The deafening clang of metal meeting metal sounded across the practice yard. Finnea Uriro fought in the center of a sand circle, her sword a blur in the hot summer air. She felt sweat soaking into the cloth wrapping her hands, but she didn’t dare to shift her grip on the handle of her sword. Her opponent was a pale flash of muted color beyond the reach of her weapon. She had no conscious thoughts, focused completely on acting and reacting to the man mercilessly attacking her. Every movement happened so quickly that she knew that she had only lasted as long as she had, purely by muscle memory. Parries, blocks, and deflections happened in the space between breaths, her arms burned with exertion, and her legs quivered with exhaustion.

Despite all that, Finn was keeping up with her brother. She fought with the circumspection of someone who had faced this same opponent countless times, who knew the way he thought better than she knew herself. So when she saw the opening, she didn’t think about it, she just went for it. Her sword slid into her brother’s shoulder like a hot knife through butter.

They both froze. She knew her eyes were almost the size of saucers but couldn't gather enough will power to control her expression. He stared back at her with her sword still piercing his shoulder, his face unreadable as always. Thick red blood dripped down Finn’s blade and filled the hot summer air with the smell of copper and sweat.

The sound of slow clapping came to Finn from outside the practice ring.

“Excellent work, Finn,” her father’s voice came to her distantly, slowly pulling at the corners of the fog of adrenaline that Finn was trapped in. “Disengage,” her father said flatly.

Ruven, Finn’s brother, straightened up out of his stance first, and Finn stumbled to stay close so that she didn’t pull her sword from his shoulder. A panicked voice in the back of her head was babbling about blood vessels and that her sword might be the only thing keeping Ruven from bleeding out all over the sand of the practice circle. It was counterintuitive to pull a weapon out in many situations.

His face still blank, Ruven took her sword in one hand and yanked it from his shoulder with barely a flinch. Blood gushed from the wound, but it didn’t shoot out with enough strength to suggest a punctured artery.

“Get cleaned up and meet me in the armory,” their father said shortly, his face as unreadable as her brother’s, before turning on his heel and walking casually away.

Once he was out of hearing range, Finn turned toward Ruven. She had no idea what she was supposed to say in a situation like the one she found herself in. She had never landed a direct hit on her brother before. Ruven was a swordsman without parallel. Privately, Finn thought he was probably even better than their father was. But, she had been nicking him during practices for the past few weeks, so maybe she should have expected it.

“Are you okay?” she asked hesitantly. She hovered near him, but wasn’t sure if she should try and help him take off his leather armor, or put pressure on the wound, or what she should do. She was the one who had stabbed him, so she felt responsible, even if it was their father who insisted they use live blades.

Ruven barely spared her a glance, but his expression softened somewhat. “Help me bandage it, and I’ll forgive you,” he said with a wry smirk.

Finn tried to smile back, but she knew that it looked wobbly.

She followed Ruven as he led the way through the Seelie Court at a sedate pace. The court was as beautiful as it always was. It existed in a constant state of summer, the sky clear and blue as a robin's egg, the grass soft and green and fragrant, the flowers vibrant and bobbing in a gentle pleasant breeze. The buildings that made up the many halls and homes within the court were all carved in gentle swooping arches from pure white marble. Songbirds sang in the branches and frogs croaked from the small babbling brooks that wove through the grounds.

She imagined that her brother and her made a strange sight, walking through the beautifully and carefully created illusion of perfect natural beauty that was the Seelie Court. Physically, they fit the image. Both she and her brother were elves, tall and willowy with a natural grace to their movements, silvery white hair and shining eyes set in long narrow faces. But that was probably about as far as they managed to fit the mold. For her part, Finn knew that the years of her life dedicated to the sword had made her shoulders muscular and her thighs a bit too thick to fit the idea of a delicate elf. Her long hair was frizzy and untamed whenever she let it down, and tucked up in a messy bun at the base of her neck the rest of the time. Her skin was dotted all over with freckles, her arms decorated with red ink. The other lady elves had always tittered when she wandered too close. Magic could have prevented or hid the freckles, but they couldn't have fixed her face. She had been told her eyes were too narrow and sharp, her lips too thin, and the big notch of flesh taken out of her nose in a practice match was just the cherry on top. Her brother was a match for her in all these things, though at least his scars and tattoos made him look masculine, even if the mess of his artlessly chopped at hair made him look a bit like a bird had tried to build a nest on his head.

Finn walked through the beauty of Queen Titania's court and tried not to stare at the blood steadily moving down her brother's undershirt. An old resentment for her father and the court at large was building in her chest, and Finn tried to push it down. This had been their life as far back as Finn could remember. Fighting and fighting and fighting again. While the other members of the court lounged in fine clothing and ate delicate fruit while enjoying a balmy breeze, her and her brother risked their lives over and over again to keep them in luxury. If her father had ever heard her private thoughts, he would say that success in battle would bring them honor. Her father would often say that they only needed each other, but then would turn around and make them mercilessly fight each other.

He wasn’t wrong, though. Finn knew that among the fae, kindness and love were things meant for poems and songs, not something that any sane member of the court would actually deal in. It was better to stick with Ruven as much as she could and only entertain the other court fae with caution. Her brother was better company than most anyway, but sometimes he was so like her father that it set her teeth to grinding.

They eventually reached the significantly less beautiful halls of the guard barracks. Ruven sat on a rough stone bench on the shady side of the building near a spring that gurgled out of a small rock. Finn brought a bucket of cold fresh water and helped Ruven carefully clean his shoulder, exposing the puncture wound beneath the mess of blood. It was clean, but difficult to tell how deep it was.

“Ru,” Finn ground out, finding it difficult to look away from the gore she had made of her brother’s shoulder. “I’m so fucking sorry,” she added.

He stared at her evenly. “You don’t need to apologize. I didn’t block the thrust. It was my fault.”

“I should have pulled it,” she protested, upset that he wouldn’t just blame her for hurting him. He never did, but that didn’t make her feel any better.

Ruven shook his head and pulled a first aid kit out of thin air with a wave of his hand. Finn watched as he rummaged through the small box, feeling like a terrible burden on her brother. Ruven used magic and martial arts with an efficient and capable air. He could hide any number of useful items in the space between realities and pull them out at will. Finn had never managed to master this ability, even though it seemed to come naturally to her brother. She may have finally bested him in a practice fight, but it didn’t feel like a real victory. Ruven had never hurt her like she just had, though her father certainly wouldn’t have cared if he did. She didn't believe that Ruven was fighting her seriously.

“We’ve already made him wait too long,” Ruven said after bandaging his shoulder with Finn’s sullen assistance. “We better get going,” he said, pulling his soiled undershirt back over his head with a grimace.

Crossing back to the practice grounds to get to the armory where their father spent most of his time seemed like a death march. Finn was trying to imagine what kind of weird announcement he was going to make, but she was at a loss. Her father wasn’t likely to share his thoughts with her on anything, unless those thoughts were about how shit she was at fighting. Obviously her landing a hit on Ruven meant something to him, but what that was, she had no idea.

Their father, Jhaartael Uriro, was standing with his back to the door, his broad shoulders limned in the afternoon light streaming through the tall windows. Motes of dust floated through the beams of light, illustrating how still and quiet the air in the armory was. Finn’s father’s hair was white as snow, short and coarse and stood up on end. He wore no sleeves over his thickly muscled arms, marked here and there with thin white scars. Their father certainly didn't seem to care about not looking waifish and ethereal like other elves. In fact, he seemed to revel in bucking every stereotype about them.

At the sound of their approach, he turned to face them from where he had been regarding a wall of shining new spears.

“Finnea, my daughter,” he spat the last word, but his face was otherwise blank. “You have done well today,” he continued, as if he were delivering a speech to a group of soldiers rather than just her and her brother. Finn did her best to wipe her face of expression. Any exasperation she might feel over her father’s inability to act casual would only come across as insubordination and earn her a painful rebuke.

“I think you are finally ready to serve Queen Titania directly,” her father said solemnly, obviously considering this a great honor that he was bestowing on her. She wanted to ask him what she had been doing so far. Finn had been working as a royal guard since she was sixteen, over four years by then. As much as her father acted like he was her superior, technically only the Queen could give her orders. Then again, her father was one of the most highly decorated generals in the Queen’s army, so maybe he could order her around.

Neither she nor her brother made any response to this announcement, providing him no reaction at all. This was the correct response, proven by their father’s proud smirk before he continued.

“The Queen recently asked me to handle a small rebel uprising in the south. I think you are more than ready to handle this request by yourself,” her father continued, producing a small envelope of fine paper from his back pocket and handing it to Finn. She had to take several strides across the hay strewn stone floor to reach it. After she took it, she returned to her place beside her brother.

“Read over the Queen’s orders and prepare yourself to leave before first light the day after next. Dismissed!” her father shouted, turning his back to them in case the literal dismissal wasn't clear enough.