Page 121 of Obsidian Throne

But she wasn’t, so she had to be faster and more skilled to make up for it.

Just as I opened my mouth to tell her she was too high on her left, she attacked with the same kind of unrelenting fury I had seen from her men, only far more intense.

What had she said when we sparred before?I had a lot of anger to work out.

That was clearly true now as well.

She may have wanted me to train her, but part of me wondered if she also just wanted the chance to come at me this way.

I had to work harder than usual to keep up with her, and twice, she hit me on the side.

Hard.

The second time she came in with too much force. I used the momentum to pull her to the ground, putting my blade to her throat.

“You’re letting your emotions get the better of you,” I told her. “Nothing will make you lose your fight faster than that.”

I moved my blade, offering her a hand up. Heat spread from every place her gently calloused fingers touched mine.

When she got to her feet, she was standing closer to me than I realized she would be. She dropped my hand, but she didn’t step back. She only looked up at me, her eyes burning with passion.

“You’re wrong about that.” Rowan’s tone was low, but no less fervent for it. “You can’t just take the emotions out of a situation. Sometimes they’re all you have. Sometimes they’re what keep you going long enough to win.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “You asked me how I raised an army in two weeks, Evander. It sure as hell wasn’t by leaving my emotions out of it. Perhaps the problem is that you should put your emotionsintothings.”

I thought about the things I had done because of my father. The only way I had lived with myself was by a careful, logical accounting of the greater number of lives I could still protect.

Then there was my stepmother, who had thrived on seeing another person’s pain.

“Not everyone has had the luxury of living their lives that way, Lemmikki,” I said flatly.

Her eyes flared with the same intense protection I had seen from her before.

“Maybe not before,” she allowed, taking her stance to start another spar. “But it isn’t too late for us to live a different sort of life.”

She launched into a series of attacks before I could respond to her comment.

Which was just as well, because, for a rare change, I had no idea what I would have said.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

ROWAN

Aweek passed in much the same manner.

There was no time for returning to my tea with the ladies, since most of them were still helping in the sick bay, but I did visit them there and lend my assistance whenever I could.

Other than that, my days were filled with war room meetings, training with my men, sparring with my husband. Though, our banter was conspicuously absent, since I had told him we didn’t have to live in his past anymore.

Maybe he disagreed. Maybe he just didn’t know how to process that concept.

In any event, my moon time had even come and gone, so I had been right about it being attributed to stress. Which was for the best, obviously, since Evander and I were barely speaking, and our clan was in the middle of a war.

So I knew how unreasonable it was, the sinking feeling I got whenever I thought about it. But I didn’t quite understand why until Mila asked me.

We had just finished our luncheon in the vast room where we usually held tea with the ladies, and she was working on mending some of the men’s uniforms while I reluctantly helped her with my mediocre sewing skills.

I was mid-stitch when she broke our comfortable silence with the question.