Her Obsession (by Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 55

His Steadying Words.

They lined them up two rows facing us across the yard like mirror images: ghosts I’d trained beside years ago, ghosts who’d gladly take a pound of flesh if it meant moving one step up in Yakov’s ledger.

“Begin.” Yakov said, and the whistle ripped the air.

First came Vek. Thick wrists, heavier shoulders, slow feet. He aimed at my head, like always. I stepped inside the arc of his punch and drove a palm up into his throat. Not enough to crush, enough to stun. He coughed, staggered; I snapped a kick across his knee and felt the joint give. He dropped. I stayed upright. Naomi’s first opponent lunged at her in my periphery; she slipped the strike and drove an elbow into a temple. Clean. Efficient. The man’s legs went soft and he folded. Second. Mila. Fast hands, dirty tricks. She raked for my eyes; I turned my face, took her nails across my cheek instead. Pain flashed. I answered with a heel to her instep and a hook into her liver. She wheezed, faltered. I caught her wrist, spun, and used her momentum to put her down. My ribs howled. The world narrowed and widened in pulses. Third. Petyr. He liked body shots. He found my side and every nerve lit up. I saw white. He wound up again and I walked through it, grabbing his jacket front and smashing my forehead into his nose. Cartilage cracked. Blood sprayed warm across my brow. Petyr reeled; I shoved him, and he slipped in his own blood and kissed dirt. Naomi took her third opponent with a trip and a stomp that stole breath without breaking bone. She was holding back just enough not to cripple them. She knew what this was. So did I. Fourth. A woman I didn’t know, newer, lean, hungry. She feinted high and scythed low, and my left leg buckled. I dropped to a knee; she dove to capitalize, and I met her with a short, savage uppercut from below. Her chin snapped. She tumbled. I forced myself up. My vision tunneled and then cleared with a rush of cold air. Fifth. A blur. Elbows like razors. He cut across my bandaged shoulder and heat tore through me as the half–healed wound screamed open beneath the wrap. The ground tilted. I staggered, saw his grin, small and cruel. I let him close, then sank weight into my hip and jammed a knife–hand strike into the hollow beneath his ear. His body short- circuited. He dropped twitching, breath whistling. My own came ragged, copper on my tongue. A murmur ran the yard, low, hungry. The children were pressed to the fence, eyes wide. Sixth. Seventh. Eighth. The numbers blurred. I stopped counting names and started counting impacts, jaw, ribs, shoulder, thigh. Each connection rang through me like a bell struck in bone. I gave ground, took it back, gave it again. I moved like someone who had trained hurt for years, because I had. Hurt was a familiar rhythm; I found it and rode it until it became a metronome that kept me upright. Naomi was a metronome of her own. She flowed, slipping, striking, resetting, her eyes empty of everything but the work. When she stumbled, she used the stumble; when she fell, she rolled and came up throwing. At one point she laughed, breathless and a little wild, a sound that cut through the drills like a spark. A guard snarled. She smiled at him and broke the next man’s wrist. Ninth. The ground came at me too fast and I didn’t remember falling until my cheek was in the dirt, breath knocked out. Boots thundered. I pushed up through molasses and caught an incoming knee with both forearms. The impact shuddered my spine. I bit it down and countered with a short, mean punch into the soft meat beside his hip bone. He folded; I stood over him because I couldn’t afford the energy to drag him.

“Up,” Naomi’s voice flicked across the space between us without looking. “Stay up.”

I did. Tenth. Eleventh. My balance went treacherous. My left leg shook whenever I planted. Blood had soaked through my shirt at the shoulder and stuck it to my skin; every movement peeled it away, fresh fire. The yard glared white, then gray, then snapped back into color. A hand caught my throat. I tore it free. Fingers dug into my ribs; I broke them. Someone’s elbow kissed my temple and the sky strobed; I answered with a knee that echoed in my own bones. I was losing. Not the round, not the yard, something deeper. Heat leaked from me in waves, pulled out by the morning wind and the slick on my skin. My body wanted to fold into itself and be small and be still. I thought of Conner’s hand on the back of my head, steadying. “You’re not dying here, sweetheart“. The memory slotted into place like a lock turning.

I lifted my hands again. Twelfth. The ghost across from me hesitated, pity or calculation. I surged first. Two punches fell short, a third found teeth. He reacted late; I pressed, ugly, efficient, no flourish. He went down, clutching his mouth, red seeping between his fingers. Naomi took a kick to the back and turned on the pivot, caught the leg, and wrenched it at the knee. Pop. The man screamed. She let him go instead of finishing it. She was saving her strength for what was left. We were both counting the same invisible clock. Yakov’s silhouette cut against the wall, still, attentive. I knew that posture: cataloging, measuring, deciding what to break next.

Thirteenth. My opponent was older, scar–laced, the kind who’d survived by learning when not to waste energy. He circled, made me work for the exchange. Smart, Cruel. We traded, and for a breath I found the groove, the muscle memory that had nothing to do with rage and everything to do with craft. I used angles, not force. He misstepped, I harvested it, and he took a knee he couldn’t rise from immediately. The whistle didn’t blow. He crawled away. I swayed, blinked sweat and blood from my eyes. Fourteenth. The ground moved under me like the deck of a ship. I knew I’d hit the edge, my body borrowing from reserves that didn’t exist. Naomi’s grunt snapped across the yard; she was still up. Good. If I dropped now, she’d carry both of us through. That was the rule. That was the trap. The next ghost rushed me, sensing the end. I didn’t have speed. I didn’t have strength. I had timing. I let him in too close, then sank and turned, shoulder–to–chest, hip–to–hip, and used what was left of his momentum to sling him across my thigh. He hit hard. I stayed standing by will alone. My vision tunneled to a pin. The world fuzzed at the edges.

“Enough,” Yakov said at last, voice cutting calm through the panting and the groans.

“Better,” Yakov said. “Still rust on the blade.”

His boots turned away. The children watched with their unblinking eyes. The sky above was a narrow strip of pale.

1/2

7:25 pm D

His Steadying Words.

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