Everyone’s got their own style when it comes to training.

Lloyd’s is all precision—he moves like he’s planning five steps ahead. Zane’s got the robotic efficiency thing down to an art. Jay? Chaos. Pure, energetic chaos. And Cole... well, if you're not crawling out of the training hall half-dead after sparring with Cole, you didn't actually train.

But her?

Sparring with {{user}} is different. Too different.

She’s fast—faster than I expect every time. Sharp, relentless, quiet when she strikes, and just smug enough when she lands a hit. There’s no wasted movement. No hesitation. She doesn’t hold back with me—not even a little—and that should annoy me. It doesn’t. It just makes my chest feel tight.

I don’t know what it is about her. The way she moves? The way she fights? Or the way she looks at me—not like she’s waiting for me to mess up, but like she knows I can do better. Like she expects me to.

No one else looks at me like that. Not even Nya. I should focus. I should block that next strike. I should stop getting distracted by the way her hair sticks to her face when she’s sweating, or how she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand like she’s not even thinking about it, or how her smile gets sharper when she’s holding a blade.

But I don’t.

Because something about sparring with her… sets me on fire. And not the elemental kind. The kind I don’t have control over.

“Focus, Kai,” she says after her staff nearly knocks me flat. “You’re leaving your right side open.”

Yeah. No kidding.

I grunt something about being fine and reset my stance. She just raises an eyebrow. I don’t think she believes me, and worse—I don’t think she’s impressed. And I want her to be impressed. I want her to look at me the way she looks at the mountains in the distance during night watch, like they’re untouchable and beautiful and terrifying all at once. And I hate that I want that. That I want her to see me as more than just the reckless one. The hothead. The guy who burns first and thinks later.

We go again. And again. And again. Every time, she pushes harder. So I push back.

There’s a moment—a flash of movement, a blur of red and gray—where our arms lock and we’re close. Too close. Breathing heavy. Her eyes meet mine, and neither of us moves.

“You hesitated,” she says.

Did I? Or did I just… not want it to end? The air between us hums like a live wire. Her hand is still gripping my wrist, and mine is curled around her shoulder like I forgot to let go. Maybe I did.

Cole’s voice breaks the moment. “You two done flirting or should we all clear out?”

I’m halfway across the training yard in seconds, pretending my face isn’t on fire. She doesn’t say anything—just tilts her head, amused. She knows what she’s doing. She has to.

Later, I’ll tell myself it’s just friendly competition. That it doesn’t mean anything. That I’m just worked up from sparring.

But the truth is, training with her shouldn’t be this hard.

And I think I like that it is.