Chapter 40: Congratulations

Lily hit me at roughly the speed of a thrown chair.

I’d gotten maybe ten steps off the ring floor and into the side corridor, still holding a rag to my nose, when she came around the corner and got both arms around my middle. Then she squeezed, right where Fenna had hit me twice.

"You won," she said into my shoulder.

"Ow. Ribs, careful."

"Sorry! Sorry." She let go by about two inches and looked up at me with her eyes shining and her hands still on my sides. "You actually won, against Fenna Greywild, and she’s, everyone said she was going to be in the top eight, everyone said it, and you—"

"I know."

"Your nose is bleeding."

"It’s been doing that since the second minute. Hardly a new phenomenon."

She took the rag off me and started dabbing at my face herself, standing on her toes and frowning with her whole forehead. I let her, because I was very tired and she looked really cute doing it.

In any case, there were sixteen of us left in the bracket. One of them was Serena Frostfall, one of them was the crown prince of this entire kingdom. To get Lily the Benediction I had to beat every single one of them that got put in front of me. I had done exactly one, and that one had cost me a nose, some knuckles, and most of my mana.

[Long staircase. Whatever, though. First step’s done.]

Six weeks ago I was an F-rank extra who fell over a tree root. Today I put a Knight Course monster on her back.

I let myself have that one.

"Come on," I said. "I’m starving. If I don’t eat something in the next ten minutes I’m going to lie down on this floor and become a problem for the janitorial staff."

---

The arena grounds had turned into a market.

Seventeen-year-old me was very clear in her notes that the fighting was there to give students something to do between the food stalls. Every province sends someone. The Wildfolk delegation runs half the eastern row and the Church runs a stall that sells blessed pastries, which are... just pastries.

We got skewers first, some kind of river-eel thing from the southern coast, grilled on a stick, sweet and salty, hot enough to take the roof of my mouth off. After that came fried dough with purple sugar on it. Then Lily made me try a fruit I’d never written and couldn’t identify, which was fine, and a fermented milk drink from the Wildfolk row that tasted awful.

"It’s good for you," said the woman running the stall.

"It’s punishment."

"It’s that as well, but you’ll thank me in the morning."

Lily drank hers without complaining, because Lily is a better person than me. Then she quietly bought a fruit juice and didn’t say anything about it.

We ended up sitting on the low wall at the edge of the grounds with our food, watching people go by. A couple of people recognized me and pointed. I heard the word "fox" go past three separate times, and one guy said "the C-rank, the one with the weasel," which is the greatest thing I have ever been called.

The weasel, personally, was asleep in my collar and had been since the match ended.

"Kohaku," Lily said.

"Mm."

"I want to help you train."

I looked over at her. She had both hands around the juice cup and she’d clearly decided what she was going to say somewhere on the walk over.

"You’ve been teaching me swordwork every morning since the forest," she said. "Every morning. You get up before me, you set out the practice blades, you never once said you were tired, and I just took it. And then you go off in the afternoons and come back with bruises and you don’t tell me where you’ve been."

[Ruin. Monsters. Your literal magic teacher’s affair partner. Please don’t ask.]

"So I want to help," she said. "I’m not, I know I lost my match, I know that, but I’m still, well, you know what I can do. And you’re going to have to fight people like Frostfall. So let me help. Please."

She said the last part fast and then looked at her juice.

Lily Everdawn beating drills into me was objectively the correct move. She has the Calamity Queen’s blood, monstrous stats, and she’s the best swordswoman in her year even when she’s holding back. Turning that down would be professional malpractice.

I put my arm around her and pulled her in.

"EH!?"

"You’re hired," I said.

"Really?"

"Absolutely. Full authority. Yell at me, hit me with the flat, whatever gets results." I squeezed her against my side and put my chin on top of her head, which I can do, being taller. "Although I hope you know what you’re signing up for. Early mornings. Long hours. Sweaty. Hands all over each other correcting form. It’s a very intimate working relationship, Lily, and I don’t want you falling for your student."

She went red from the collarbone up in about a second and a half.

"That’s, I’m not, that’s not what training is!"

"Isn’t it? Because that’s how it’s gone every morning so far."

"No! You stand apart and you swing at each other and then you go and have breakfast, that’s the whole-" She stopped and narrowed her eyes at me. "You’re doing this on purpose!"

"I have no idea what you mean."

I ruffled her hair. She batted at my hand, then gave up and stayed leaning on me anyway.

[God, she’s adorable.]

We stayed on the wall until the sun went orange over the stalls.

They post the next round at the end of the day, on the big board by the north gate, and everybody crowds it. Marisol was somewhere in that crowd. I saw the curls and went the other way, because I did not have the mana left today to be publicly claimed by anybody.

They read the pairings out loud, too, for the people who can’t get close.

Frostfall drew some poor third-year whose name I didn’t catch. The prince drew a Mage Course boy. Cassian drew a girl from the exchange program. The matches run over two days that weekend, and the eight who survive go on from there.

Then:

"Round of sixteen, match five. Kohaku Sakana, Commoner Scholarship."

Lily’s hand found my sleeve.

"Versus Sir Perrin Alderltoft, Knight Course."

[Oh. They gave me Perrin. The man who left Lily standing in front of a Warden and ran, and they’ve put him in a ring with me in front of the entire school.]

I smiled so wide it hurt my face.