I kicked away from the wall and reached for my knife. It was a simple kitchen tool, a world apart from the shiny new sword the girl who did not belong here carried, too dull even to gleam in the moonlight, but sharp. And sharp is what does the trick.

I shot the girl a look. I thought I knew what I would see in her face. Fear. But instead I saw something that surprised me. Glee. Anticipation. And a steely determination I hadn’t expected. Her hands shook as she reached for her sword, but only slightly. It made her more interesting than she had been seconds ago.

The men came toward us, moving as an undisciplined unit. I spared her a quick glance. “Hope you know how to use that pigsticker, princesa.”

She shot me a look that was as sharp as that sword. “Baronesa, technically. Well, almost.”

“Huh.” I twirled my knife as I watched the man approach. He thought we were easy prey. Two girls. Children, really. She might have been, but I damn well wasn’t. “If we live through this, you’ll have to tell me how the daughter of a baron wound up in a place like this.”

“Deal.”

“What’s your name, by the way? Just in case I have to inform your loved ones of your sudden death at the hand of drunken assholes.”

She smiled, sharp and vicious. “My name is Eustaquia de Sonza, daughter of the Barón de Sonza. First of her name.”

With that, she charged, sword aloft, straight at them. Straight at four men twice her size and drunk as rats drowning in a barrel of ale. Straight into the arms of certain death.

And somehow, she did not die.

The fight goes fuzzy in the dream. The details of it aren’t important. What was important were the nights that followed. I waited for her in the same spot, in that alcove. Without fail, she came by again and again. We would run amok, looking for trouble and causing it when we didn’t find it. On one such night, she invited me to her house. And then, I never left.

The dream fades as I roll over in bed, mostly still asleep, but with a smile on my lips. I liked that memory because that was it, really. The moment I knew.

I, Ana Lezama de Urinza, was in love.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Kiki

My head aches only a little when I wake up, but it’s enough to make me wish I was still asleep.