Persie Merlin and the Witch Hunters - Bella Forrest Page 0,3
my bathroom mirror after a particularly brutal arena session, or during moments of deep exhaustion. Anytime I was at my most vulnerable, it seemed—like he had a radar for my gloom. I might not have minded if he had more interesting things to say, but he was usually interrupting the hours of personal study that I had to do after classes ended, and he brought nothing of value to the conversation. He chitchatted, mostly one-sidedly, about the glory of Purging and how magnificent I’d look by his side, as his queen. That last bit tended to cut the conversation off sharp, every damn time.
My attention was snapped up again by Genie, in the center of the dojo floor. She darted forward like a furious honey badger, hands up and ready to boogie. This was the only athletic class that didn’t allow magic, but Genie was like a fighting chameleon, able to adapt to any and all circumstances and surroundings. On the other side of the training room, Marcel took a few casual steps toward his swift opponent. The sensei and the grasshopper, though I had no idea how this was going to end.
“Ah, come on, I know you can move faster than that! Don’t give me this shuffling old bear trick!” Genie shouted, peacocking a little. She wasn’t a show-off, but she was a bit of a performer. Now that our classmates had our backs and we had theirs, the Institute definitely felt more like home. Mom was part thrilled, part miffed by that revelation, but I’d come to learn that moms always had a gear to grind, even when things were going well. Or maybe she just missed me as intensely as I missed her.
Marcel snickered. “You fight with your hands, Genie, not your gob.”
Genie ignored this jibe and dropped to her knees, skidding right between Marcel’s legs. I could’ve sworn I saw a flicker of confusion on the scholar’s face as he processed what had happened. Genie jumped up on the other side and drove a kick into the back of Marcel’s knee, but his leg stayed firmly rooted, like the oak trunk it imitated. “I swear, you’ve had your bones replaced with metal,” she said, ducking away from his arm as it swung back to pull her into that deadly headlock.
“Aye, and you grease yourself up before you come to my classes. Slippery as a jellied eel!” Marcel leapt into a breathtaking swan dive, curving his head up at the last moment before impact with the spring floor, so his shoulders took the hit. As the rest of his body followed through the roll, he popped up to his feet, all in one fluid motion. My Uncle Finch, with his troubling enthusiasm for that ancient film Flashdance, would’ve been whooping and hollering right about now.
“It wouldn’t be any fun if you could catch me,” Genie shot back, pacing in front of her assailant.
Colette exhaled a tense breath in the brief pause. “Yeesh, that was close. When he gets you in that headlock, it’s all over.” She rubbed the crimson shadow on her throat, evidence of her turn with the scholar. Marcel’s headlocks were infamous, and though he’d taught us how to use them, they were never as precise or deadly as his.
“At least ya arm stayed in its socket, eh?” Dauda winced as he rolled his own injured shoulder in a circle. The clicking sound that emitted from his bones turned my stomach. Dauda was a six-foot-five, hard-as-nails Sierra-Leonean, so I felt slightly better knowing he’d had his ass handed to him too.
Marcel mopped his shiny brow on the back of the Institute’s version of a judogi, which we all wore for these lessons. The judogi worn by trainees was black and durable, with a strip of white cutting through the center to identify us as first years. Marcel wore a solid maroon belt, which he tightened before lunging back in to silence Genie’s smart remarks. Finally, they were in close combat. For every strike that Marcel put up, Genie blocked it with a forearm, a palm, a shoulder—the sound of the fast impacts smacked through the room, making everyone flinch. For every strike Genie tried to land, Marcel countered as though he were flicking lint off his uniform.
“You’re thinking too much,” he warned as he advanced on her, forcing her to retreat before jabbing the heel of his palm into her sternum and knocking her backward.
She recovered quickly, steadying herself by squatting low. “I thought I