Selene Graythorn.Leonel's younger sister.
She formed a circle with her hands and yelled even louder:
"Next time, make him cry, big brother!"
Leonel felt as if his spirit was taken from his body.
He brought his hand down over his face while he was talking to himself in a low voice. Even Zellanstill, on his knees, couldn't help but laugh at the situation.
Lady Seraphina sighed, though her eyes were shining with unmistakable amusement."That kid is going to be the demise of this family."
"Too late for that," Darian said.
More laughter could be heard from the elders' podium.
When Leonel was leaving the arena, the murmurs kept following him as if they were his shadows.
"Did you see that speed?"
"A low-rank did that!?"
"He didn't even look tired..."
Leonel did not pay any attention to them.
Not because of an arrogant attitude but simply because he didn't have anything to prove. His steps were not loud and unsteady, but rather they were of a man in control of himself. His breath was also very calm.
His eyes were not looking at the praise or the admiration, but at the road that was ahead of him.
In the darkness near the elders' podium, Valtor Graythorn was intently and quite uncomfortably watching the boy.
"Interesting..." he whispered, his fingers drumming the armrest. "Very interesting indeed."
The arena was exactly like that. Apart from the cry of a hawk far away and the uneasy shuffling of a thousand people trying to understand what they've just seen, no other sounds could be heard.
And there was a kid in the middle of all this. Leonel Graythorn. An eight-year-old who looked like he'd just been for a run instead of having a sword fight.
His fake sword was hanging from his hand like an object he didn't even remember he had. After that, he grinned. It wasn't the winner's grin. It was a little, intimate thing, the sort of thing you smile when you remember a secret that is only yours.
Uncomfortable muttering of people trying to understand the situation spread through the stands.
"Gods above, what was that?" a woman whispered as she wrapped her shawl tightly around her. "He looks... as if he is proud of himself." "No child should ever smile like that," a man said to his neighbor. "Not after doing... that."
They were so wrong. They looked at him but didn't see who he was. He was not looking at the judges or the boy being helped away. His eyes were fixed on one point in the bleachers.
There was Lyra. His little sister. A silver-haired tornado and full of energy, she was completely absorbed in the act, jumping up and down on her seat, totally ignoring the stunned silence.
"Beat him again, brother! No one can defeat you!" The weird tension was pierced by her small voice, sharp and clear as a cracked bell.
The audience couldn't hold their silence. After her interruption, a ripple of relieved laughter was heard. The spell was broken. Leonel's weird little smile turned into a genuine one, warm and real.
A single thought came to his mind, simple and clear: How could I lose when you are making such a noise?
She was like a lighthouse, his one-woman cheering squad in a world that usually just stared at him as if he was an unsolvable mystery.
However, for the other kids who were waiting for their turn, those with sweat on their palms and nerves in their stomach, the mystery had become way scarier.
Leonel didn't just win. He made it look like he didn't even have to try. With a move so flawless and quick that almost all grown-ups didn't even see it, he defeated a Sword Initiate, a kid who had been trained for years a lot longer than him.
He didn't even look like he had exerted himself. The point was made, very clearly and loudly: all of them had been wrong in their assumption of him.
The expressions on their faces tell you what is going on in the minds of the participants who are waiting in the gallery.
Thaddeus Graythorn, Leonel's older cousin, was standing with his back against a stone pillar, his arms crossed and his face full of expression. Slowly, a grasping-with-understanding-like-he-had-seen-it-all smile spread across his face.
"Well, I never," he uttered under his breath in a low voice, which could hardly be considered a whisper. "The little fox has been hiding a whole set of teeth. I wonder how sharp they really are."
At the same time, Liora Moonshadow, next to him, was not smiling. Her penetrating gaze, the color of amethysts, was like a pair of scissors narrowing as she mentally dissected Leonel's every action on his way out of the ring. She removed a strand of her own silver hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear.
"That's far beyond what you think," she said very quietly as if she was whispering. "It's not just the power. Just look at his feet, the way he moves. He is too... precise. It's like he is dancing to a tune which only he can hear and the rest of us have no idea."
Not far from them, a young bullish kid, Roland Stormbreaker was making the sound of "pop" by cracking his knuckles. His face was all brightened up with a huge, eager smile.
"Now we are getting somewhere!" he smiled. "The very first time that I will actually have to work for it, is by this person, right?"
However, not all the people were sharing the same feeling of joy. The other side of the gallery, was the scene of a different kind of talk, a talk marked by dissatisfaction and unspoken grievances.
Felric Ironfist was clearly already over the top with his strength as one might imagine from the namesake of the situation he just snorted in disgust. "Lucky shot," he said sarcastically, adding more emphasis to his words by hitting his palm with his fist. "The guy who's not involved must've tripped.
When I get my claws on him, I'll make sure he won't be able to recognize himself with just a glance. I promise you."
Kiera Shadowthorn, who looked so pale that one might think he was a ghost, and whose frame was very thin, was biting his thumbnail in nervousness.
"Lucky? Are you seeing with your own eyes, Felric?" he whispered sharply, his head moving rapidly up and down as if he were trying to locate an escape route.
"He attacked Renly's guard as if it wasn't there, cut with his blade a strap without even a little help from the guard. That is not luck. That is fear! The fact is, he has been acting weak all this time."
Clearly this thought had made him quite sick.
Third of their year, Garic Stormblade, their leader, had not uttered a single word. His face was an expressionless one of rage and his eyes were so fixed on Leonel that they could be compared to a gaze that freezes milk.
His hand holding the sword hilt was tightening so much that the skin between the knuckles was stretching revealing the white bone underneath.
Eventually, his first and only utterance was a very low and venomous one, weighted with a nasty and long-standing bitterness of years.
"That little rich brat," was one of the things Garic said in disgust.
"Spoiled Graythorn prince. Raised with too many praises, pampered, maybe even got his first sword offered to him on a silver plate." He looked at his two friends as if to say: "What about us?" burning eyes of his meeting theirs.
"So, what did we get? Hands that are blistered and a master who still considers us not good enough. Nothing earned by the hard way. It was given to him like a present."
It came out of Garic's mouth as if it were infected with poison. "The minute I touch him, I will..."
His speech was interrupted by a shudder he felt.
"You know what I'm going to do, right? Yeah. I'm going to take that tiny little finger and force him to wipe his pretty face with it - that smile that's there for sure but not for long. Smiling no more."
The sharp spike of hatred that went up Leonel's back as he sat down was something that he could sense without seeing. He had no doubt who it was.
Garic. He was aware of the gossip and rumors in the training yard that were about him and he could feel the hostile glances directed at him.
Without letting his face give any indication of the inner conflict, he let out a slow breath. But inside his mind a single, cold thought was as clear and firm as if it were made of stone. Your turn is coming.
The main announcer, a man whose voice was of such a power that a landslide could have been started by it, approached the centre platform.
"Good folks! The great show is still going! We are now off to the semi-final fights! First match: Kiera Shadowthorn against Liora Moonshadow!"
The spectators went wild again as the opponents entered the arena of dry sand. Kiera's movements were as if he was nervous heavily and his energy was very jittery; however, he had this sharp, nasty grin of a kind that did not reach his cold eyes. One of his fingers was running on the side of his blade.
"Prepared to be defeated, Moonshadow?" he shouted, showing a false face of courage. "I don't treat anyone nicely, even girls."