Mona Lisa Craving

TWENTY-ONE

WE ENDED UP bickering some more before finally coming to terms we both agreed upon. Dante had proposed archery, shooting at targets. His opponent, Oswald, had snorted, and proceeded to tell us what he thought of such a bloodless sport.

He got to choose the terms of the fight, Oswald insisted, since I had issued the challenge.

We all had to take a moment to rehash the events—Mona Sephina’s issuing challenge, Dante’s counteroffer, her withdrawal of the challenge, then my issuing it. Yup. I guess that’s how things had pretty much ended—with my challenging her, Dante proposing himself as my champion, and my accepting him as such.

How his eyes had blazed when I had said those words—I accept Dante as my champion. How odd the twists and turns tricksty fate continued to bring into our lives.

Everyone poured out into the courtyard to witness the spectacle about to unfold.

Oswald had gotten his wish for a bloodier fight. His terms. Unarmed combat, four-legged form allowed.

I’d seen the look in Dante’s eyes as Oswald had announced the rules. Just a faint flicker in his eyes, no other betraying movement. But somehow I knew that the last part of it had bothered him. I didn’t know what Dante’s animal form was or if he even had one. Could he even shift? If he could, it still had to be a new ability only recently attained with puberty, which usually took place around seventeen years of age in Monère males.

I spent another five minutes haggling, to no avail. Oswald’s chosen terms stood. Shifting was allowed. The only concession I managed to wring from Mona Sephina was that the winner was the man who first pinned his opponent to the ground for ten seconds. I don’t know if that helped Dante or made it harder for him. He gave me no hint, no clue as to what would help him. In truth, he didn’t seem to really care what the terms were.

Both Mona Sephina and I agreed that the challenge was to be nonfatal. Death was not allowed. Would be punished, in fact, by awarding victory to the other side. No guarantee, but at least it would motivate Dante and Oswald not to kill each other. No male liked to lose.

Again, I didn’t know if that hindered Dante or helped him. Maybe it would have been easier for Dante to kill Oswald rather than pin him; he was a big guy. But in this matter I was operating solely on my own preference. And I found that I’d rather Dante lose and live. In my heart of hearts, I did not want him to die.

Oswald stripped down to just his pants. Unclothed, he was an even more imposing figure with a thick chest, massive shoulders, and heavy, dense muscles that knotted his hairy body with solid strength.

Dante, on the other hand, was more elegantly built, with sleeker muscles. Like a ballet dancer rather than a burly wrestler. Even the way he removed his clothes was in marked contrast to the way Oswald had done so. Instead of rough, forceful gestures, it was a graceful, deliberate disrobing, with calmness, precision. He passed his sword and dagger into his brother’s keeping. The wrist bracelets and necklace were removed next and also handed to Quentin. Standing beside each other, you could see the features that made them brothers. The similarities—the high-bridged noses, the long, lean cut of their faces. And their differences—the warm tawny brown of Dante’s hair, his lightened blond streaks coming from the sun’s natural touch, not a bottle; and Quentin’s darker hair. One face smooth, almost girlishly pretty with big eyes and long lashes; the other face less refined, yet roughly beautiful somehow in its harsh imperfection.

It was in the eyes, though, where the true difference lay. Quentin’s eyes were still soft, still young. Dante’s eyes were those of an old soul, one that had lived long and hard. One to whom death, pain, and suffering were familiar knowledge.

When all items of clothing were removed by Dante, all but for his pants, he stepped forward into the cleared center, ringed by the curious throng that was composed of Queens, guards, maids, foot-men, and various other housestaff. All who had come out to watch the fight.

The two opponents approached each other, and it was like watching a young David step forward to meet a hulking Goliath. I knew Dante’s history, had seen him fight. With a sword he was almost unparalleled. But I did not know what he was capable of in unarmed combat, and the disparity between their sizes…it was frankly daunting. Dante’s muscles seemed as naught next to the bulk of Oswald’s more mature, brutish mass. They were of the same height, both just over six feet, but Oswald was almost twice Dante’s weight. Twice his width.

With a grin, Oswald charged, going after Dante like a two-ton tank. They collided with resonating impact. Surprisingly, it was Oswald who went tumbling in the air for a dozen feet before crashing to the ground. The big warrior lay there for a moment, stunned by the unexpected outcome. Then he picked himself up, and with a roar, launched himself at Dante again. With coiled, springing grace, Dante met him in the air. Oswald swung. With a lithe twist, Dante ducked his blow, and landed one of his own. The force was enough to alter Oswald’s course. One moment he was springing forward, the next second Dante snapped Oswald’s head back with a solid hit that not only halted his forward momentum, but sent him flying backward in reverse.

Dante seemed to pack quite a punch.

Oswald landed with an impact that made the ground tremble. He shook his head, clearing it, and seemed to decide that a change in strategy was required. With a rippling release of power and a sparkle of light, he started to shift. Oswald’s big, broad face pushed forward into a snout. His brown eyes lightened to yellow. His spine curved and he fell onto all fours. A short, hairy coat of tawny fur spilled over his skin, a tufted tail emerged, and a beautiful auburn mane thickened around his head and shoulders. With a great roar that showcased the long canines wickedly well, he completed his shift into lion form—a magnificent and deadly predator, even bigger now than he’d been in his upright one.

All eyes turned to Dante. Energy pulsed once, twice. But he didn’t shift as everyone expected. Only two things changed. His eyes silvered, and his hands started to morph, to shorten, thicken, the bones becoming more curved. Two-inch long claws pushed out of his fingertips, sliding out like blades. A partial change. I’d only seen two others do that, shift only that one part of themselves. One had been Dontaine, my master at arms, and it had not been an easy thing for him to do—more of a slow and painful process. For Dante, it seemed as natural and simple as breathing. And his change was even more refined than Dontaine’s had been. No fur. Just his human skin, though it was thicker and coarser now. There was no hint of what his animal self was, other than those long, curved claws. The only other person who had accomplished such a partial transformation so effortlessly had been Lucinda, Halcyon’s sister, a demon dead princess.

From the murmurs that came from the audience, the light gasps, I took it to mean that the partial shift and the ease with which it was done was not a common ability. Still, impressive though it was, those claws did not seem an adequate match for Oswald’s lion. I glanced at Nolan and Quentin’s faces, and saw from their troubled expressions that they did not think so either.

The crowd backed farther way, giving them more room as the lion sprang. Dante stood his ground. At the last instant, he slashed and rolled out from beneath those powerful paws, scoring four diagonal cuts along the lion’s underbelly. It continued in that same pattern, like a beautiful, vicious, choreographed dance—Oswald attacking and Dante dodging, scoring light hits when he could. But quick though Dante was, in his lion form Oswald was equally as fast. And he had four clawed appendages to Dante’s two. On top of that, he had flesh-tearing canine teeth, making it five weapons in his arsenal to Dante’s mere two. Inevitably, one of those swiping paws caught Dante. The impact sent him slamming to the ground, his left side ripped open, the white of his ribs showing through the torn flesh.

The excitement of the bloodthirsty crowd swelled, and their eager cries swallowed up my gasp in a sea of sound. But Dante’s eyes turned from his springing opponent and unerringly found me. As if he’d heard my soft cry of distress. Could discern it from all the other noise.

Only when he was assured of my physical well-being, that I was fine and my reaction simply that of seeing him injured, did he turn his attention back to Oswald, back to the fight.

It left me shaken, that look, that keen awareness of me even in the midst of battle. I swallowed a scream as the lion fell on Dante.

Dante rolled away at the very last instant so that Oswald hit the ground not on top of his prey as he had intended, but past him. A hard, downward chop of Dante’s hand, and the thick bone in the lion’s foreleg broke with an audible crack. A sweep of Dante’s legs, and the big animal toppled to the ground. Dante rolled on top of him, and drove his right claws through the lion’s two back legs, his left claws stabbing through the upper forelegs, pinning the beast to the ground in a brutal, effective manner, with his body behind and out of reach of the great jaws.

The crowd fell unexpectedly silent at the sudden reversal. Into the silence, Quentin started counting, “One. Two. Three. Four…”

On the count of five, the lion tried to heave back up. With almost casual violence, Dante yanked his left claws out from the pinned forelegs and backhanded the beast across his head with a powerful blow. The lion fell back to the ground, knocked out for the remainder of the count. When ten was called out, Dante un-hooked his right claws, wiped the blood stains on Oswald’s thick pelt, and stood up. Two soft pulses of power and the long, hooking nails shrunk back beneath the flesh, and his hands became just hands once more.

The crowd parted, making way for him as Dante walked back to his brother. He stood quietly, allowed Quentin to bind his wounds, then donned his necklace, arm bands, and clothes, in that order. With his dagger secured and his sword belted at his side, he strode to me and the crowd slipped back away from him…and from me, once they saw where he was heading. Only Amber, Dontaine, Tomas, and Aquila remained by my side.

Stopping before me, Dante went down on one knee, bowing his head.

“Your victory, milady.”

Then, with no more fuss than that, he stood and walked away, his family following after him. Leaving behind a stunned audience of warriors and Queens and one particularly furious one—Mona Sephina, who gazed down at the still unconscious Oswald with tight, thin lips.

“That’s a cool one,” someone in the crowd muttered, voicing the sentiment aloud for us all.

Dante had taken down a warrior much older and more powerful than himself with an economy of motion, snatching victory from his competitor’s grasp with simple, elegant savagery. He had defeated a warrior shifted into his animal form while he had remained in his upright one. Most disturbing of all, though, was that not once while Dante had fought Oswald had emotion touched him. No rage, no passion, no anger. Not even triumph in the end.

A cool one, indeed.

And far more dangerous than even they knew.