Chapter 8: Snow on the Sword

The Saintess squeezed Yeon-hwa's hand once, hard, and let go.

"Heaven keep you, Miss Seol," she said sweetly, for everyone else to hear.

Then she floated back to her grey mare with her eyes lowered, and she never once looked at Seo-gang.

Yeon-hwa drew her father's sword.

Up on the wall, two hundred cultists went quiet.

Seo-gang took his stance.

He had the Azure Cloud's beautiful style, all long lines and wide sleeves.

In the memories that came with this body, Yeon-hwa had watched him practise it for ten years from behind a kitchen door.

He was good.

He was very good.

He'd also never fought anyone who wasn't afraid of his father.

He came at her with the Azure Cloud's opening cut, high and grand and slow enough to admire.

She didn't block it.

She stepped off the line and let it go by.

The cultists on the wall made a sound.

He turned and came again, faster.

She gave him First Snow, light and straight, and tapped his blade aside.

Then Snow on the Pine, rising.

He parried it, barely, and his eyes widened.

"Where did you get that?"

"From my father," she said. "You kept it in a box."

He pressed her.

He was stronger than she was, by a long way, and he had the fire she was still hunting for.

Every time their swords met, she felt it shove at her.

But he fought like a man showing off.

Every big cut had a breath before it where he set his feet.

And Yeon-hwa had spent fifteen years of her old life learning to see that breath.

She went backward across the open ground, giving him the space he loved.

He followed, smiling.

Then he smiled wider.

There it was.

The author's favourite smile, the one that came right before his lunge.

She was moving before his front foot left the ground.

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