Chapter 175: Well Enough

I stood in the nave, weight manacles heavy on my wrists and ankles. Stained glass filtered weak light across the stone floor, casting fractured colors over the cold stone, but I barely noticed it. My focus was entirely on the woman in front of me.

Magdalene tilted her head, that familiar crooked grin spreading across her face. "What’s with the energy today? You want your darling red hair to sleep here that badly?"

I froze for a moment, fixing her with what I hoped was a mean expression. I hoped she saw it. I hoped the anger in my eyes was sharp enough to cut.

"Well, technically, she belongs here." I jabbed my fingers at her. "And you belong to the streets!"

If I let myself remember that I somehow had to find my way around fucking this Saint, I’d have migraines the size of a mountain. So I didn’t think about it. Not now. The absurdity of my situation could wait until after I survived the next few minutes.

Kassie watched from the columns, arms crossed, her gaze cool and evaluating. She’d see everything. Judge everything. Good.

Maggie’s grin widened. "Very well. Don’t cry when I break your nose again."

She vanished and appeared closer.

It was the same pattern she’d employed over the past few weeks — that almost-lazy speed I’d mistaken for her limit. She came at me with her hand cocked back, the fabric of her habit shifting around her like it had a mind of its own.

But this time, I didn’t rush to meet her.

’The sword is a conversation.’

I inhaled and exhaled, letting my breath settle into my core. The stained light shifted across my vision as I moved.

She threw a jab. I didn’t block — I stepped. A small adjustment. Just enough to make her fist pass my cheek without contact.

Her eyes flickered. Surprise? Amusement at my attempts?

Second jab. I slipped the other way.

She lunged forward with a kick — the same one that had nearly disfigured my face last time. But I’d already started moving before her weight shifted. Before the kick was thrown.

I wasn’t certain about Ting Jin, not yet. But I listened with enhanced hearing, paid attention to the whole of her body with the whole of mine.

’Perhaps I could use this to achieve even greater things during sex!’

I felt her intention in the way her hip turned, the subtle tension in her planted leg. The kick was coming—I was already gone.

I pivoted around her. Not attacking. Just moving. Breathing.

’She’s still holding back. Same speed as before.’

The realization settled over me like cold water. Maggie was using the exact same tempo she’d used in our first fight. The same deceptive rhythm designed to bait me into overcommitting.

’She led me on intentionally. Whatever opening I found, she’d turn it against me.’

She expected me to find another "opening." To dive in like an idiot and eat her knee again.

I didn’t.

I circled around her attacks, watching and breathing, paying attention to the way her body spoke to me.

Her bouncy ass. Her thick thighs. Perhaps I drifted away from the main point, but I wasn’t careless. The appreciation was incidental to the observation. Mostly.

The conversation continued. She spoke — I answered. But my answers were silence and distance. The patient observation of someone who wasn’t in a hurry to die.

Maggie’s grin faltered.

"What are you doing?" She threw a probing combination — two punches and a sweep that I evaded with minimal movement. "Fight properly."

"I am."

Ci. Pi. Dian. Mo. Beng. Tiao. Lan.

The seven bones of the sword. I didn’t have a sword, but I had distance, timing, and the space between movements.

I threw a testing jab — not committed, just to read her response. She swatted it aside easily. But I’d already retracted, already repositioned.

’Her counter is fast. Faster than what she’s been showing.’

[Your proficiency with attribute: Strategic Apex has increased]

[Attribute: Strategic Apex has leveled up]

I didn’t mind the notification yet. Filed it away for later satisfaction.

I threw another jab from a different angle. Same result — easy deflection, attempted counter. I was gone before her knuckles arrived.

"Stop running," Maggie said, irritation creeping into her voice. "This is supposed to be a fight, you vile miscreant."

"No." I settled back into my breathing rhythm and flashed her a cocky grin. "This is supposed to be a conversation. And you’re lying with every word."

"Are you mad?"

Her eyes narrowed. "I’ve had enough of your dirtiness."

’There.’

I’d touched something. That look — the slight tightening around her eyes, the way her weight shifted almost imperceptibly forward—

She was about to stop playing.

The air in the nave changed. The weak light through the stained glass seemed to dim, shadows pooling in the corners of the vaulted ceiling.

Maggie moved, and this time there was no theatrical leisure in it. She crossed the distance between us like white flame, her habit trailing behind her like smoke.

Despite the weight bracelets on her — three times my own — she achieved speed that shouldn’t have been possible. The stone floor blurred beneath her feet.

I barely got my arms up in time. Her fist drove into my guard with force that shouldn’t have been possible from someone her size. The impact traveled through my forearms, into my shoulders, rattled my teeth in their sockets.

’Okay. So that’s her real speed.’

Or something like it. She was still wearing weights.

She followed with a knee. I twisted — it caught my hip instead of my stomach, sent me spinning. I used the momentum, turned it into distance, got my feet under me.

But she was already there.

Her next strike came for my throat. I dropped my weight, let it pass over me, and drove my shoulder into her center of gravity.

It was like hitting a wall — she barely shifted.

But her eyes widened.

I’d touched her.

Not a real hit. But I’d entered her space, disrupted her rhythm, made her adjust.

Her elbow came down toward my spine. I threw myself sideways, rolled across the stone floor, came up bleeding from a scrape but still moving. My palms stung from the cold stone.

Maggie was looking at me differently now.

Not with condescension or that crooked grin that said ’I’m playing with my food.’

Her zombie-like eyes dripped with carefulness. It wasn’t something I’d seen the last time. I wanted to believe I was making progress.

’If your root is weak, your sword is a branch in the wind.’

My root was weak. I knew that. The weight manacles dragged at me, my breath was starting to come harder, and Maggie—Maggie was at the very least eight thousand years of combat experience wrapped in a petite body that hit like siege weaponry.

But I wasn’t a branch anymore.

I advanced.

I wasn’t charging recklessly. I moved with the breathing pattern Kassie had drilled into me — exhale on the strike, inhale on the recovery. My movements flowed into each other, each step creating the foundation for the next.

’Jab. Retract. Circle. Probe.’

Maggie blocked, countered, pressed. Her attacks were precise now, economical. No more wasted motion, no more baiting openings that didn’t exist.

She had stopped underestimating me.

’If she had been careless like usual—’

The thought crystallized into certainty as I narrowly avoided an elbow that would have shattered my cheekbone.

If she’d kept playing around. If she’d stayed at that fake speed, convinced I’d commit to another headbutt or reckless tackle—

I might have actually gotten her.

The realization was almost better than a win.

...Almost.

Because Maggie was very much done playing.

She feinted low. I read it and adjusted — but the feint was itself a setup. Her real attack came from an angle I hadn’t anticipated, a spinning backhand that caught me across the temple.

Stars exploded behind my eyes.

I staggered, tried to recover. Got my hands up just in time to catch the follow-up kick on my forearms instead of my face.

The impact lifted me off my feet.

I hit the stone hard, the floor slamming the air out of my lungs. The cold seeped through my clothes immediately, biting into my back. Before I could roll away, her foot was on my chest, pressing down with deliberate weight.

"Yield."

I wheezed. Tasted copper.

"Yield," she repeated, pressing harder. The weight manacles clinked against the stone.

"That’s enough."

Kassie’s cold tone came in clutch. She was already closing the distance, unhurried but measured, her gaze sharp enough to flay Maggie apart.

The corpse-like nun stepped back and scoffed but said nothing.

Kassie grabbed my hand, pulling me up. She was smiling.

"Interesting," she said. "That’s the best I’ve seen you do. You almost had her, in fact."