The shield grew heavier every time Lewd corrected her grip.
She knew the weight had not changed. The circular face remained the same size, the skull fixed in the same position, the fastening held against her arm exactly where she had formed it. Still, what had felt manageable for the first exchange now dragged at her shoulder.
Blight struck the edge again.
Lewd caught the blow, but her sword drifted outward as she braced. She brought it back too quickly, turned her hips to compensate, and crossed her feet.
Blight stopped instead of following the opening.
That was becoming worse than being hit.
Lewd stepped back into position and adjusted the shield. The cartridge at her sword’s hilt clicked as she moved. She looked down at it, then immediately wished she had not when Blight’s blade touched the top of her guard.
“You are watching the weapon instead of the person using one against you.”
“I heard the cartridge.”
“It is where you put it.”
Lewd lifted her eyes.
Beyond Blight, Derpy worked with Celica and the pets. He had managed to keep his weapon ready through their last exchange. Sphinx circled back toward him while Mia waited for the next movement.
Lewd faced her own opponent again before Blight could correct that too.
She remembered Lenora telling her to choose the shape and hold it. That had helped with the flowers. It had helped with the mist. This was different. She could picture the shield perfectly and still fail to keep it between her body and a blade.
Blight moved to her left.
Lewd followed with the shield, but her sword came across with it. Both weapons crowded the same side. She tried to separate them, lost the angle of the guard, and felt the next light strike turn her arm.
“Set your feet,” Blight said.
Lewd did.
“Bring the sword back.”
She corrected that too.
“Now look at what you have done to the shield.”
It had dipped again.
Heat rose into Lewd’s face. She pulled it up, tightening her grip until the muscles along her forearm trembled.
Blight lowered her own weapons.
“Worthless.”
Lewd stopped moving.
The word seemed to leave everything else in the lesson behind. She could still see Blight’s mouth moving, but for a moment the voice came from farther away.
“You cannot hold a line. You cannot keep your footing. Every correction costs you the thing you corrected before it.”
Lewd tried to raise the shield higher.
Her arm would not settle. She changed her grip again and felt the sword shift in the other hand. Blight was right about the mistakes. Lewd could name every one of them, and knowing that did nothing to help her stop making them.
She looked toward Derpy.
The thought arrived before she could question it.
He is going to leave.
He would see how much effort it took to keep her standing. He would have to stop his own training because she could not manage something as simple as putting her feet in the right place. Eventually, helping her would become one more thing he could no longer afford.
She drew a breath to explain.
It caught high in her chest.
The next came too quickly. She tried to slow it and became more aware of how little air seemed to reach her. Her fingers tingled around the grip. The shield tilted, and she could no longer tell whether she had loosened her hold or lost it entirely.
It struck the ash beside her.
Lewd sank after it. The sword slipped from her hand as she drew her knees against herself, both weapons lying where everyone could see she had dropped them.
She pressed her forehead down and caught her sleeves in her fists.
Blight said something above her.
Lewd could not answer.
“Stop.”
Derpy’s voice reached her more clearly than the others.
Ash shifted under approaching feet. Then he was between her and Blight, blocking enough of the view that Lewd no longer felt exposed to the entire shore.
“That is enough,” he said.
Blight’s tone hardened. “She needs to learn how to—”
“She needs room to breathe. Put the weapons down.”
Celica had followed him. Lewd could see her feet beside Blight’s through the narrow space above her knees.
Derpy crouched nearby without touching her.
“Lewd, it is me. You do not have to stand up.”
She tried to lift her head and could not make herself finish the movement. Her breath kept breaking, each failed attempt making the next more frightening.
“I cannot,” she managed.
“Then stay there. I am staying with you.”
She heard something move across the ash. He had set his own weapon aside.
“You dropped the shield,” he said. “That is all. You can pick it up later, or leave it there.”
Her hands tightened in her sleeves.
“I keep getting it wrong.”
“I know. I watched you try to fix it.”
That made her breathing hitch harder. She had wanted him not to see.
Derpy waited, then shifted just enough for her to see his hand resting open on his knee.
“I am not leaving because you are having trouble.”
The words caught her attention despite everything else.
“You do not have to become good at this before I am allowed to care what happens to you,” he continued. “You can drop it. You can need help. None of that changes why I am sitting here.”
Blight made a dismissive sound.
Derpy looked up.
“This is training,” he said. “If she cannot breathe or listen, what exactly are you teaching?”
Blight held his gaze. Her shield remained raised at her side, its skull facing the pair on the ground.
“Someone outside this place will not stop because she is frightened.”
“You are supposed to be helping her face that person.”
Neither moved for several seconds. Then Blight turned her weapon away.
Celica looked down at Lewd.
“She is afraid of more than being struck.”
“I noticed,” Derpy said.
He returned his attention to Lewd. Her next breath was still uneven, but she managed to let it out without immediately dragging in another.
“Can I put a hand on your shoulder?”
After a moment, she nodded against her knees.
His hand settled lightly, giving her something steady to feel without asking her to move. She stayed folded over until the shaking in her arms eased enough to loosen her grip on the cloth.
“You are not worthless,” he said. “You are learning to use two things at once while someone tests everything you do. That is difficult.”
Lewd swallowed.
“I do not want you to decide I am too much trouble.”
“Dropping a shield will not make me decide that.”
She raised her head a little.
He was still there. His shoulder carried the stiffness of Celica’s training, and ash marked one knee. He had stopped what he was doing to sit beside her without looking toward the veil or asking how soon she would be ready.
Lewd tried to speak.
Instead, she leaned forward and kissed him.
It was brief and clumsy, driven by the need to close a distance that had frightened her more than she knew how to explain. She felt him go still beneath the contact and pulled back immediately.
Derpy stared at her.
The shock on his face made her stomach drop.
“I—”
He swallowed. His hand remained on her shoulder, though he seemed newly aware of where it was.
“Give me a second.”
Lewd lowered her eyes. She had made another mistake. Of course she had. The moment someone gave her room to breathe, she had found a different way to make everything difficult.
Derpy shifted to meet her gaze without making her look up far.
“I am surprised,” he said. “That does not mean I want you to disappear.”
Her fingers curled against her knees.
“You do not have to say something just because I am upset.”
“Then let me say what I mean. We can talk about the kiss when you are not shaking and everyone is not standing over us.” He glanced toward the others, then back. “I am not brushing it away. I want us both to be able to finish a thought.”
Lewd watched his face, looking for the rejection she expected to find hidden in the gentleness.
He did not move away.
She let out a breath and wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
The fear had not vanished. Blight’s word still waited close enough to return whenever she looked at the fallen shield. But the shore had become a place with separate sounds again: ash moving beneath Celica’s feet, Mia shifting nearby, Derpy breathing beside her.
She could hear them without feeling that all of them were watching her fail.
Derpy waited until Lewd sat upright before nodding toward the weapons.
“Would you rather stop, or try a few exchanges with me?”
She looked at the shield.
“You are faster than Blight.”
“I can choose not to be.”
“And if I do the same thing again?”
“Then we find the part that is going wrong and work on that.”
Lewd rubbed her palm against her sleeve. She did not want Blight to think the lesson had ended because of her, but that was not a good enough reason to stand. She made herself wait until she could identify another.
She wanted to know what it felt like to hold the shield correctly more than once.
“Slowly,” she said.
“We begin slowly. You tell me if we need to stay there.”
He offered his hand. Lewd took it and rose, unsteady for the first moment, then finding her feet beneath her.
The abandoned weapons dissolved. She formed them again with the shield closer to her body and the sword held low while she settled her stance. The cartridge clicked into place at the hilt.
This time, she let herself look at it before the exercise began.
A faint colored haze clung to the blade. Small green-gold bubbles formed along its edge, catching the light before disappearing. They carried the appearance of her poison without releasing it into the air.
Blight noticed.
“Keep it that way for this exercise,” she said.
Lewd nodded. She was not ready to answer more than that.
Celica stepped back with Blight, leaving a clear stretch of ash between the trainees. Mia and Sphinx padded toward Derpy, one settling on either side.
Lewd watched them arrive.
“Are they part of this?”
“They will move with me,” Derpy said. “To start, they will only make you look somewhere besides my hands.”
He raised an arm. Frost gathered around it, forming a close guard of ice, its edge bright with Frostburn. He kept the cold drawn against himself rather than reaching toward her.
“I use the scythe and gauntlets because I know how they feel,” he said. “But Mia and Sphinx are part of how I fight too. If you only watch my weapon, you lose them.”
Lewd adjusted her shield.
Derpy studied the angle, then her feet.
“That is close enough to begin. I am going to touch the upper edge first.”
He stepped forward at a pace she could follow and tapped the shield. She braced too hard, driving her shoulder forward after the contact had ended.
“You can let the shield take some of it,” he said. “You do not have to push back every time.”
They tried again. Then he changed the angle and told her before doing it.
After several exchanges, Lewd realized she had stopped listening for the cartridge. It remained where she had put it, exactly as Blight had said. Her attention had room for something else.
Derpy stepped back.
“A little faster?”
She took a breath, checked her feet, and nodded.
He dashed in, covering the distance quickly enough to startle her even though she had agreed to it.
Frostburn struck the shield with a controlled blow. The impact rang through her arm and pushed her back two steps, ash spraying around her heels.
Derpy stopped immediately.
Lewd was still standing.
He looked at her face before speaking. “Too much?”
She shook her head, surprised by her own answer.
“I thought I was going to drop it.”
“You did not. Set your feet again.”
He gave her time to do it.
On the next approach, she stepped toward him instead of yielding. The shield struck his shoulder, interrupting his line and forcing him half a step aside.
Lewd lowered it at once.
“I am sorry—”
“Keep your guard,” Blight snapped.
Celica spoke before Lewd could fold inward again. “You completed the exchange correctly. Do not leave yourself open while apologizing for it.”
Derpy rolled his shoulder and faced her.
“That was the movement I was giving you room to find. I am all right.”
Lewd brought the shield back up.
He waited until it settled.
“Ready?”
This time, her answer came without looking at Blight.
“Try it again.”
The work stayed small enough to understand.
Derpy tested the top of her guard, then its outer edge. He gave her more than one strike in a sequence, keeping the force light while changing the direction. When her feet crossed, he stopped advancing and waited for her to notice.
She usually did.
Sometimes he had to point.
Mia moved along one side without attacking. Sphinx circled on the other, his tail occasionally catching Lewd’s eye at exactly the wrong moment. The first time she turned her whole body to follow him, Derpy tapped the unguarded side of her shield with two fingers.
“You can look without giving me the space.”
On the next pass, she turned her head and kept her feet.
Her arms began to burn. This time, she recognized the fatigue before it became proof of something terrible about her. She asked for a moment, lowered the weapons, and worked her fingers until they stopped trembling.
No one left.
When she raised the shield again, Derpy resumed from the same distance.
She began bringing the sword into the exchanges in short movements. At first, it emerged too far from behind the shield. Then it came out too cautiously to matter. Derpy showed her the space between those choices by approaching until she had to decide where to put the point.
She made him step away.
The green-gold bubbles shimmered along the blade as she withdrew it, harmless signs of a power she was keeping contained.
Blight watched without offering praise. Lewd found she could continue without turning to see whether any had appeared on her face.
Derpy approached again.
She caught his first strike, shifted enough to keep Sphinx in the edge of her sight, and held the shield steady when Mia moved. Her sword came forward in a short counter that claimed the space in front of her chest.
Derpy leaned away from it.
Lewd nearly apologized. She felt the words begin, closed her mouth, and kept the point where it belonged until he had stepped clear.
“That one,” he said. “Remember what you did there.”
She looked down at her feet. They were apart, balanced beneath her. The shield had not fallen. Her sword remained in her hand.
The next exchange might go wrong. She was tired enough that it probably would.
Lewd adjusted her grip and faced him anyway.