She knew what Vaisra wanted. She was tired of that argument.
“Reach matters more than maneuverability.” She wedged her foot under the trident and kicked it up into her hands.
Nezha came at her from the right. “Reach?”
She parried. “When you summon fire, there’s no one who’s going to get close to you.”
He hung back. “Not to state the obvious, but you can’t really do that anymore.”
She scowled at him. “I’ll fix it.”
“Suppose you don’t?”
“Suppose you stop underestimating me?”
She didn’t want to tell him that she’d been trying. That every night she climbed up to this same clearing where no one would see her, took a dose of Chaghan’s stupid blue powder, approached the Seal, and tried to burn the ghost of Altan out of her mind.
It never worked. She could never bring herself to hurt him, not that wonderful version of Altan that she’d never known. When she tried to fight him, he grew angry. And then he reminded her why she’d always been terrified of him.
The worst part was that Altan seemed to be getting stronger every time. His eyes burned more vividly in the dark, his laughter rang louder, and several nights he’d nearly choked the breath from her before she got her senses back. It didn’t matter that he was only a vision. Her fear made him more present than anything else.
“Look alive.” Rin jabbed at Nezha’s side, hoping to catch him off guard, but he whipped his blade out and parried just in time.
They sparred for a few more seconds, but she was quickly losing heart. Her trident suddenly seemed twice as heavy in her arms; she felt like she was fighting at a third her normal speed. Her footwork was sloppy, without form or technique, and her swings grew increasingly haphazard and unguarded.
“It’s not the worst thing,” Nezha said. He batted a wild blow away from his head. “Aren’t you glad?”
She stiffened. “Why would I be glad?”
“I mean, I just thought . . .” He touched a hand to his temple. “Isn’t it at least nice to have your mind back to yourself?”
She slammed the hilt of the trident down into the ground. “You think I’d lost my mind?”
Nezha rapidly backtracked. “No, I mean, I thought—I saw how you were hurting. That looked like torture. I thought you might be a little relieved.”
“It’s not a relief to be useless,” she said.
She twirled the trident over her head, whipped it around to generate momentum. It wasn’t a staff—and she should know better than to wield it with staff techniques—but she was angry now, she wasn’t thinking, and her muscles settled into familiar but wrong patterns.
It showed. Nezha may as well have been sparring with a toddler. He sent the trident spinning out of her hands in seconds.
“I told you,” he said. “No flexibility.”
She snatched the trident up off the ground. “Still has longer reach than your sword.”
“So what happens if I get in close?” Nezha twisted his blade between the trident’s gaps and closed the distance between them. She tried to fend him off, but he was right—he was out of the trident’s reach.
He raised a dagger to her chin with his other hand. She kicked savagely at his shin. He buckled to the ground.
“Bitch,” he said.
“You deserved it.”
“Fuck you.” He rocked back and forth on the grass, clutching his leg. “Help me up.”
“Let’s take a break.” She dropped the trident and sat down on the grass beside him. Her lung capacity hadn’t returned. She was still tiring too quickly; she couldn’t last more than two hours sparring, much less a full day in the field.
Nezha hadn’t even broken a sweat. “You’re much better with a sword. Please tell me you know that.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“That thing is useless! It’s too heavy for you! But I’ve seen you with a sword, and—”
“I’ll get used to it.”
“I just think that you shouldn’t make life-or-death choices based on sentimentality.”
She glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He ripped a handful of grass from the ground. “Forget it.”
“No, say it.”
“Fine. You won’t trade because it’s his weapon, isn’t it?”
Rin’s stomach twisted. “That’s idiotic.”
“Oh, come on. You’re always talking about Altan like he was some great hero. But he wasn’t. I saw him at Khurdalain, and I saw the way he spoke to people—”
“And how did he speak to people?” she asked sharply.
“Like they were objects, and he owned them, and they didn’t matter to him apart from how they could serve.” His tone turned vicious.