Beastward Academy: Reborn, I Claimed My Sister's Serpent novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: The Ring

I hadn't known the stone was soft inside.

I'd held it every night after she threw it down there.

I'd felt the crack under my thumb and thought it was old.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"You didn't drop it."

"I should have carried it up out of that cellar."

"You were twelve. You carried it a drop at a time." He stood and brushed the sand off his knees. "Three days. Tell me how to beat a dragon without wings."

So I told him.

For three days I fed him at breakfast, at noon and at midnight.

Kerensa stole meat pies from the kitchen and brought them to the training ring in her apron.

Morvran ate six at a sitting and complained about the crust.

And I told him everything I knew about Leofric's body.

I knew it the way a mother knows a child's.

Ten years of oiling that gold stone, I'd learned every ridge on it. The shape inside had pressed up against the shell as he grew.

There was one place on the left side of the jaw where the stone had always been thin.

Where the hinge was.

"He favors his left," I said, drawing it in the sand with a stick. "He'll come high with fire first because it looks good. Then he'll go for your throat. When he opens his jaw wide, the left hinge shows."

"And then?"

"Then you put your whole weight on it."

Morvran looked at the drawing.

"You know him very well," he said.

"I spent ten years thinking he was going to be my whole life."

He was quiet a moment. "And now?"

"Now I know where he breaks."

On the third day the stands around the ring were full.

Students. Teachers. Grooms from the stables. Kerensa in the front row with her fists clenched in her lap.

← Chapter 3 · All chapters · Chapter 5 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend