Once Was: Book One of the Asylum Trilogy by Miya Kressin

normal use, but my father had hung it up on the wall with a sense of pride I saw him give few other things.
    “Well, that is rather endearing, but I was considering more the fact that you look like a regular woman, one who belongs here. Your hair is different, your clothes are new, and other than your well-worn shoes, you look little like the weary woman who collapsed onto her bed yesterday. You look like you but rested. I know for a fact you slept well within the warmth of my bed last night, Roseen. You fell asleep with your head upon my chest and my fingers playing in your hair.”
    Feeling his blade against the toe of my shoe, I slid my foot under it and kicked the sword up into my hand in a manner that would make my combat instructors pleased. All priestesses were given some form of training in self-protection. I preferred the sword to a staff in honor of my father’s trade. If Cade thought sweet words would erase my fright, he did not know me well at all.
    “I do not favor being scared, Blacksmith.” I pointed his own sword at his chest, the blade shimmering in the rapidly fading daylight. The tip nestled in the gap left between the front panels of the vest, and I could have split the laces open with little effort. “Where’s the other blade? I know there’s bound to be one more.”
    With a look of mock-surprise, Cade reached down the sides of his legs and pulled a shortsword that wasn’t much more than a good hunting dagger from each boot. “You always did know my best tricks, Witch-woman.”
    My whole body became a fluid form as I advanced. Clanging steel danced in our hands as our words sang with unmeant insults, each earning a hearty laugh. He was stronger; I was faster. We were a match unlike any other. His strengths were my weaknesses, as mine were his.
    “Are we playing until one of us tires, or shall we call it here, Lady?” He lowered both wrists, though I knew by honed instincts that he could still best me if I let my guard drop.
    With a step back, I saw the path beside me and took off at a sprint. “You’ll have to catch me to find out, Cade!” The blade fell from my fingers with a whisper of a thud as it landed in the sand of the beach we had neared, and I propelled myself further out to begin climbing a dune. My legs tangled in the length of his shirt and my mother’s chemise, each step becoming harder as I tried to go higher.
    Soon, the sand and scrub brush became my sky and the clouds my ground as I lost my footing and fell backwards. Before I could hit the rockier sand at the bottom, those same arms from earlier caught me, one about my chest, the other sliding to my knees as quick as he could from his first grasp at my bottom. “This is not quite what I thought you meant in catching you, Roseen.”
    The husky rasp to his voice brought about my own, as did the warmth of his chest against me. “What are you going to do with me now that you’ve caught me, Cade?”
    The heat was tempered now, but I could see the embers in his eyes. So easy it would be, so easy if I were a different woman. Full lips parted, and an escaping breath carried with it the heat of a summer plain scorching to create a wildfire. “This,” he hissed. The embers caught the kindling in my soul, and I felt flames burning me alive as our heads neared one another, mine tipping back and up while his lowered. The warmth of Cade’s lips was just out of reach, then he kissed the tip of my nose and dropped me to the ground while I complained.
    “I told you, Rose; hope is all a man needs.” By the whistle I could hear as he disappeared down the path to town, he had found his blasted hope.
    Cade left me there in the sand, my hips aching from the drop to the ground, my pride hurting from his dismissal. If his parents still lived, I would be standing on their doorstep demanding they rein in his demeanor. He’s the one who attacked me while I slept. He’s the one who then stretched out over me. And he’s the blasted fool who