It was just like last time, and the time before that.

  Flounce had been paired against Dalliance twice before, and just like before she wasted no time in exploding with colorful streamers of spores the moment the signal was given, fine powder sweeping through the arena in curls of pink and orange shading almost to crimson, sweeping off her bronzed skin in waves of color.

  Wherever the spores landed, Dalliance's skin burned.

  It took Dalliance three seconds, approximated by his heartbeat, to cast [Breath of Fog]. It wasn't his most practiced spell, but as the moisture coated his skin, he felt the spores stop burning.

  "Rain washes the air clean," his ma had used to say. And it was true.

  Dalliance hadn't even really needed to see the solution Ronan had come up with, once he'd taken the time to really stop and think about it.

  Ice Prison.

  No spores, no problem. Just alpha strike from right out of the gate. It was rude, and probably felt overbearing to bring out his strongest spell right away against this little slip of a girl, but if she wasn't going to hold back . . . well, why would anyone else?

  Effie, he bet, watching him, was going to lightning bolt her to the face next time the two faced down.

  The rule, imposed by her spell, was this: you have twenty seconds of consciousness.

  But what if Dalliance could make her yield in five?

  Of course, if he left the mist she'd get him again. But in his elation at having finally found her counter, he didn't much care. It hadn't been his first plan anyway.

  Dalliance became the wind.

  The transformation billowed outward, boy-sized becoming room-sized, and the cloud of fog exploded into rapidly expanding wisps—the spell still draining mana, but too dispersed now to fulfill its function. He didn't care. He swept forward, the few remaining threads of mist breathing through his form and making it something ghostly, otherworldly, crashing down around her, and collapsed back into a boy, all the parts of him spinning into themselves.

  He was behind her.

  He drew his sword as quietly as he could. She heard him anyway—spinning as he brought the blade to her neck, dropping under it and twisting away—if he'd thought of it, he could have whipped it across the smooth skin, were there not a ward. He didn't until later.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  He saw the kick coming. Saw her first version, anyway, where he stepped back and let it pass, and saw the revision, where she redirected mid-motion, her flexible enough to find a new angle even as her foot was already moving.

  Her foot planted itself in his stomach and pushed him away. She was limber more than anything else—she didn't have Ronan's blinding speed, which owed half its effectiveness to his strength and leverage in any case, but she made up for it by redirecting her kick in mid-execution in ways his [Prediction] could see coming, but his body couldn't adjust to quickly enough.

  Just more reasons to rank up Agility.

  The burning prickle returning to his skin told him the fog was thinning. Ten seconds, no more. He cast more fog, and the burning eased, just as she grabbed for the back of his sword wrist and pulled.

  He saw that coming too. Went with it—committing fully to the pull, lunging forward and sideways, his knee finding the back of hers on the way down. It wasn't graceful. Her leg folded around his and she came down with him, both of them hitting the floor in an undignified heap, her ankle pinned under his bent knee.

  One of his hands was occupied with the sword, hers still grasping his wrist, folding it up to her collarbone and clamping it with the side of her head even as she slapped him across the face with her free hand (he'd seen that coming as well), too fast to block without losing the position he'd just bought. He tilted his face to minimize the pain, accepted it as the cost of doing business, and used his other arm to pull her across his own body instead, her stuck ankle twisting under his knee as her body weight pulled it free, and he rolled, feeling her stomach sink under his weight as he planted a knee, cringing at the familiarity of it, but his balance was wrong and she wasn't letting go of his wrist: it was the only place he could put it to get stable. Her breath whooshed out, he tore his wrist free, and rose in a lunge to get his feet under him for just long enough to raise his sword high.

  A fleeting instant's pause, as if he had just realized what he was about to do.

  The spores were back, the fog thinning, and the whole class watched as he let himself fall, bringing the full weight of the sword's pommel down.

  Silence.

  Dalliance looked up, expecting exasperation on Missus Tempest's fac: and it was there, but not aimed at him.

  Missus Tempest addressed the classroom, though her face regarded the unconscious form of Flounce Petite.

  "Hold back," she said softly. "Not so you don't win, but so you don't draw the serious attention of those who are willing to hurt you."

  "What was she supposed to do, accept the loss?" Evercandle, toying with his staff but clearly engaged with the question. The boy himself had only one spell he typically used, but Dalliance was willing to make him an exception. The illusionist was fun to spar.

  "Learn other spells," suggested his teacher. "Escalation begets escalation—Dalliance defeated Gallant without using his full 'kit', and Gallant accepted the loss—"

  "Could have hurt me, but he didn't," commented Gallant. "If you think about it, it's almost mannerly, except for the shirt thing."

  "—with grace, because that is the done thing for honorable people. Miss Petite distained the blade at her neck, and Dalliance is not quite cold-blooded enough to run her through, and so we have . . . this. An indecorous scramble of tangled limbs and a blow to the face."

  She sighed. "Do attempt to avoid entanglement with your female classmates. I hate to think what you are doing to your reputation, or theirs."