simon kay

After Cain’s fight, the seventh match proceeded without a hitch, and as always, Seraph stepped into the ring for the final battle of the round. Though his earlier wins had been desperate and narrow, the prince’s arrival brought a chorus of cheers from the audience. One might expect this noisy support to bolster his confidence and turn him back to how he was, but he remained humble, or perhaps ‘fearful’ would be a better word. Every win would plague him with doubts, doubts that he was really strong enough to have defeated his opponents. All of his accomplishments were surely due to plain luck, or maybe his enemies had been paid off to let him win.

“Are you sure it’s not too early to incorporate that headband into your training?”“I only get stronger by pushing my limits. Besides, I’d say I have a good grasp of this technique. I proved it last night, didn’t I?”

But at that moment, a memory flashed through his mind, something Noah said to him after he lost his arm. ‘People don’t know how to fight someone with missing or prosthetic limbs. It throws them off balance, and he took advantage of that. No one expects to be kicked in the chest with a peg leg.’ He glanced at Ingram, focused entirely on the fall and keeping Roc restrained. From the look in his eyes, he was most worried about Roc’s free wing getting in the way or failing to pull away in time and crashing with him. For all of his focus, all of his determination, his guard was dropped entirely.