CHAPTER 183: HIS WEAKNESS, MY ADVANTAGE

{Elira}

~**^**~

Friday morning came with a knot already tightening in my stomach.

After our classes for the day, Cambria, Nari, Juniper, Tamryn, and I headed for the auditorium together.

We found seats together near the middle. Juniper leaned close, whispering, "You look way too calm, Elira. Either you’ve mastered inner peace or you are seconds from fainting."

I smiled faintly. "Probably both." I wished I wouldn’t be called upon today, but something at the back of my mind told me to accept my fate already.

The professor standing on the stage, a tall woman with moon-black streaks in her dark hair and a voice that carried easily without effort, lifted the microphone.

"All right, students," she began, her tone clipped and professional, "the combat elimination continues. As always, twenty names will be drawn. When your name is called, remain seated until the full list is complete."

Her fingers slipped into the glass box. The first name echoed through the hall, then another, and another.

By the tenth name, I had gone completely still. I didn’t dare to hope. And then, I heard my name.

"Elira Shaw."

My stomach dropped clean through the floor. For a breath, the whole world seemed to hush before my friends erupted around me.

Juniper clapped her hands together with a grin. Nari told me that I was going to win this because she could feel it. Tamryn dropped two tips for me while Cambria gave me a knowing smile.

"Just breathe. You’ve got this as usual."

Their confidence in me almost made me believe it, too.

After the last name was called, every other student was dismissed except the twenty of us whose names were called.

The professor stepped down from the stage and began pairing us off, calling out names two at a time. And finally, she got to me.

"Elira Shaw versus—" She glanced at the next name. "Darren Colt."

A murmur swept through the remaining students.

I turned, searching for the name, until I spotted him. He was a boy easily twice my height and triple my build, muscles straining against the sleeves of his uniform jacket, his dark hair falling over pale, unreadable eyes.

He cracked his neck once and narrowed his eyes when they met mine. Then, his mouth curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile.

"Guess I drew the short straw," he said casually, his tone low but carrying enough for me to hear.

I stared up at him, way up, and tried to ignore the fact that his shoulder was about level with my forehead.

Just then, the professor gave a final nod. "All pairs, follow me to the main training hall."

As the others began to move, Tamryn’s voice echoed faintly in my mind. "Keep your centre low and read your opponent’s moves before you strike."

Easier said than done when your opponent looks like he could lift a table with one hand.

Still, I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced my steps to stay steady as we filed toward the hall.

Inside, the scent of the polished mats and faint ozone from past duels filled the air. Professors stood in a row along the wall, clipboards in hand, ready to observe.

---

Forty-five minutes later, my opponent’s and my names were called, and we stepped onto the mat.

My palms were slick as I crouched in my stance, every muscle taut like a drawn string.

Darren Colt’s shadow loomed over me; he was all size and slow certainty, the kind of fighter who relied on pure force and the weight of his reach.

I swallowed the panic climbing my throat and forced my breath long and even as I began once more, rewinding the training and the pointers I received from the brothers yesterday.

Darren moved first, charging forward with a brutal rush, shoulder aimed like a battering ram. I tried to tuck and pivot, but his first strike hit across my ribs with a searing, white-hot pain that momentarily stopped my breath.

The hall blurred for a dizzy second; taunting murmurs rose on the edges of the room. He grinned then, confident and cruel, and the crowd’s energy tightened.

He didn’t fight pretty. He fought like a rock—predictable, heavy, and when he had me in reach, he grabbed my hair, hauling my head back to expose my jaw. The pain seared. My nose burned from another hit.

For a few brutal minutes, he drove the fight, and I kept falling back into reflex: get up, breathe, shield, fall. My body took more than I thought it could. My vision went starshot blue at one point, and I tasted metal on my tongue.

But pain made something else settle in me: focus. The blows blurred into a pattern. Darren’s footwork was wide and slow; he overcommitted on power and left his weight lagging behind him.

He favoured a right sweep after his left lunges. He gaped, for all his size and ferocity, to reset after a big hit; those were the moments he left a small, hungry gap.

I remembered Rennon’s drill, and I began to move differently—smaller steps, lower centre, slipping the edges of his reach rather than matching force. Where I had previously tried to meet him, now I moved around him.

I ducked a sweeping arm and let his momentum carry him forward; I planted a foot and twisted under his shoulder, and for the first time, my fists found their mark.

Five small strikes—scattered and precise landed as I weaved underneath his guard. They didn’t knock him out, but they disrupted his rhythm.

He roared then, furious and embarrassed at being outmanoeuvred by someone so much smaller. He grabbed for me again, and this time his hand closed on my hair.

Hot pain flared, sharp and immediate, and something in me went quiet and hard. I could feel the seconds ticking—ten minutes creeping up like a clock with claws.

Adrenaline sharpened my edges. I sensed the slightest opening. He had taken a breath too long after a heavy swing, his chin lifted, and his stance a touch wide.

Just then, Rennon’s last lesson—the one he had said was only for when there was nothing left, flickered up in my mind like a stubborn lantern.

I didn’t think about mercy. I thought about balance and the single necessary motion I had practiced until my muscles knew the map.

I moved like water, small and fast. My fist found the right spot.

Darren’s head snapped. His knees eased out from under him as if the ground had been pulled away.

The sound of his body hitting the mat echoed through the training hall—a heavy, final thud that silenced even the whispers.