from the distance, Selina could have sworn the woman’s eyes met hers. Full of challenge. And invitation.
She’d jumped and run across rooftops with the Leopards, hauling TV sets and other stolen goods. Then, the drop had been thirty feet, not three hundred. But no less lethal.
And perhaps it was the thought of those Leopards she’d left behind a month ago, but Selina murmured to Anaya, “Go. Now. I’ll block for you.”
Warning flared in Anaya’s rich brown eyes, her long black hair fluttering in the fierce wind roaring through the peaks. A test of trust.
Selina only held the other girl’s gaze, steady and calm. “Now,” she repeated as the four acolytes began to approach, smiling faintly.
Yeah, they’d try to spook them. Trip them.
With a shallow nod, Anaya sucked in a breath and launched into a sprint.
A blond acolyte moved first. Scooped up a small rock to throw, discreet and tiny enough to go unseen as her arm cocked back—
Selina grabbed another stone, slinging it out. Slamming right into the blonde’s arm. Forcing her fingers to splay and drop the rock that had been aimed for Anaya.
Anaya hurtled down that narrow path. The acolyte from Serbia moved next. Lunging toward Anaya’s path, to force her to dodge sideways, to lose traction.
Selina was on her before Anaya could register the movement.
The Serbian acolyte let out a grunt of pain as Selina stomped down on her foot. The acolyte’s body arced downward, as if she’d grab her own foot, right into Selina’s awaiting elbow.
She’d done the move a thousand times in the fighting rings. Always followed by her next move: locking the Serbian acolyte’s arm and hurling her toward the other two approaching acolytes, as if they were no more than the ropes of the ring. Sending the three of them staggering back.
Selina didn’t wait. Didn’t give them a moment to recover as she whirled and ran.
Anaya soared through the mountain air, the breeze shoving her to the right—
But she landed, barely, and scrabbled her way onto the ledge, where Nyssa didn’t so much as look at her.
No, because Nyssa was watching Selina as she thundered down the narrow path toward the ravine as the acolytes recovered enough to realize her plan and look for retaliation.
She didn’t have as much space as Anaya had to make that jump. With the attack, she’d yielded twenty feet.
But Selina raced onward, the ledge nearing, the drop beyond beckoning.
Pain flared on the side of her head, a starburst of agony. She stumbled a step but kept going, kept going as more hurled rocks landed behind her. She didn’t care where the other acolytes had come from, but she knew where she’d been born. Where she’d been raised.
She wondered if the others knew, if Nyssa knew, that the pain was secondary. The pain was an old friend. Introduced long before those fights, before the Leopards. Introduced courtesy of her mother.
So the blow to the head did not stop her. It had never stopped her, that kind of pain.
And as Selina cleared the ledge and leapt, throwing herself a bit farther left to account for the gusting of the wind, she only heard the screaming air and the roughness of her breathing, only felt the bitter cold and the warmth of the blood trickling down the side of her face.
The opposite ledge was too far. Still too far.
Every nerve in her body came screaming awake as she slammed into the edge of the cliff, half on, half off. Gravity hauling her down—
Anaya lunged for her, but Nyssa held out an arm. Blocking her path.
Selina’s nails broke and screamed in agony as she dug them into the rock.
But where Nyssa had refused to help, Nature threw her a bone.
A rise in the stone with enough of a jutting lip that her hands latched on. And held.
And held.
Nyssa made no move to help Selina as she hauled herself up, arms trembling, head pounding.
And when Selina at last had solid ground beneath her, when her temple was dripping blood onto the gray stone as she crawled, panting, from the ledge toward Nyssa, she looked up at her instructor.
Nyssa glanced between her and Anaya.
And Selina could do nothing as Nyssa shoved Anaya over the cliff edge.
Anaya did not scream. There was only silence. And then a thud that echoed over the granite peaks.
Selina couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything other than stare at Nyssa, her dark eyes so cold.
Nyssa offered no explanation.
None.
Selina cleared the leap between buildings, claws finding purchase in the