The Truelove Bride by Shana Abe

Author:Shana Abe [Abe, Shana]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Romance
ISBN: 9780553580549
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1999-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

You must remember to keep your wrist straight.” Avalon bent over the brown-haired girl, ran her fingers down the girl’s arm and tapped them against her wrist. “Here, you see? If you bend your wrist when you hit, you lose power, and you might hurt yourself.”

The girl was named Inez, and she dutifully repositioned her hand, following Avalon’s example. She was about thirteen, Avalon would guess, beginning to learn to fight at an age almost as old as Avalon had been at the end of her training.

Inez had soft brown eyes and a sweet, engaging smile. She was one of seven girls in Avalon’s rather eclectic group who had volunteered to learn the bride’s warrior skills. There were twenty-eight pupils in all, every one of them young. But there were adults lingering on the fringes of the crowd, men and women both.

When Inez and her friends shyly came forward that first morning to join the class, the boys had moaned and hissed them off, until Avalon silenced them by stating that unless all were welcome to learn, she would not teach any of them.

The boys had looked at her, and then back at the girls, who were sullen but still hopeful.

Avalon had walked over to the girls and begun there, showing them the proper stance before a hit. One by one, the boys had come over.

Every now and again she caught a glimpse of Marcus, watching through a window that looked down on the bailey, walking by with a group of men, even standing and just looking at her, the wizard at his side. His face had been dispassionate, his expression mostly matter-of-fact, but underneath that exterior the chimera told her he was pleased, greatly so. She probably should have found that disturbing, but couldn’t.

Over two weeks had passed since he told her she owed him a boon. Sixteen days, and he had not mentioned it again. Nor had he talked to her of marriage. In fact, he seemed content to allow her a measure of freedom, to discover Sauveur on her own, apparently taking her at her word when she said she would stay. For now.

The door to her room was never locked now, and this gave her some comfort at night, knowing she could walk out any time she wanted. There was no guard trailing her. People still stared, yes, and they still talked and thought about her; she was still a novelty here. But in these two weeks she had had time to gradually come to know both the castle and its inhabitants, and they her. It was taking some of the shine of mysticism off her arrival. She was a woman. She did normal things that women did. Well, she tried to, at least.

She had gone down to the buttery to visit Tegan and her helpers. She had joined in the making of a meal. She had kneaded dough herself over the protests of the kitchen women, who had ended up standing back, watching her work with a kind of scandalized delight.

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