TWENTY TWO, feet kicking in the air. Emilia Mori sits in the shadowed rafters of the uptown gym. Ice cream in her hand, Sixer at her hip, tongue stalling outside her mouth as she watches the oldTech scoreboard screech an ear-piercing note and flip from 0-8 to 0-9. The scene below is chaos. Burned by fluorescent spotlights, a roiling crowd of university fighters strain against the ropes of a sandstone fighting square as they watch the princely duelist who’s been making a clown of their hero make a clown of him again. Jeering and shouting their derision while roaring support for the crimson-haired boxer who sags against the ropes in the same breath.
“Fuck him up, Mars!”
“Don’t let him beat you like that!”
“You got this!”
“Get up, man! Come on!”
Mars Mons, the Showmaker, twenty-two and an embarrassment to the martial arts, wipes a taped-up wrist across his mouth. A wry grin is waiting on the other side. The answering roar is electric, kinetic. Pushing him back to his feet while the blonde swordfighter stoically cleans his rapier on the other side of the ring.
In the rafters, Emilia smiles. “That’s more like it.”
The entire gym is on its feet. A tidal wave of excitement that fills the brick-walled expanse beyond capacity. All workouts halted, all eyes on the action as the Showmaker gets back up and a buzz of anticipation builds. He’s bouncing on his heels. Shaking his hands. Shirtless, drenched with sweat, snorting out a glob of blood while his blood-haired twin climbs the corner pole and tries to talk him down; voice drowned by the mob.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Talking down him?” Emilia chuckles through a mouthful of ice cream. “Good luck.”
She sways from side to side in the afternoon sun. It’s not her first trip uptown, and it likely won’t be her last. This little ritual, a weekly thing, keeping a promise she made so long ago. Much of her has changed since that day. She’s a little taller, though only in heels. Her freckles are more pronounced. Evergreen eyes softer, warmer than they used to be. Eighteen years of sharp edges, four years of understanding to smooth them. Her braid hangs down her chest, not her back, covering the knife-notched ear that she fingers even now. A tattered cape hangs from her back. The fur hood, bleached creamy white by time, encircles her shoulders like the hair of the woman she made that promise to.
There’s a stirring below as the Showmaker shoves off the ropes, squaring up once more. The mob eats it up. The retro music pouring out of the gym’s shitty speakers cranks so loud the roof starts shaking. Again, the roar builds. Again, that old bell hammers away like the world’s about to end. Every round it makes the same promise. That this time, it’ll be different. And when he tosses his crimson hair and throws a hand to the crowd that gets them roaring and jumping off their feet, for a moment, everyone in the gym believes. Even Emilia Mori.
The intermission ticks down to zero.
But by the time Mars Mons loses yet again, she’s already long gone.