Royal Outlaw: (Royal Outlaw, Book 1) by Kayla Hudson

Author:Kayla Hudson [Hudson, Kayla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-06-30T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

“If you want to be good, you have to learn to use a sword in both hands. This is an old trick of the Versati Corps.”

Mariel shifted her wooden practice sword into her left hand and took the ready stance.

Her papa laughed. “It’s not that easy, my little fairy. If you have to use the other hand, it’s probably because your sword arm is wounded.”

He stepped forward and tightly bound Mariel’s arm to her body in a painful position.

“That hurts!” she whined, as she moved and pain shot up her arm.

“So does a broken or wounded arm. You have to learn to ignore the pain and become good with the other hand. You’ll practice this way until I say your left hand is as good as your right.”

The girl groaned.

Mariel felt a sharp pain in her stomach that had nothing to do with her mostly healed wounds and she shook her head trying to stop the flow of the memory from the days when Darren had trained her.

Mariel absently rubbed her left arm and felt the tightly wound bandage beneath her thin nightdress. The pain had lessened considerably over the last month and the flesh had come back. She sighed and picked up Aracklin with her right hand, wishing she was nine and being trained by her papa once more and the reason she could not exercise with her left arm was because it was bound to her side, but, alas, true injury was the culprit of her temporary handicap and she had to make do with what she had.

Settling into a fighting stance, Mariel let all thoughts and feelings slip from her mind as she moved into one of her fighting patterns. Aracklin sliced through the air as Mariel silently danced across the thick, exotic rugs covering the floor of the royal suite in the Citadel in the City of the Gods. She exalted in the loosening of her muscles and the feel of sweat as she began to move into a more complex pattern.

Reality pulled Mariel back long before she was ready. The muscles that had been used little over the last month screamed in protest at the movements. Panting, she collapsed into one of the puffy chairs. She tried to convince herself that the drops of liquid running down her cheeks near her eyes were beads of sweat, but she knew that they were tears of frustration.

After spending two weeks on mandatory bed rest and the following two weeks only walking, Mariel had lost the strong muscles she had so carefully maintained most of her life. She did not remember being this out of shape since she had been six and lived as an exiled illegitimate princess with her mother at Remel.

Mariel launched from the chair. Dizziness from fatigue struck and she wobbled a moment before regaining her balance. Lurching toward the water pitcher on the stand on the far wall of the room, she took several large gulps of water directly from it and then poured the rest over her face and head, destroying all evidence of tears.

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