Bookishly Ever After (Ever After #1)(73)
While the girls were out swimming, I dug through my duffel, pushing aside sweaters and extra socks until my fingers curled around the familiar edges of my notebook. I’d almost chucked it into the lake after my disastrous kiss with Kris, but couldn’t do it, and was thankful I hadn’t. I needed every page of bookish advice I could get if I wanted to survive the rest of camp.
I flipped through, looking for the strongest Maeve and Marissa excerpts I’d pasted inside, and started reading. I’d be a warrior—unafraid, strong, and beautiful and completely immune to any of my old feelings for Dev.
Golden series book 3: Gilded PG 18
Aedan’s lecture the minute she arrived in the training hall was unexpected. “If you want to learn how to fight, you have to get dirty. This will not be like fighting with your bow or magic. You need to be willing to drive a sword into your opponent’s stomach and get covered in his blood. You have to know you can die the instant you step foot on the battlefield.”
She narrowed her eyes at him in her best bored-warrior18 look and twirled the gold-colored sword, trying not to show how heavy it really felt. For an archer, she’d expected to at least have gained a little more upper body strength. “I’m the Harper. You might remember that I fought a horde of goblins and saved both our worlds. I think I can handle a little bit of hand-to-hand combat.”
Moving faster than she could react, Aedan twirled his sword to pin hers down against the floor. A heartbeat and he was just inches from her face, the point of his sgian shimmering millimeters from her carotid artery.
“Can you?” he asked, a hint of an impish grin breaking his formerly stern look.
Maeve shoved aside the little voice in her stupid brain telling her to kiss him and, instead, pulled back from his blade. As Aedan’s grin grew wider, heat replaced her breathlessness from a few seconds before. “You made your point. This isn’t training, this is you stoking your stupid Leprechaun warrior ego at my expense. I’ll get Colm to teach me, instead. He’ll train me properly.” She grabbed her coat and stalked towards the door. “I’m out of here.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Aedan coming at her again with his sword, and she instinctively swung around and blocked his blow, her arms vibrating with the force of the impact. Adrenaline took over and she pulled a page from his book, stepping close so she could disengage her sword and deliver a not-too-gentle tap to his waist while he tried to adjust his reach. “What the hell, Aedan?”
“Interesting. You’re a natural, just like with the bow.” He stepped back, nodding to concede the point, but his smile was full blown. “Now you’re learning.”
She blew air through her lips and tried to slow her insane heartbeat. “If making the Harper die of a heart attack was part of your lesson plan, congrats, you almost did. I can’t learn if you don’t teach me the rules and just mess around.”
His expression grew dead serious. “Rules are good and honorable. But, sometimes, to survive, you need to break them. If it’s a choice between you and your opponent, be as ruthless as your part-goblin blood will allow. And you need to forget that fear exists.”
“Having my Leprechaun warrior jerk of a soon-to-be exboyfriend come at me with weaponry isn’t going to help get rid of any fear, you know.”
He kept going as if she hadn’t said anything. “Fear will paralyse you. You doubt yourself, you’ll die.”
“Cheery.”
“I’ll teach you the rules, but I will also teach you reality. If you only train to the rules, you’ll be tied to the rules. And then you will die.”
“Got it. I get scared, I die. I follow the rules, I die. Any more lectures around that theme, or are you going to stop talking and teach me?”
“Never doubt yourself. Others will, and you need to prove them wrong.” With that, he sheathed his sword and turned towards the exit. “We’ll practice again tomorrow. I suggest you wear a lot of padding19.”
44
“Group eight, welcome to the low ropes course.” Mr. Hamm stood at the center of a pair of ropes that were attached to one tree on one end and then spread into a wide V where they attached to two trees on the other side. “Just like the trust walk, the purpose of the course is to learn teamwork.”
“I’m starting to see a theme,” one of the boys from Dev’s cabin muttered with a barely audible groan and Dev made a shh-ing sign at him.
Ms. Forrester looked up from checking the ropes and nodded. “Yes, there is a theme, Nathan.” She stood and wiped her hands on her cargo pants. “Teamwork is important, and the first exercise is going to teach you how to work with a partner to get to your goal.” She pointed to the ropes. “This is called the wild V. In this exercise, you’ll need to partner up with someone close to your height. You’ll start at this end,” she pointed to the tree with both ropes attached, “and, working with each other for balance, you will try to go as far as possible without falling off the ropes.”
“You need to find a partner who is about your size. Try to partner with someone you really don’t know as well.” As the kids scrambled to grab their friends, Mr. Hamm walked through the group and mixed up the pairs, to the groans of the whole group. Once he was satisfied with the pairs, he stepped back into the middle of the V. “Who wants to go first to demonstrate for the rest of the group?”