A low grunt shook Jace’s chest.

Nero turned his hard stare on him. “Is something funny, Corporal Fireswift?”

Jace put the stopper on the chuckles, molding his face into an expressionless block. “No, sir.”

“Good,” Nero said, his eyes shifting to me. “Show me what you’ve been practicing.”

I turned toward Jace. Slowly, we began to circle each other.

“I hope you haven’t spent the last four hours playing Ring-Around-the-Rosie,” Nero said sharply.

At his words, Jace surged forward. I knew he would target my injured ribs. With Nero watching, he wanted to make this quick and clean. Our surprisingly civil chat didn’t change the fact that he saw me as a threat to be taken down.

Well, I wasn’t going to make it that easy for him. I waited until he was nearly upon me, then I pivoted, kicking the back of his legs as he passed me. Jace stumbled, but he recovered immediately. He spun around so fast that I couldn’t react in time. His fist hammered into me, and I doubled over from the fresh stab of pain to my ribs. I straightened, but I was too slow. Jace’s second blow hit me hard in the face. I snapped my head up, blood pouring out of my nose. I caught his fist on its next swing and twisted it behind his back. My hold on him was too slippery, however, and he flipped me over him, throwing me.

“Move faster, Pandora,” Nero called as my back smacked against the floor.

I didn’t have any spare energy to curse at him, so I focused on getting back up again. My bones groaned in agony when I jumped to my feet. The whole world seemed to tip like a ship caught in a storm. I blinked back the blackness creeping across my vision and turned to face Jace. His next sequence of punches streaked across my already-blurred vision, but I managed to avoid his fists at least.

“Stop running away and fight,” Nero chided me from the sidelines.

“Stop distracting me,” I ground out.

Jace’s leg swung low, tripping me. I rolled to avoid his followup stomp and my leg bumped against a water bottle. Grabbing the full bottle, I jumped up and launched it at Jace’s head. It hit him square between the eyes. I took advantage of his brief moment of shock to rush him, tackling him to the ground. As we touched down, I flipped him over to plant him face-first against the floor. I pulled back on his arms, and he grunted in pain. He tried to thrash free, but I’d pinned him too well.

“Stop,” Nero said, and Jace stopped struggling. “Let him up,” he told me.

I released Jace, and we both got to our feet.

“Your performance was satisfactory. You may go,” Nero said to Jace.

Nero waited until he was gone, then he turned his eyes on me. He maintained a cold, silent stare until I couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Ok, what is it?” I said. “What did I do wrong?”

His eyes hardened. “You tell me.”

“He’s too strong, so I can’t let him get in so many blows,” I said, wiping the blood from my face.

Nero’s eyes flickered briefly to the blood on my hands. “Yes, you need to move faster or get more resilient. Preferably both. What else?”

“I got slippery hands?”

He sighed.

And so did I. “Gods, Nero, why don’t you just spit it out?”

“This.”

Something shot at my head. I threw up my hands and caught the water bottle I’d used in my last fight. Nero had moved so fast that I hadn’t even seen him pick it up.

“This is a water bottle,” he stated.

“Why thank you for telling me, Mr. Obvious. Or should I call you Colonel Obvious?” I winked at him.

“A water bottle is not a weapon,” he continued.

“It is the way I used it.”

“You know how I feel about your improvised weapons.”

“That they are clever?”

“This isn’t funny,” he told me.

“It is from where I’m standing,” I replied with a smirk.

“Let’s see if I can’t change that.” He motioned me forward.

“I don’t let men spank me until the second date.”

“What has made you so bold?”

I was asking myself the same thing. Part of it was my mouth’s tendency to fire off whenever Nero was around, but that wasn’t all. I’d nearly been blown to pieces today. Ok, if we were right, the bomb had never meant to kill us, just scare us, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t have died. There was something about facing my own mortality and surviving that made me feel oddly immortal—and bold.

“What has made you so hard on me?” I shot back, embracing the boldness.

“I’m always hard on people.”

“You weren’t hard on Jace.”

“He didn’t fight his opponent with a water bottle.”

“Maybe that’s why he lost.”

Nero caught my wrist. “No, he lost because you’ve done something to him.” He wiped the blood from my hand with a towel, then released me.

“What did I do to him?” I asked.

He tossed the towel aside. “You were kind to him.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“You reminded him of something we Legion brats have been trained from birth to forget,” he said.

“Which is?”

“That we’re human. When you treated him with kindness, Leda, you made him care about you. You made him more human.”

“Are we talking about Jace or you?” I asked him.