my face, right? Since sure, I get the mana mark on my face because men love women with huge blotches on their face.” She laughed more, and it was unhinged. Tears gleamed in her eyes. Which would fall first? The tears or the blood?

Even Pinch looked uncomfortable.

“I’d like to try and heal you,” Gray said. “Ames feels bad—”

Lilian giggled and giggled. “She feels bad but she’s not healing me. It’s fine. She doesn’t need to like me. I’m not here for her. Don’t they say this is a test? Maybe she’s just part of the test. Maybe you are too. Always have been, always will be, my little slave boy. Ha. That’s a laugh. You were never a slave boy, and I was never a perfect little princess. What a par we are, Grayson Fade. What a pair!” She giggled until she fell to her knees.

Then the tears fell but not that many.

Gray knelt in the snow with her. He took her hand and touched her face.

They ended up looking into each other’s eyes. She was so pale, so exhausted, and he knew why. She’d emptied her core into her meridians.

He gave her mana, and her cheeks filled with color.

“I can feel that,” she said softly. “It’s so arm. Did you see anything?”

“No.”

She couldn’t help but chuckle. “But you saw something last night. Then you told that strange elfish girl all about it.”

“I didn’t need to. We’re bonded. And Ames can sometimes see into the future. That can be helpful but not always. Now hush. I need to concentrate.”

Lilian closed her eyes.

He couldn’t help but stare for a second. She was so pretty.

He touched her face, letting his fingers linger, as he closed his eyes. He focused on moving mana from his core, through the meridians of his right arm, and into his fingers. He could visualize the flesh closing, healing her, fixing the damage that Ames had caused.

Healing. Repairing. Offering comfort and warmth.

He should be able to help the princess. He’d loved her. No, it had never been love. It had been lust and a mixture of affection and a chance to change his life. For him, she’d always been more of an opportunity than a person. In fact, he hardly knew her at all. For example, he’d never known that she had spent most of her life practicing the wind dance.

All that thinking wasn’t helping him. He felt the energy fading from meridians and then it was gone.

Lilian took his hand from his face. “You’re not very good at actually using mana, are you? Well, luckily, we have lots of healers. Can you believe that’s even a thing? I told you, Gray, the world had magic. I told you!”

She gently pushed him away and walked to where Ames and Rynn were standing. “Okay, girls, which one of you gets the pleasure of healing me?”

Ames turned and walked away.

Lilian giggled. “Looks like you won, Rynny. Heal me, please!”

Rynn shot Gray an exasperated glance and then did just that.

Gray got a little shot of mana from his envy resonance. Why did it come so easily for her?

The Magistrate and Settie both came walking up. From the expression on Crewel’s face, he looked less than thrilled to be there.

“Which fight am I to proctor?” he asked.

Pinch strutted up to him. “Between me and Gray. We have issues, as you well know. Would you mind? I don’t trust any of these fucking idiots to do it correctly.”

The Magistrate grinned, showing lots of big, crooked yellow teeth. “It warms my heart, Miss Thornpinch, for you to see clearly how things are.”

He then glared at Gray. “I’ve not forgotten your treachery nor your trial. If you were wise, you would drop out.”

Gray nodded, laughing. “Mr. Crewel, you and I don’t agree on much, but we do agree on that. Too bad we’re all staying and getting more powerful all along. Now, you remember how much Pinch and I like to fight. Or should I call her Pamalee?”

The fae girl laughed sharply. “While we’re fighting, Pinch is fine. Let’s see if we can spill some actual blood today.”

“That might take a while,” Gray said.

Pinch leaned in close. “That’s the plan.”

It led to a most interesting fight—as interesting as Ames and Lilian? No. But interesting all the same. Especially hours later, after dinner, they met in the main living room at Ruin Manor. For once, Settie sawt with them because they had so much to talk about.

Missing the tea and cookies that Mrs. Quillswrath supplied, Midj whipped up batch of treats and yes, found an old tea set, though all the cups and saucers were either chipped or cracked or both.

After pulling enough chairs into the living room, and after lighting a fire, Gray had to ask, “Did you close the window this time, Tomi?”

The cat girl laughed. “Of course.”

“What did you find?” Settie asked.

Tomi winced. “Well, it’s complicated.”

Mid snorted. “That’s one way of looking at it.”