‘You fight to prove yourself to others,’ Israfil continued, voice low and fierce, meant only for her ears. ‘Pride drives you, and you think it makes you strong.’ His words pounded her as hard as the flurry of his blows that followed. Riv staggered backwards, her parries and blocks wilder, her counters slashing only empty air. ‘But you are wrong,’ Israfil ground on, ‘your pride is your weakness.’

She felt a squeeze of pain in her chest at his words, the world dimming around her, her vision focused solely upon Israfil.

‘It makes you brittle,’ he said, lips sneering in disgust and disappointment.

Riv reeled, spinning into open space to give herself a moment to recover; she was gasping as if she had just been gut-punched.

Brittle? No. I am strong, have trained every day, all my life for this.

Israfil’s blade slipped through her guard but her quick feet pivoted her away, its edge grazing the leather of her jerkin.

‘Is it because you have no father?’ Israfil said as he swirled around her. ‘That you feel you must try so hard to prove yourself?’

‘What?’ Riv spoke for the first time, feeling her shock and hurt shift into something else, edged in red. ‘No,’ she said in a snarl, ‘my sister is a White-Wing, as was my mam before her. I have enough to admire . . .’ More blows, driving air and words from her lungs, Israfil’s wooden blade connecting with her shoulder, one blow flowing into another, cracking into her ribs. A great pulse of his wings and she was stumbling back, slipping to one knee, the pain in her side fuelling the anger that was swelling in her gut, outrage at being so wronged by someone she had respected completely and utterly until only a handful of heartbeats ago.

My father? He is long dead.

She looked up at Israfil, who hovered above her, mouth twisted in some unreadable emotion.

‘You are weak,’ he said to her.

Riv leaped at Israfil, a red rage flooding through her. She grabbed his belt and hauled herself higher, saw his mouth was moving but could only dimly hear his shouted words because there was a roaring in her head like a storm shaking the trees of Drassil, and then her fist was slamming into Israfil’s face, once, twice, blood gushing from his nose, and his wings were beating, lifting them higher. Part of her was appalled at what she was doing, but that part of her was small and powerless, an observer to events, nothing more, watching as she rained blows upon the Ben-Elim. Even then all she could hear were his words, you are weak, you are brittle, and then the red mist filled her head and her vision until she saw and heard nothing except her own wordless howl.