The Righteous Sect's Discarded Fiancée novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Mine

"Then show me," Yeon-hwa said.

"Show you what?"

"How it hit you. Every bit you remember. Tomorrow, in this yard."

"I can't do the seventh form, Yeon-hwa. Nobody can. That's the point."

"You can do the part of it that put you on the floor. Do that to me."

He looked at her.

"No."

"You're my subject," she said. "That was an order."

His mouth twisted.

"That's cheating."

"I'm a demon now," she said. "I cheat."

By the next morning the whole mountain knew the Heavenly Demon was going to fight her own betrothed in the training yard.

They were on the walls before the sun.

They were on the roofs.

Pyo had set up a stall by the gate and was selling fried dumplings.

"Uncle," Yeon-hwa said.

"A man has to eat, Young Lady."

Mu-hyeon walked out onto the sand in black, with his own sword.

Not a practice stick.

He had insisted.

"If I'm going to show you what Jin did," he'd said, "it has to be real, or it's no use to you."

They bowed.

Then he came at her, and for the first time since the night they'd met, he didn't hold anything back.

He was so much better than Seo-gang that it wasn't the same sport.

Yeon-hwa got out of his way for twenty breaths, then thirty, on her old feet and the girl's old forms.

She lost a sleeve.

She lost a lock of hair.

The crowd on the walls stopped cheering and started gasping.

"Now," he said. "Watch my blade. This is where he went."

He came in close, and then, without warning, he stepped back and lifted his sword straight up over his head.

Point to the sky.

His body bent back under it.

It was her own sixth form, Moon on Snow.

She knew it so well that for one heartbeat she didn't understand what she was seeing.

His qi came up into the sword in a rush.

The blade didn't turn red for him.

But it shone, hot and bright as a lamp.

Then it came down.

Not a cut.

A fall.

The whole drawn bow of his body let go at once.

The sword came down out of the sky with everything he had behind it.

Yeon-hwa saw it.

She saw it.

She threw herself sideways and it hit the sand where she had been standing.

Sand fountained up over both of them.

The crowd screamed.

She rolled and came up on one knee, coughing, with her sword still in her hand.

"That," Mu-hyeon said, breathing hard. "That's what he did. Only faster. And red. And I didn't get out of the way."

"It's my sixth form," she said. "Then it falls."

"It's your sixth form and then it falls."

"Again."

He did it again.

She got out of the way again.

Then a third time.

On the fourth, she understood.

The seventh form wasn't new at all.

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