(Sable POV)
The next few days blurred into a rhythm of bruises and breakthroughs.
Morning: stumble into the hall sore, get greeted by Adrian's infuriatingly calm, "You're late." (I wasn't.)
Afternoon: swords, pain, lectures about "balance" and "stance" that sounded suspiciously like philosophy.
Evening: collapsing into bed with my Knights stationed like quiet sentries in the woods beyond the castle walls, their constant awareness flickering in the back of my mind like far-off campfires.
Progress was… painful. But real.
I stopped lunging like an overeager amateur. Learned that folding mid-swing was as much about timing as instinct—fold too early and you give away intent; fold too late and you land in someone's blade. Adrian didn't compliment me outright—he just stopped humiliating me quite so efficiently. Small victories.
By the end of the first week, I could survive two minutes against him without being disarmed. By the second, five.
On the fifteenth day, something shifted.
We clashed in the center of the ring, steel ringing like bells in a storm. I parried high, feinted low, folded behind him—and he missed me. Just barely, but enough that his golden eyes sparked with something I hadn't seen before: genuine surprise.
"Better," he said, and though his tone was still even, there was weight to it.
I grinned through the sweat stinging my eyes. "Careful, Adrian. If you start encouraging me, I might get dangerous."
"You might," he allowed. And then, faster than thought, he had me flat on my back again.
Progress.
(Adrian POV)
The man was insufferable. Loud in his own quiet way. Nervous energy wrapped around sarcasm like armor. When I'd first agreed to train him, I assumed it would be a brief exercise in futility—a courtesy to my mother, perhaps, and little more.
But Sable… surprised me.
He lacked grace, true. His footwork was a disaster in the beginning, his instincts too heavily reliant on vanishing instead of confronting. Yet there was a persistence to him. Each fall, each failed strike, he absorbed like a sponge—not bitterly, not with despair, but with this stubborn refusal to quit.
It was… irritating. Admirable. Both.
By the third week, I found myself anticipating our sessions. Not because he had become an equal (he hadn't), but because he was learning. When I struck, he adapted. When I pushed harder, he didn't flinch away. He started asking questions mid-spar—sharp ones, the kind that revealed he was thinking beyond survival.
"Why do you angle your blade before a thrust?"
"To create a false line."
"And if I wanted to counter it?"
"Then stop looking at the blade and look at me."
His humor grated less as the days wore on. I even caught myself… amused, once or twice. When he tripped over his own foot, rolled with it into an unintentional dodge, and had the gall to look proud of himself, I laughed. Out loud. I hadn't done that in… years.
He froze, blinking at me like I'd grown horns. "Did you just—was that laughter? Mark the calendar, I got Dracula's son to—"
"Focus," I snapped, though my lips almost curved again.
What startled me most, however, wasn't his improvement with a blade. It was what I saw in his eyes when we locked swords: a depth of intent I recognized. He wanted to be better not for vanity, but for purpose. Whatever his mission, it burned in him like a second heart.
One evening, after a particularly grueling session where he'd managed to hold me at bay for nearly ten minutes, we ended in mutual silence, standing in the cooling hall with swords lowered.
"You've improved," I said simply.
He shrugged, breathing hard, but his eyes gleamed. "Guess I've got a good teacher."
I should have brushed it off. Instead, I found myself saying, "You have a good will."
He blinked at that. Then, slowly, a small, genuine smile spread across his face—not his usual lopsided grin, but something quieter. "Thanks."
Something in me—some old, guarded part—loosened a fraction.
Perhaps this man of stars and sarcasm might, in time, become something more than a student. Perhaps… an ally.
(Sable POV)
By the end of the month, we moved like dancers instead of mismatched partners. Not perfect, but fluent enough that even Adrian acknowledged it. My Knights had begun to integrate into the drills, responding to my calls mid-spar. I could feel their awareness threading through me like an extra sense, my blade work syncing with theirs in a way that made me feel… whole.
One night, as we wrapped up, I caught Adrian watching me with that unreadable gaze of his.
"What?" I asked.
He shook his head slightly, almost a smile on his lips. "Nothing. Just… seeing how far you've come."
For once, I didn't deflect with a joke. "Not done yet."
"No," he agreed. "But no longer at the beginning, either."
It wasn't much. But coming from him? It felt like the highest praise in the world.