A dying man had given her a piece of advice. He hadn't been on his deathbed, but without a drop of clairvoyant power, his eyes could see far enough into the future to know that it held little place for him. And so, waiting graciously for his own demise, he had agreed to meet the newest of the Furies, and tell her the one bit of wisdom he'd gleaned from a life he described as 'full of good memories and not too many regrets.'

 You have a lot of battles ahead, he had told her. So learn to fight, and learn only from the best, even if you have to grovel at their feet. I was too proud to beg, and it has cost me. Sacrifice your pride, not your life.

 Wise words, she had no doubt, but hard to obey. Chatoya knew she had to learn the arts of death, and she knew who her teacher had to be. But swallowing her pride and fear was like chewing handful after handful of splinters, wondering when she would begin to bleed.

 Nonetheless, she had done it, and now she would face the consequences.

~*~

"First, the rules."

 Blue Malefici's living room had been cleared of all furniture. Nothing filled it but the two of them, and she felt that he took up too much space and she took up too little.

 "I am teaching you. Not Bhari. She is no part of this. And I am teaching you to fight with your body and your wits, not your magic. If you speak one word of a spell, my witch, you can find someone else to help you survive. Thirdly, we are not done until I say so, and if that means you must crawl about with broken bones, so be it."

 "I accept," she said at once.

 His haughty glance said that he had taken her agreement as given. I know how much you need me, that look said. More than I will ever need you.

"We'll begin then," he said. "What do you know? Can you punch?"

A flash of Cougar, his face turned aside from the force of her fist. "Yes."

 "Come here then, and punch me."

 It was an invitation she had waited a long time for. Chatoya stalked up to him, and threw all her strength at him-

 He caught her fist in his palm, and the smack of flesh on flesh made her want to flinch back. His fingers curled over her knuckles, holding her fast, and so close, she was unsure whether the look in his eyes was desire or disappointment. He hid himself so well, veiled behind colour and nuances.

 "Basic. You need some refining. Kicking?"

 "No."

 "Blocks?"

 "No."

 "Dirty tricks?"

 "Not really."

 He nodded, as it was no more than he had expected. "Very well. Today I'm going to teach you some basic moves. Tomorrow, we're going to fight, using just those until you can react well enough to move onto something better."

 "Fight?" she echoed. "You?"

 The gleam of his smile was like light moving along a sword. "Why do you sound surprised?"

 When she considered it, she didn't know.

~*~

 That night, he lay alongside her, his breath stirring her hair. His finger traced the shallow niche that ran from her stomach to the bottom of her ribcage, dividing her into asymmetry, but his eyes were on her face, moving restlessly from feature to feature as if he would devour her.

 When he is gone, he will leave me as nothing but bones and offal. And yet I invite him in, beckoning him to me because the uncertainty dances on my nerves like those famous angels who tango on pins.

 "Are you afraid?" he asked, while his hand moved idly as a metronome.

 "Should I be?"

 "Yes."

~*~

The next day, she spent the morning practicing those moves he had shown her, but she felt slow and clumsy. Even at her fastest, watching her reflection in the full-length mirror, she had none of his silky speed, none of his fluidity or precision.

 I am in trouble, she thought, and feared.

 He was sat on the floor when she walked in, stretching with a cat's sinuous arches. When he stood, he said only, "Ready?"

 How can I ever be ready?

 But still she said, "Yes."

 She thought he might circle her, swinging closer with each pass until he was her equinox, blotting out all but him, stark and bright.

 He didn't; he walked straight up to her, and she saw the deadly intensity in his eyes. Whatever he saw, it wasn't the girl he had lingered on so long last night, it was only a target, a marked creature in an ordinary room.

 And then he hit her. She had half-raised her arms, but not fast enough, and his fist connected with her jaw so hard she staggered back. The backlash went through the soulmate link, and blood sprang into her mouth, her lip numb.

 She touched her fingers to her mouth; they came away red, and she got to her feet, unaware of the bemusement in her eyes.

 Why are my hands covered in blood? Shouldn't it be yours?

 "I won't go easy on you," he said, as if answering a question. "No one else will. Ready?"

 She wanted to shake her head, but she knew that although he would steal back to her under nightfall and shadow to draw promises on her skin, though he would speak to her with vicious delight and seething scorn, he would never teach her again. And it would be a lesson lost because she could not endure him.

 And so she nodded.

 ~*~

That evening, she limped into her house, moving as if age had warped her skeleton. Vaje swore when he saw her, and Lisa leapt to her feet, hands covering her mouth.

 "Oh my god." The made vampire hurried over to guide her into a chair. "I'll get your salves. The bastard, what does he think he's doing?"

 "Teaching," she said, and was surprised to hear another voice speaking in unison with her.

 She met Vaje's eyes, and though there was a proprietary anger in them, he looked her over and said only, "You look like mincemeat. So did I the first time Malefici taught me."

 "You learned from him?" The words were clotted by her swollen mouth, but he seemed to understand.

 "Yeah. Eventually. Why'd you think I rose so high in Pursang? I was just ticking along until that little son-of-a-bitch honed my skills. I spent five months having the crap kicked out of me."

 Lisa returned in time to hear him. "You're a shapeshifter. You heal faster."

 "Not fast enough. Every damn day he used me as a punching bag. I spent a fortnight fighting with a broken arm, and he never let up. He used to go for it, in fact."

 "What happened?" she asked as Lisa knelt down and began to apply salve to her face. Thank god the dragon magic had made her healing so much more effective; under the ointment, the ache was cooling and diminishing.

 "I started practicing. Lance was getting lessons at the same time - he and me, we had our own little fight club."

 "Should you be talking about it?" muttered Lisa darkly. "God, Toya, you can't do this. Find someone else."

 She knew she couldn't.

~*~

 When the sunset drew him to her that night, his first look was not for her, but for her bruises. When he saw none, his displeasure was stony and immovable.

 "Have I done something wrong?" she asked.

 "Nothing wrong. Nothing right."

 And when she thought over that particular night, and the odd way he touched her, as if she were forbidden fruit and not Eve, who had learned sin with one bite, and repentance with one banishment, that was the only label she could put to it.

 Nothing wrong. Nothing right.

 ~*~

"Ready?" he said the next day. Everywhere he had hit her felt fragile, but not painful.

 She knew the drill. "Ready."

 When he declared the session over, she had to crawl out. He walked beside her, back straight and his eyes filled with implacable amusement.

 "How long are you going to hurt me?" she croaked, refusing to shed one tear while he could see, though it took all her energy.

 There was nothing but contempt in his eyes. "Until you learn enough to stop me."

 He drove her home, his antagonism palpable.

~*~

 "How long are you going to keep doing this?" Lisa demanded in an uncanny echo.

 "As long as it takes," she answered. When Lisa marched from the room in disgust, she cried until Vaje took the place that should have belonged to someone else, and held her until she ran out of grief.

 "Keep on," he told her, smoothing the balm over her twisted ankle. "You aren't the first he's made cry. He made Lance howl for three hours. I exhausted my entire supply of 'knock, knock' jokes before he stopped."

 She raised a grin.

 "And just think," Vaje added. "When this is done, you and me can go and wait for him in a dark alley."

 "With big sticks?"

 "With crowbars, lass."

~*~

 Nightfall carried him in with the winter, and again, she was condemned under his eyes. Do you need to see wounds? she wanted to say. Is it blood you long for?

 "I can't fight if I can't stand," she muttered when she thought he was asleep, his back an opaque wall between them.

 His answer floated through the gloom, touched with drowsiness. "One day you might have to."

 "I thought you wouldn't be sorry if I died."

 "I wouldn't be sorry you'd died, witch of mine. But I would be sorry you hadn't lived."

~*~

 The next day, she drew scanty comfort from the fact a kick had nearly connected with his stomach. She needed it: as she lurched into the house, she entertained the thought that she was insane.

 Lisa's prim frustration greeted her again. Every salve Chatoya had ever made in case of future visits from psychopaths, mass murderers and newly risen dragons was now stacked in a corner, and she could only congratulate herself on her foresight. When the vampire flicked the lid off a pot, Chatoya shook her head.

 "No. I don't want them healed."

 Lisa's eyes nearly popped from her head. "Did he hit you harder than usual?"

 "No," she muttered. "He always hits just as hard. But I need to learn to fight even when it hurts. He stops when he's had enough, but the Furies won't stop." She glanced at Vaje, whose pity had changed into foreboding. "Will you practise with me in the garden?"

 "No!" exploded Lisa. "I'm not letting my boyfriend kick seven kinds of hell out of you. You need to be in bed, and I mean alone!" She sounded on the verge of tears.

 But Vaje was only watching her, his eyes moving from bruise to bruise. It was a reckoning, she thought, and she knew what his answer had to be. "It ain't your decision, darlin'," was all he said, his voice terribly gentle.

 Lisa gawped. "You're not serious."

 "I am. And so are those injuries. If I don't help Chatoya, she's going to come home with a fresh crop every damn night."

 "This is crazy."

 He wrinkled his nose. "This is life in the Furies, darlin'. We all did it, but she's learning later, and that's ten times harder. If me going out there every night means she comes home with one less cut, then I'll do it."

 Lisa turned on her heel, her voice strained and shrill. "I can't be part of this."

 Her absence left a silence full of the future: of another hundred days like this, fraught with conflict, all made so much worse by the love behind the anger.

 "Sorry," she said to Vaje. She hadn't intended to force a choice between the Furies and Lisa.

 "Don't be. She'll see sense. She's good at that, my lass." He cracked a wry grin. "If you're going to beat Malefici, you're going to need to practice every move until it's easier to fight than to do nothing."

 That, at least, I can understand.

 "We'd better get started," he advised. "And I won't go easy on you."

 "I know," she said glumly.

~*~

 Darkness seeped in, and brought him to her, sleek and subtle. She wore her bruises like jewellery, flaunting the damage he'd done. It was a challenge, and an attempt to wound in the way her hands could not.

 She saw him note each mark, including the ones he had not put there. If this was your lesson, I will learn it, she thought. If endurance is what you're teaching me, I'll suffer every blow, and perhaps you'll suffer it too. I'll learn, but let's not pretend it's easy.

I will fight, no matter what. But I wonder if it's occurred to you that you're creating your enemy, giving me your weapons as you have given me your heart.

 "So this is love," was all he said, his eyes vast and unreadable. There was no scorn to the words, only what might have been a lingering bitterness. "Is it still worth it?"

 "I don't know," she answered, unable to be anything other than brutal. "Can you make it worth it?"

 "Let's find out," he said, and whether it was a declaration of love or war, she didn't know.

 She wasn't sure there was much difference.