"Beautiful fall, My Lord! Truly, the way you used your face to break the ground's momentum, simply inspired!"
Reiner's voice, bright and uncomfortably cheerful, sliced through the frigid morning air like a blunt hacksaw. Cherion didn't move. He remained exactly where he was, face-down in the slush of the Valtrane training grounds, tasting iron and wet dirt.
He'd been at this for two hours? Three hours? Forever? Time didn't even feel real anymore. And if he had the lung capacity left to manage it, he would have crawled across the yard just to bite Reiner's ankle.
He groaned, the sound muffled by the earth, and tried to push himself up. "Again, My Lord," a voice said. It wasn't loud. It wasn't mean. That was the problem.
