Chapter 8: Contract, Not Comfort

"Again," Brogan said.

Sorcha wiped sweat out of her eyes and set her feet in the packed dirt of the training ring.

It was the second dawn since the orchard, and the Moot was a day and a night away.

"I can't call it on purpose," she said. "It only comes when I'm angry."

"Then be angry."

"At what?"

"Pick something."

She thought of Brianna on her knees on the frozen road, saying you had everything.

Heat rolled up her spine, and silver crackled down her arms to her fingertips.

She swung before she could think.

The light left her hand in a bright rope and hit Brogan square in the chest.

He went back three steps and stopped with his boots dug into the dirt.

"Good," he said. He was breathing hard. "Again."

"I could have hurt you."

"You did not."

"You're supposed to be teaching me."

"I am teaching you not to flinch."

She hit him again. And again.

On the fifth try the light came up from her stomach instead of her arms, wide and steady, and he stopped it with his gloved hand held out flat.

The air in the ring shook.

Then he stepped in under it.

She had not seen him move. His hand locked around her wrist, and he swept her feet out from under her.

She went down on her back in the dirt with the wind knocked out of her.

Brogan dropped to one knee over her, pinning both her wrists to the ground.

His face was inches from hers.

"You think too much," he said. "In a real fight you will be dead before you finish deciding."

Sorcha had stopped listening somewhere around the word fight.

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