“So, what’s the sister like?” Tybalt asked after a moment.

  “Oh, no, that’s for you to get to know,” Mariella said, shaking her head. “You’ll have plenty of time with just the two of them.”

  “I don’t know if I like the sound of that. Where will you be, again?”

  “Greedy!” Mariella exclaimed, laughing. Some of the tension of a minute prior had broken. “You always had to have known I was going to go back home at the end of all this.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Tybalt replied. He let a little of his genuine disappointment show through in his tone. He had known for a short part of the day that she intended to leave. He hadn’t known about it for long, though.

  “That’s… true, isn’t it?” she said with a slight note of regret. “You know, I’ve been thinking about everything you said over the last week. I had a lot of time. I realized that when you were talking to me back with the squad, you weren’t just trying to seduce me. At the time, you said that the system was too broken to be fixed from within, that I couldn’t help them, but I could help you. Even then, it sounded like treason, but I let myself forget about it in the sea of more pressing things happening.”

  Tybalt went silent for a few seconds.

  “So, I’m correct?” she asked finally.

  “Depends on what you’re inferring I meant.”

  “In retrospect, it sounded a little like you want to start your own kingdom out here in the desert. You wanted to recruit me.”

  That’s really smaller than my actual ambitions, but it’s not a bad jumping off point for discussion purposes.

  “Why not?” he said. “It’s land the Kingdom doesn’t really know what to do with. We come out here and brutalize people who are barely eking out a living, and for what? So they don’t bother the salt miners? I’m confident I can find a better way to rule this place.”

  “I think you genuinely care, so you would probably rule well. There’s only one problem for me. Silly thing. But the Kingdom is rather attached to its territory. My family is attached to the Kingdom… and any version of you getting your way will lead to thousands of deaths. It will also probably put you at odds with my family.” She tried to be playful at first as she spoke but sounded genuinely vexed by the end.

  “I understand how all of that could be a small problem.”

  “Yeah,” she said softly.

  Tybalt took one of her small hands in his and stroked it as the quiet settled uncomfortably over them.

  “What do you want to do this afternoon?” she asked after a very long ten or twenty seconds.

  “Several things,” he replied, giving her a meaningful look.

  “I—I’m open to all suggestions,” she said, blushing again. “Maybe you could make me forget about some of the heavy matters we’ve been discussing, just for a little while.”

  “I want us to spend some quality time together,” Tybalt said. “Especially because you’re thinking about leaving.” He was careful with his phrasing, not quite accepting her decision to leave.

  She swallowed. “I’d really like that.”

  “First thing, I’d be interested in sparring with you again.”

  Mariella looked surprised for the first time since he’d sat down with her.

  “Wait, why?” she asked after a moment.

  “I gained a bunch of levels during and after the fight for the village,” Tybalt said. “I’ve been moving around carefully, and I felt a little bit weaker with my injury until it healed just now with another level. But now that I’m at full power, I recognize I don’t really know my own strength anymore. Too many levels. At the same time, I promised you once that I’d kick your ass before you knew it. It’s a little silly, but I’d really like to see if I’ve gotten there yet.”

  She bit her lip. “With the skills you have now, you’ll have to be careful. You know, you could… actually kill me.”

  “I have other plans for us later in the day and into the evening, so I’ll try to avoid that.”

  She snorted at that.

  “Also, I was thinking this session should be completely without mana, to establish who would win in a fight without any magic at all. Maybe we could make a small wager, if you’re interested.”

  “What are we betting?”

  “Loser has to grant the winner’s every wish for the next twelve hours.”

  Mariella gave him a complicated look, then averted her eyes and spoke slowly, seemingly reluctantly, but simultaneously with a note of longing.

  “Tybalt, it’s been a really long six days, just watching you sleep and… missing you. Talking to you, touching you, feeding you in your sleep. I’m trying not to sound too wanton, but maybe that caravan has left the city. To put it simply, I think I was already going to do… whatever you ordered me to do. All night long and, um, eagerly. There’s also a significant likelihood that the wishes you’d be granting for me are the same as the wishes I’d be granting for you. This might be redundant, if all you really want is the end result.”

  “That’s impressive honesty from you, Mariella,” he said. “But would you also be granting those wishes while calling me ‘Lord Necromancer?’”

  “Jerk!” she replied, trying not to laugh. “Not because of the ‘Lord Necromancer’ thing. But you know that you’re the one who can’t tell the truth to save your life…”

  He placed a finger under her chin and tilted her head up and to the side, directing her to make eye contact with him.

  “No, I meant it,” he said. “I might be more of a liar than you, but we both have trouble expressing ourselves. How we really feel. That’s part of why I want this. Fighting is raw and clumsy as a means of showing your feelings, but it’s also honest. I want you to feel me, my intentions and my strength, in your bones.”

  I want you to remember this, the necromancer thought. Remember that I overcame you. Remember that I can keep you safe… if you stay.

  After a few seconds of staring into each other’s eyes, she rose up on her knees and kissed him hard on the mouth.

  When they separated, there was an intense gleam in her eyes.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Tybalt and Mariella left the hut, and he followed her lead up the mountainside. She seemed to already know the area reasonably well.

  She brought him through some trees and walked seemingly aimlessly uphill for fifteen minutes, until they stepped into an area that was blocked from view on two sides by dense stands of trees. Tybalt had the feeling she had selected this spot in advance, probably with more than sparring in mind. There was a stream running downhill nearby, and Tybalt stared for a moment, trying to figure out if it could be the same water source they had encountered before. Probably not. Possibly, though.

  “Show me your feelings, then,” Mariella said in a voice that was more sultry than aggressive or any other quality.

  The two fighters squared off, just as they had in the cave a little over a week ago.

  But this time, the circumstances were very different. Mariella made the first move.

  She darted in suddenly and threw a quick jab at Tybalt’s stomach—or at least, it would have come off as quick the week before. He lightly pushed her wrist, deflecting the punch so that it didn’t hit his body at all.

  She’s… slow?

  Before the levels, he recalled, her strength had far outpaced his, but she had never shown similar feats of speed or reaction time. Her strength was out of step with her agility.

  She threw another punch, and instead of just deflecting it, he slipped inside her guard and threw a close range punch at her stomach.

  Mariella just let the blow hit, absorbed most of the strength with her stomach muscles, took a single step back, and then aimed a roundhouse kick at his side. He blocked with his other arm and stepped away again.

  What followed was a dance almost as much as a fight.

  Tybalt could and did dodge most of her blows. Mariella, noticing that he was faster than her, tried to play it more carefully, committing less energy to big attacks. But she couldn’t help but be a little frustrated, the necromancer could tell.

  She had gone from dominating their last spar to having trouble keeping up.

  From the attacks that Tybalt did receive, he could feel she was still at least as strong as him, probably stronger.

  But she was much slower now, and she had no other apparent advantages in a physical fight besides that towering strength. They both knew each other’s moves by now, not that they hadn’t before. Neither of them was a monk type class that unlocked martial arts secrets with levels. They had both received essentially the same basic martial arts training from the Royal Nietian Army.

  Tybalt allowed himself to take an elbow to the stomach so that he could land a punch. Even being faster than her, there was still a cost to getting inside of her guard.

  She shifted at the last second, and his knuckles struck her in the face instead of the body.

  He winced. That would leave a black eye if we didn’t both have high constitutions. He was fairly certain that as things stood, neither of them would have any marks on them an hour after the spar concluded.

  He opened his mouth to apologize, and he was taken off guard by an uppercut to his chin. She hadn’t stopped just because she took a hit in the face. He bit down hard, involuntarily, on his lip, and he tasted blood in his mouth.

  Well, forget apologizing, then. We both embraced this anyway.

  She tried to capitalize on him being off-balance from the punch, but he sidestepped her follow-up kick and punch.

  Mariella threw herself after him, and all one hundred pounds or so of her tackled Tybalt into a tree.

  He laughed, he couldn’t help it. Body weight attacks from her were less than harmless at this point in their respective levels of development. If he’d wanted to, he probably could have thrown her from the mountainside using her own weight against her when she was in midair. He had the agility to accomplish that more quickly than she could stop him.

  She responded to his laughter. A hand reached out, grabbed his collar, and threw him to the ground.

  “Enough of you slipping away,” she growled.

  She straddled him, only for Tybalt to grasp one of her thighs between two of his and roll to flip their positions. She tried to pull him back down, and he slid out of her grabbing range again.

  In apparent frustration, she lunged from her position on the ground and managed to grab his sleeve.

  Then he twisted free, grabbed the back of her sleeve, and threw her to the ground in a fluid series of quick movements.

  As she rose to all fours to get back up again, he slapped her hard on the ass.

  “Hey!” she yelped in surprise rather than pain. “What—what do you…?”

  “You used mana,” Tybalt replied, grinning. “I think that’s how I’ll respond to that. When you use mana, I’ll just give you a friendly little reminder not to.”

  “I… I did, didn’t I?”

  It must be almost second nature to Mariella, using mana in a fight, even if it isn’t a mage fight. It had happened when she was frustrated. A quick burst of mana into one ankle, allowing her to move quickly enough to grab hold of him. She could enhance her agility for a key moment like the one when Tybalt was slipping backward out of reach. The fire mage seemed to already know that her agility was her relative weak point.

  Using mana this way wasn’t second nature to Tybalt. He had never been as adept with it until he got his class- and, now that he had his class, he was required to focus hard if he wanted to use his mana for normal tasks like enhancing himself, since his necromancer and pestilence mana was usually deleterious to human flesh rather than helpful.

  “Um, sorry,” she said quietly.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  She rose to her feet again and tackled him, this time not throwing herself but charging. The difference was that her feet didn’t leave the ground.

  She’s thinking a lot more about how to compensate for the difference in speed, Tybalt thought appreciatively. Of course she is. Mariella is a real fighter. Adaptable.

  He allowed her to take him to the ground again, and again, he used the moment when his back was on the ground and she was taking her position above him to flip her into his position. The pair began wrestling, quickly trading places on top, back and forth.

  Mariella was too strong to be pinned down indefinitely. Still stronger than Tybalt, for certain, so he deliberately avoided going all out in brute force and instead focused on slipping out of her grip, putting her in holds that were hard to escape with just somewhat superior strength, and trying to use as much of her energy up as possible.

  The two of them sparred—mostly wrestled, because Mariella could clearly tell she was getting nowhere with striking attacks—for well over an hour. Perhaps two or three hours.

  It was far more intensely physical than their first spar together had been.

  As the struggle wore on, Tybalt began introducing little surprises into their fight. When he pinned her, about half of the time, he would kiss her hard on the mouth before she could do anything to reverse their places.

  If he got her into a more compromising position, he would sometimes grab her breasts or her ass or playfully smack it again.

  The first time he did that, she asked, “Did I use mana?”

  To which he responded, “I don’t think so. Can you stop me from doing it, though?”

  Gradually, the spar devolved into a mixture of true wrestling and tongue wrestling, bodies pressing hard against each other. One of them might be on top, though who that person was shifted each time, but it wasn’t clear that meant the person was winning—if, indeed, there was any winning left anymore.

  Tybalt broke off one of their kisses with a little smile.

  He was on top, and Mariella’s hands were on his hips, a light, affectionate touch.

  It’s over, he thought.

  She had been weakening for a while now.

  He quickly grabbed her two hands in his and pushed them backward until he forced them to the ground, holding her in place, their faces inches apart.

  Mariella didn’t struggle at first. Then, when it was apparent that he was challenging her to a direct contest of strength, she tried to push his hands back up. She managed to lift the backs of her hands a couple of inches off the ground before he slammed them back down.

  The look of surprise when she couldn’t push his palms back up and free her hands was one he would never forget.

  “You… won…” The words weren’t spoken aloud, just mouthed with an expression of surprise.

  “I think we should move on to more interesting activities,” Tybalt whispered into her ear.