Nyx didn’t look out at Rhys or Anneke. And she would deal with Yah Tayyib later.
She looked at Jaks.
Yah Tayyib was rubbing Jaks’s arms and shoulders. Nyx had no illusions that this would be a proper fight with proper rules. She saw no one at the buzzer. It was going to be one long round, with a moment or two for Rhys to patch her back up if she got too bloody. Maybe.
Nyx stood with her hands down and her left toe forward. She waited.
Jaks didn’t put in a mouthpiece, and she didn’t offer one to Nyx.
“Don’t get hit,” Rhys said.
“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” Nyx said.
Yah Tayyib took his hands off Jaks and waved at the buzzer. A thousand hard-backed beetles exploded into movement, sounding the bell.
Jaks leapt forward.
Nyx left her hands down until Jaks was within hitting distance. Then she ducked and blocked Jaks’s wide, wild left hook. As Nyx ducked, she pivoted behind Jaks and caught her with a left jab to the back of the head.
The dull edge of the blade she held in her fist jarred her palm. She sucked in a breath, stepped back into a fighting stance.
Jaks stumbled and turned and moved away, reassessed.
They circled, hands up.
Nyx watched Jaks gnaw on strategy. She had opened too eager, just like she did eight years ago, hungry for a quick fight, for first blood.
Most people who watch a fight think it’s all about the muscle: hitting harder, moving faster. And, yeah, sometimes it looked that way. But telling somebody that you won a fight by hitting the other person harder and more often was like telling somebody that the way you kept from drowning was by moving your arms and legs.
Once two fighters knew how to fight, they stood pretty even. What made one win and the other fall wasn’t about blood or sinew or sweat. It was about will.
Jaks was old enough to know that.
So was Nyx.
Nyx dropped her hands again.
Jaks made as if to hesitate, then stepped in and fired.
Nyx ducked and blocked. The blow glanced off her forearm. She had only enough strength to take a couple of good hits. She needed most of these to bounce off, but she needed them to bounce off in a way that made Jaks think she was winning. Nyx was tired. Not all of the hunched posture was feigned. Her body ached. It didn’t feel like her body anymore. Hadn’t for a long time. She sometimes wondered who she belonged to: the queen, the magicians, the front; Raine had thought she belonged to him, thought he had some responsibility.
But in the end it was just Nyx in a ring.
Jaks sent out a double right jab, a left cross. Nyx kept her hands up. Nothing got through, but she let Jaks keep at it, keep pounding at her forearms and shoulders. Jaks tucked in an uppercut to Nyx’s midsection.
Nyx huffed air and stepped left, tried to get herself out of the corner Jaks was trying to push her into.
“Hit me!” Jaks yelled at her. She batted at Nyx’s raised hands, and Nyx peered between her gloves at Jaks’s pinched face. “Hit me, you fucking coward!”
“Your brother was the one who wouldn’t fight,” Nyx said, pushing back at her with her gloves. “Your brother was the coward.”
Jaks swung, a wide right hook, double left jab, right uppercut. The combination was too fast for Nyx. The uppercut caught Nyx hard under the chin. She fell back and caught herself on one knee.
Jaks brought a gloved fist down. Nyx rolled out of the way and staggered back up, brought up her hands. Sweat poured into her eyes. The bell didn’t sound. It had been longer than two or three minutes. Too long.
That was all right. Nyx didn’t intend to fight fair either.
“Look at you, broken up over a dead boy,” Nyx gasped. She sucked more air, tried to concentrate on her breathing. Remember to breath, remember to breath….
You kept yourself from drowning by breathing air.
Jaks swung again, a wild swing. Nyx caught her in the belly with a hard left uppercut, pummeled the side of her face with a left hook.
Jaks reeled and swung. She caught Nyx across the ear.
Nyx grabbed her in an embrace, locked their bodies together.
“You rigged this whole thing for a dead kid, a coward,” Nyx murmured in Jaks’s ear, “and you’re no better.”
Jaks pushed her away and tried forcing her backward. Nyx pushed back.
The lights were starting to flicker. Nyx thought maybe her sight was going. She tried to blink the sweat from her eyes. Her face was starting to swell up. She needed both eyes. She tried to protect the bad side, the one with the swelling eye, but Jaks saw what she was trying to do and swung away at that side with her right.
Nyx stumbled again. She saw darkness at the edges of her eyes. Jaks pounded at her. Still with the right.
Nyx staggered back, put her hands up again. Blood leaked from a wound just above her eye. She blinked, rubbed the side of her face against her shoulder, smeared blood.
“Let me clean her up!” Rhys yelled. “Let me clean her up!”
The lights were flickering. What was that? Nyx tried to look up, but Jaks was on her again.
Nyx hung back on the ropes and let Jaks pummel her shoulders and forearms. She let the force of the blows bleed into the ropes.
“You want to know how he died?” Nyx said. “He was a bleeder, just like you.”
But of all the things she remembered, vividly, from her last night as a bel dame, the death of Jaks’s brother was not one of them.
Just another boy, another body, to Nyx.
But to Jaks: the world.
What had Nyx done, what had she given up, for her brothers? Her mother?
Jaks pounded at her again. Sweat poured down her face. Her body shone.
Nyx’s arms were tired. She waited out the shaking and the pain, kept taking the hits. She didn’t look directly at Jaks’s face but kept her eye on the left side of Jaks’s body, just below the collarbone. She watched the muscles move there from between her gloves. She didn’t need her peripheral vision so long as she had a good look at the way Jaks’s muscles and tendons moved under the skin.
She remembered to breathe.
“You can hit me harder than that,” Nyx said.
Jaks’s assault slowed down. She was losing momentum.
Nyx used the ropes to push herself up against Jaks. She forced the younger woman back and yelled at her, “He bled out like a dog.”
The swing came from the right. Nyx blocked and saw her move left.
Bel dames didn’t trust anyone.
Lucky she wasn’t a bel dame.
Nyx dropped her guard on her right and ducked and turned her head. Instead of smashing her in the temple, Jaks’s left caught Nyx full force on the upper right side of her head. The hardest part of her head.
Light exploded behind Nyx’s eyes. She dropped to her knees.
Jaks cried out and fell back, clutching her bad hand to her chest.
Nyx curled over her hands and pulled at the knot on her left glove with her teeth. Her head spun. Black juddered across her vision.
Jaks dropped next to Nyx and grabbed her by her butchered hair, jerked at her throbbing head.
Nyx wedged her left glove between her knees.
Jaks forced Nyx to face their audience. “You could have cut and run from your team. You could be in Tirhan now, living on that beach you told me about in that shitty cantina outside Punjai. But you didn’t run, and this is where it left you.”
Jaks’s left hand was limp at her side. She spoke through her teeth, whispered into Nyx’s ear, “You think dying for your team makes you a hero? No, Nyx, heroes live for what they love. It’s what separates the heroes from the cowards. Arran and I weren’t the cowards. You’re the coward.”