Avaunt laughed. “You? What can you do? Are you going to run up a wall a few times and hope to make me so dizzy that I pass out?”

“It doesn’t have to go down like this. You could just walk away.”

“I am a hidden blade, a knife in the shadows. I do not walk away. Why do you care who I kill? What has any of this to do with you?”

“It’s my job now,” Tanith said. “I help Sanctuaries around the world, hunting down criminals, fighting monsters, that sort of thing. I save people.”

“You’re an assassin, you ridiculous tart.”

“Ex-assassin,” said Tanith.

“And you really think you can stop me? I’ve always been twice the fighter you ever were, Highborn. You should scurry away before you annoy me.”

“I could,” Tanith conceded, “but seeing as how we both have swords, what do you say we fight to the death instead?”

Avaunt grinned. “You read my mind.”

She came in with blade flashing and Tanith blocked and blocked again and stepped back and kept blocking. Avaunt’s eyes burned with determination, her lip curled in hatred. She was right, of course. Avaunt had always been the best. Down there in the cold and the dark, her practice sword would smack against Tanith’s fingers, her arms, her head. She had something – a raw aggressiveness, an eagerness to inflict pain that Tanith had always lacked. But it wasn’t a practice sword Avaunt wielded tonight, and if Tanith were to survive, she needed to do something she’d never managed to do before – she needed to beat her.

Tanith jumped over a low swipe and turned her body sideways so her feet settled on the wall as she answered with a swipe of her own. Avaunt cursed, caught off balance. She stumbled and Tanith walked sideways, her sword clanging against Avaunt’s, keeping the pressure on, forcing her back. Avaunt lunged and Tanith flipped so that she was upside down and Avaunt passed beneath her. Tanith’s blade opened up her shoulder and Avaunt hissed. Energy crackled around her hands, but she needed both of them to hold the sword.

Just as Avaunt was getting the measure of her upside down, Tanith dropped to the floor and spun, opening a long slash across Avaunt’s thigh. Avaunt hobbled back a few steps and Tanith pressed the advantage. Avaunt’s guard was getting weaker. Her blocks were being pushed aside by Tanith’s overpowering strength. It was all so easy. It was all so incredibly easy.

Their blades locked and Avaunt did something, moved somehow, and Tanith felt an impact against her hips and the world tilted and she was on the ground and her hands were free.

Where the hell was her sword?