Chapter 6 – The Duke Who Only Speaks Fist

The training hall smelled like blood and old leather.

Stone walls. Weapon racks. A man the size of a small horse standing dead in the middle of it.

The man turned around.

He had a beard like an angry shrub. A scar split his left eyebrow clean into two pieces. His shoulders did not fit through normal doors. He was, without question, my new father.

Duke Reginald Vandermere.

Cool. Cool, cool, cool.

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

The silence in the training hall stretched out long enough to read a short story.

“You are late.”

“Yes.”

“Breakfast was an hour ago.”

“Yes.”

“I had to eat alone.”

“Sorry about that.”

He cracked his knuckles.

Each crack sounded like a small door closing on a small future where I lived to see lunch. The rack of practice swords behind him glinted. Up in the rafters, a nervous pigeon decided this was its problem now and noped out a high window.

I took a breath.

I had practiced this line in the hallway. Twice. Three times. It had sounded clean in my head. Now it felt like a rock in my mouth.

I said it anyway.

“Father. I want to train.”

The Duke blinked.

“Say that again, boy.”

“I want to train.”

“You.”

“Yes.”

“Want to train.”

“Yes.”

“With me.”

“That was the general idea.”

He stared at me.

Three full seconds. I counted them. Somewhere out the window, the pigeon panicked at a leaf.

Then he laughed.

It was not a normal laugh. It was the laugh of a bear discovering a salmon factory. It rolled out of his chest like a small earthquake. He doubled over. He slapped his thigh. The practice swords on the rack rattled in sympathy.

I waited.

I tried to look like a guy who had expected this exact reaction.

He straightened up. Wiped a tear out of one eye. Pointed one enormous finger at me.

“Finally.”

“Father—”

“Finally.”

“I—”

“The Vandermere blood has woken up.”

“I would not call it—”

“I was three days from disowning you and adopting an orc.”

“That is. Specific.”

“I had a name picked out.”

“Of the orc.”

“Reginald Junior.”

“Bold choice.”

“He had good shoulders.”

“Father.”

He grinned.

It was a wide, sharp, slightly unhinged grin. The exact grin I had practiced in the mirror upstairs. So that was where I got it. Mystery solved. Genetic horror confirmed.

He pointed one finger at the wall behind me.

“Stand there.”

“Why?”

“To test you.”

“Test me how.”

He cracked his knuckles again.

I sighed.

I walked to the wall.

The stone was cold against my back. My boots squeaked on the polished floor. The Duke stood ten feet away, rolling his shoulders like a man warming up to crush a watermelon.

“Brace.”

“Brace what?”

“Yourself.”

“Father, listen, I do not think—”

He moved.

It was not running, running implied effort. He simply appeared, faster than any man his size had a legal right to move. One huge palm slammed flat against the wall beside my head. Stone cracked. Dust drifted into my hair. My ears rang like cathedral bells.

He grinned down at me.

“Good.”

“Good?”

“You did not flinch.”

“I absolutely flinched.”

“Internally does not count.”

“It really, really should.”

He stepped back.

He picked a wooden practice sword off the rack and tossed it at me. I caught it. Barely. The grip felt wrong in my hand. The boy in this body had clearly never lifted anything heavier than a teacup, and even those, only to throw.

The Duke picked up his own sword.

It was twice the size of mine. He held it the way I held a pencil. Casual. Bored. Dangerous.

“First lesson.”

“Yes.”

“Hit me.”

“Hit you.”

“Anywhere you can reach.”

“This feels like a trap.”

“It is not a trap.”

“You are smiling.”

“I always smile.”

“That is also deeply concerning.”

He waved the sword in a lazy circle.

I lifted mine.

I swung.

He swatted my blade out of my hand without looking. The sword spun across the marble and clattered to a stop at his left boot. He looked down at it. He looked up at me. His eyebrows climbed about an inch.

“Pick it up.”

I picked it up.

I swung again.

Same result.

By the third try, I was ready for it. I shifted my weight. I aimed lower. He swatted the sword out of my hand anyway, but this time I felt the impact ring through my whole arm. My shoulder buzzed. My pinky ring sat warm against the wooden grip.

The Duke laughed.

“Better.”

“That was not better.”

“Your stance was better.”

“I dropped the sword.”

“You dropped it harder.”

“That is not a thing.”

“In this house, boy, it is.”

I stared at him.

He was, possibly, the most ridiculous human I had ever met. He was also, very clearly, having the best morning of his entire life.

I picked up the sword.

I tried again.

By the tenth swing, my arms had turned to jelly.

By the twentieth, my legs filed a formal complaint with management. By the thirtieth, the Duke was laughing every time I missed, which was every single time. The pigeon had given up and left town. The pinky ring on my hand was warm enough now to feel through the wooden grip.

I tried something stupid.

I lowered my voice. Just a little. Just on the way out. I let the warmth bloom behind my eyes the way it had with Lira—the way it had, for one careless second, with Kael.

“Father.”

“Boy.”

“That last one almost got you.”

The Duke paused.

His giant brow furrowed. He looked at the spot where my sword had not, in any reality, come within three feet of him. He looked at his own arm. He scratched his beard.

“Hm.”

“Right?”

“It was. Closer.”

“Much closer.”

“Yes. Yes, it was.”

The warmth behind my eyes faded.

He nodded slowly. He tilted his sword at me with new, fraudulent respect. The pinky ring went cool against my finger, like a small accomplice patting me on the shoulder.

I felt a little bad.

I felt a lot more impressed with myself.

The Duke grinned.

“Again.”

“Again?”

“Until you mean it.”

I groaned.

I lifted the sword anyway.

An hour later, I was flat on my back.

Sprawled across the stone. Staring up at the ceiling beams. Every muscle in my new body had filed for divorce. My pride was somewhere on the far side of the hall, possibly under a bench, refusing to come out.

The Duke crouched next to me.

His shadow blocked out the sun coming through the high windows. He did not look tired. He looked like a man who had just enjoyed a nice, long stretch.

He poked my shoulder with one finger.

“Up.”

“No.”

“Up, boy.”

“Bury me here.”

“The floor is expensive.”

“Bury me cheaply.”

He laughed.

Then he grabbed the back of my collar and yanked me to my feet like a kitten in a coat. My boots scraped the floor. My hair fell into my eyes. He set me down and clapped one enormous hand on my shoulder.

The clap nearly drove me through the marble.

“You are weak.”

“Thank you.”

“Embarrassingly weak.”

“Glad we agree.”

“It is, frankly, an offense to the Vandermere name.”

“Got it.”

“Therefore.”

He turned his head toward the door at the far end of the hall.

“Hannah.”

The door opened.

A woman stepped through.

She was tall. Older than Lira. Younger than the Duke. Her hair was the color of dark coffee and pulled into a single thick braid down her back. Her uniform was the same black-and-white Lira wore, but somehow it sat differently on her. Crisper. Sharper. The collar looked like it could draw blood on the way past.

She did not bow.

She nodded.

Once. Polite. Brief. The nod of a woman who had decided years ago exactly how much politeness cost and was not interested in handing out free samples.

She had grey eyes.

A different grey from Lira’s. Not soft. Storm grey. The kind of grey weather forecasters used to ruin weddings.

The Duke beamed at her like a kid showing off a new toy.

“Boy. This is Hannah. Head of household staff.”

“Hi.”

“She trained the house guard.”

“Cool.”

“And the house guard’s instructor.”

“Less cool.”

“And me.”

“Father.”

“Yes.”

“Are you saying?”

“Yes.”

“That she trained you.”

“Briefly.”

“Briefly.”

“She quit because I was, in her professional opinion, a hopeless cause.”

Hannah did not deny it.

She did not even blink. She stood there with her hands clasped behind her back, watching me the way a butcher watches a chicken whose number has finally come up.

I swallowed.

The Duke clapped my shoulder again.

I almost folded in half.

“Effective today, Hannah will train you.”

“Father—”

“Daily.”

“Father.”

“Until you are not embarrassing.”

“How long does that take?”

“Usually? Several years.”

“Great.”

“Weeks, if she likes you.”

“Does she like me?”

The Duke looked at Hannah.

Hannah looked at me.

The temperature in the training hall, somehow, dropped about ten degrees.

“No.”

The single word landed in the hall like a small, polite blade.

I forced a smile across my exhausted face.

“Good. Good. Off to a really strong start. Really laying the foundation.”

The Duke laughed.

He walked over to the rack. He pulled down two fresh practice swords. He tossed one to Hannah without looking. She caught it without looking. Their hand-eye coordination as a household, I noted, was deeply unfair.

He tossed the other one to me.

I caught it, this time on the first try—a small win. I would take any win at this point. I would frame it.

The Duke clapped his hands together.

“Begin when ready.”

“Father.”

“What?”

“You are leaving.”

“Yes.”

“You are leaving me here.”

“Yes.”

“With her.”

“Yes.”

He grinned.

It was the same wide, sharp, slightly unhinged grin from earlier. A father’s grin. A bear’s grin. The grin of a man who had been waiting his entire adult life to watch his disappointing son fight an unbeatable woman in his own training hall on a perfectly nice Tuesday morning.

He walked toward the door.

He paused at the threshold.

He looked back over his shoulder, exactly the way Kael had three hours earlier, because apparently every man in this story had attended the same dramatic exit seminar.

“Boy.”

“Yes.”

“Survive.”

The door closed behind him with a soft, final click.

The hall went very, very quiet.

Hannah lifted her practice sword. She slid one boot back. Her storm grey eyes locked onto mine over the polished wooden blade.

I lifted my sword.

I matched her stance.

My pinky ring was warm against my finger.