It was time to get him out of here, so that she could return to her rooms and return to herself.

Chapter Ten

HE WAS a marvelous opponent. She couldn’t get to him. She couldn’t hit him where she meant to, or as hard as she wanted. He was so quick to block or to twist, so quick to react. She couldn’t knock him from his feet, she couldn’t trap him when their fight had devolved into a wrestling match on the floor.

He was so much stronger than she, and for the first time in her life, she found her lesser strength to be a disadvantage. No one had ever gotten close enough to her for it to matter, before this.

He was so finely tuned to his surroundings, and to her movements; and that was also part of the challenge. He always seemed to know what she was doing, even when she was behind him.

“I’ll grant you don’t have night vision if you’ll grant you have eyes in the back of your head,” she said once, when she’d entered the practice room and he’d greeted her without looking round to identify her.

“What do you mean?”

“You always know what’s happening behind you.”

“Katsa, do you never notice the noise you make when you burst into a room? No one flings doors open the way you do.”

“Perhaps your Grace gives you a heightened sense of things,” she said.

He shook his head. “Perhaps, but no more than your own.”

He still got the worst of their fights, because of her flexibility and her tireless energy, and mostly because of her speed. She might not hit him how she wanted, but she still hit him. And he suffered pain more. He stopped the fight once while she grappled to pin his arm and his legs and his back to the ground and he hit her repeatedly in the ribs with his one free hand.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” he said, gasping with laughter. “Don’t you feel it? I’ve hit you possibly twelve times, and you don’t even flinch.”

She sat up on her heels and felt the spot, below her breast. “It hurts, but it’s not bad.”

“Your bones are made of rock. You walk away from these fights without a sore spot, while I limp away and spend the day icing my bruises.”

He didn’t wear his rings while they fought. He’d come without them the first day. When she’d protested that it was an unnecessary precaution, his face had assumed a mask of innocence.

“I promised Giddon, didn’t I?” he’d said, and that fight had begun with Po ducking, and laughing, as Katsa swung at his face.

They didn’t wear their boots, either, not after Katsa accidentally clipped him on the forehead. He had dropped to his hands and knees, and she saw at once what had happened. “Call Raff!” she’d cried to Oll, who watched on the side. She’d sat Po on the floor, ripped off her own sleeve, and tried to stop the flow of blood that ran into his dazed eyes. When Raffin had given him the go-ahead to fight a few days later, she’d insisted they fight barefoot. And in truth, she had taken more care of his face since then.