Anger has to burn, so burn me

"Meet me for breakfast.", the note read. Lux took a single look at it – her father's writing – and the magic tingled under her skin in anger. Before she knew, the light had gone hot again, burned the paper in her hand.

There was no way she was meeting him for breakfast, she thought as she was shaking the ashes off her hand. He was shooting dirty looks at her for days now, ever since she had stated that she was going back into personal protection in front of the DuCouteaus, and she wasn't going to have this conversation with him. Not now, when she was on her way to her first official day at the job.

The festival was tomorrow. She had interviewed three days ago, and honestly, it had felt as if the crown prince had already decided on her. Well, Cadmus had sounded as if she had the job, too. Maybe what she had told Garen a while ago was true, after the war, they had come home with a name – and a headcount. Lux swallowed and decided against thinking about it to much. It had been necessary, and she would do it all again if it meant keeping her comrades safe.

She left through the back of the mansion, to avoid her parent's wing. None of the would approve how she looked right now – armed, combat boots and her green uniform, the hair tied back like the nuisance it would be when she'd actually have to fight.

The woman that greeted her a few minutes later close to the palace had a low, rumbling voice.

"Harriet Lee. Nice to meet you.", she said and nearly crushed Lux' hand when she shook it. She was muscular, had dark sunburned skin and looked roughly about the age of Lux' mother, even though they were polar opposites.

"Lux. I'm here for the festival? I'm -"

"The new addition to the crew, I know. Come on, I don't have all day. We've got to show you the ropes of everything."

The woman – Harriet, Lux reminded herself – turned around and walked back the way she had come, and Lux hurried after her, feeling weirdly as if she just had come home. The rough tone, the way that Harriet hadn't wasted any time with small talk or unnecessary niceties - it reminded her of Cadmus Laurent and the military. It gave her a footing, a good idea where she was standing and what was expected of her – it was familiar ground. And a twisted part of her missed it. War had been easy. Kill or be killed. Nobody cared about politics in war, or about what jobs were suitable for woman.

She pushed that thought away with a brutal reminder of what the war had actually been. For a second, she felt disgusted with herself, wishing a piece of it back into her life.

In front of the palace, there was a wooden podium. Workers were running all over the place, putting chairs in place, setting up stands from where food would be sold tomorrow, decorating every single tree in front of the palace.

"Over there", Harriet pointed a finger to the gate, "normal security is stationed. We'll meet them later, lovely guys. They take care of controlling everybody's bags."

Something in her tone told Lux that Harriet didn't really thought of the normal security as 'lovely', but she didn't comment on it.

"We'll have two people on behind the podium, hidden from view. Two more stationed on the ground, that's us."

"I'm with you?"

"Unless 'us' has another meaning I'm not aware of.", Harriet said, voice dry with sarcasm.

Lux just shrugged at that. She liked Harriet, liked the simplicity and effectiveness in her tone.

"We'll be standing at the sides here -", she pointed at the corners of the podium. "Alright, how fast can you get up there?"

They spent the rest of the day playing though everything that could possibly happen. Lux couldn't count how often she had jumped on the podium, summoned shields, stopped the wood from crashing or bound Harriet to the ground with magic when she pretended to be a thief.

Lux briefly saw the other two men in the crew, as Harriet had called the group. Their names were Benji and Evan, but they were busy checking out the safety of the podium itself, so the just waved at her.

"So, Cadmus said you were one of his officers?", Harriet asked over a bottle of water they drank after lunch, sitting on a bench in the shadows. Lux just nodded. Something in Harriet's face went a little softer.

"That old fool thinks a lot of you, you know that? Said, you were one of his strongest and most reliable. And that you had the right mindset for a job like this."

"Old fool? Does he know you call him like that?", Lux said, suppressing a chuckle. Harriet grinned, and it looked so honest in her face that Lux felt warmth growing in her chest. She had spent so much time looking at forced smiles lately, that she soaked in Harriet's presence like a dry sponge water.

"Oh, of course. Hates it guts, but he can't do crap about it if he wants to leech off my cooking, can't he?"

"He leeches off your cooking?", Lux asked with raised eyebrows. Harriet laughed again.

"Sure, he does. We've been neighbors for a decade. Tried to intimidate me when I moved in. Probably thought, I'm a young twenty-something years old lad so he better tells me to be quiet, and I look at him and say 'Good sir, don't take it personally, but you're not half as scary as the black rose', and ever since then, he's coming over to chat once in a while."

Lux erupted in laughter. It made sense, it made way too much sense. She could imagine them, Cadmus, the old general who acted way more cold-hearted than he was, and Harriet, a young woman who was feisty enough to tell him to the face that he wasn't as intimidating as he thought. The picture fit so much.

"But, why a fool?", she asked when she was done with laughter. Harriet took another sip of her bottle.

"Because he told me he was done fighting, and then he ran off to be a general in a war, with a few children as officers. And again, he came back, and swore 'never again', and look at what he does now.", she gestured in the general direction of the palace, "Sitting in the damn ministry of defense. Him and the war, that's like old lovers that can't commit to each other, but can't break up either. Like I said. He's a fool."

"He might just feel a duty to his country. We all did. You think I wanted to be a soldier?", Lux responded, an eyebrow raised. Harriet gave her a long look.

"Even if you didn't, it was probably for the best."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Harriet rolled her eyes. "Just can't imagine that you'd make a good lady, kid."

It didn't hurt. It should – but it didn't even sting. Silently, Lux agreed with everything that Harriet said. She made a horrible lady, there was no denying that. But wasn't it the other way around? Hadn't this been caused by her being a soldier in her teens? There wasn't really any coming back from combat boots and mud, after all.

"Anyways, before we got sidetracked like Cadmus does when he smells my cake, I meant to ask something.", Harriet said with a serious tone.

"Sure, what?"

"You see, Cadmus has a funny idea of what the right mindset is. Sometimes I think, he would have made a good Noxian. And from what he told me; you share it as well."

"What are you talking about?"

"You think, killing somebody is sometimes better then risking them coming back, right?"

Lux opened her mouth – and closed it again. Pictures flooded her brain. A comrade dead on the ground, shot by a soldier she had spared the other day. 'Sometimes, offense is the best defense, Lux.', said Quinn. Twenty little packages they sent back to the noxian army, carried by birds, after Lux promised to be the officer her team needed her to be.

"I would rather avoid killing somebody, but … if somebody who isn't ready to kill fights somebody who is, they will always loose. And I don't intend to lose.", Lux responded eventually, clenching her fist and releasing it again. She expected Harriet to argue, to tell her that killing was bad, but she didn't.
Instead, she leaned back against the tree and sighed. "You will fight lethal?"

"If my opponent does so."

Harriet took another sip from her bottle water, and Lux grabbed a sandwich. "I see why Cadmus made you an officer.", she eventually said, and Lux released a breath she didn't knew she had held. "You two are really one of a kind. But if something happens tomorrow, I'd like you to hold off with the killing until I got the chance to ask some questions."

This was – oddly specific, Lux thought. From what she knew, the guard wasn't responsible for gathering information, or for taking prisoners. Doing so was putting the king at risk, which meant that extra personnel needed to be hired to cover the openings created by guards chasing after ... whom?

And yet, extra personnel had been hired – Lux was sitting here, wasn't she?

"You think that something will happen tomorrow.", Lux said, making it clear that it wasn't a question. For the fraction of a second, Harriet flinched back. She caught herself quick, Lux had to give it to her – the calm façade was back up so fast that she could have fooled most people – but Lux wasn't most people. She was a spy that had been sent to Noxus as a teenager; she was trained to see lies.

And Harriet, with her honest face giving away too much, had just confirmed her suspicion.

"I was just talking in general terms -"
"You ought to work on your poker face.", Lux interrupted, waving her off with her hand. "The guard doesn't take prisoners, and they don't do questioning. I can't do my job with half-assed information."

Harriet cursed under her breath but held Lux' gaze. There was no anger in either of their looks, just calm determination. Lux wouldn't take a job without Harriet being honest about the risks.

Harriet chuckled.

"Alright, kid. You're one of Cadmus', and he didn't do stupid officers."

Lux found that she was less annoyed about getting called 'kid' by Harriet than she would be with, well, anybody else. She raised one of her eyebrows, nevertheless. The woman still owed her an answer.

"Well, you read the newspapers? That poor girl, Joslyn, who was killed last week?", Harriet asked, and Lux just shrugged. "I've talked to a few policemen on the case, and they're pretty sure she killed by somebody from Noxus. And in case they try something later, I have questions."

"Noxus? Why?"

"Poor 'lad was tortured to death. I have no damn idea what they wanted from her, but she was magically silenced before her death, and that's been the signature move of a black magic clan there. If they snuck over the border, there's no guarantee they've left Demacia."

"And you think they're going to attack the king? Sounds unlikely.", Lux said. There was something fishy about the whole thing.

"They might've tried to distract the guard with it. With that many policemen trying to find out where they are and how they entered the country at all, we're stretched a little thin here. At least, that's one of the things I'd do if I wanted to strike some high-profile target in Demacia."

The noxian assassins had used distraction tactics in the last war, but something like this sounded … clumsy. Sure, killing some innocent girl in horrible fashion was bound to attract attention, but Demacia wasn't as short on guards as single teams in the war had been. At least, if Lux had to murder somebody in the nobility, she'd probably use a different approach.

"That sounds a little far-fetched for me, but it's possible. Better safe than sorry.", she eventually responded, and Harriet's face lit up again.

"Where have you been, Luxanna?"

Her father had waited for her in front of the manor. Lux closed her eyes and took a deep breath. He sounded angry, and she wasn't in the mood for an argument. She was exhausted and beaten up – she'd lost count on how many maneuvers she had practiced with Harriet somewhen during the afternoon – but until now, she had been in a good mood. Just feeling her every muscle in her body left her ecstatic, and the older woman was a very comfortable person to be around. And she even knew Cadmus.

All that good mood was blown away within the second she spotted Pieter Crownguard standing in front of the door. All that was left was the ache in her body.

"Fulfilling my duty to protect the crown.", she responded, face tight. "I've wasted enough time feeling sorry for myself for the last failure, you said so yourself."

"And how exactly are you protecting the crown?", he spat, and his eyes traveled up and down her appearance. "You look like a common worker."

"I joined the crown prince's guard. They showed me the ropes today."

"I don't remember allowing this."

She shrugged at him. "That's because I didn't ask. I'm of age."

Lux knew in this very second, that she shouldn't have said that. She should have made up some creative reason why she hadn't been able to ask him. She should ask him for forgiveness.

Pieter opened his mouth, closed it again, and she could see the rage starting to build up. It would be a little comical if it wasn't directed at her – the way his face went red and she could nearly see a vein pulsating at his forehead. When he spoke, his voice was dangerously low.

"I am the head of this family, Luxanna, and you need to ask me about such decisions. What will people think if they see you like this? Look at you, in men's clothes, dirty like a commoner. You can't just do what you want, just because you're of age. You represent nobility, act like it!"

Well, she was in to deep to back off now, wasn't she?
"I'm pretty sure people saw me dirtier on the battlefield."

"And I still wish they hadn't, but what's done is done. You becoming a soldier was the honorable thing to do once the crown found out you had magic, but the war has been over for years. There's no need to take a job like a plebian, and certainly not without my approval. A bodyguard – what were you thinking? Were you thinking at all?!"

Lux could feel anger rising in her body, cold like ice. The honorable thing. He had sent both his children in a war as teenagers because her father feared more for his reputation than for his children's life's. She knew it – she had known it from the very second when he had sent her off to a military camp with Garen when she had been eight – but hearing it like this hurt, nevertheless.

"I was thinking that if you made your own daughter a killing machine to look good in front of your friends, I might as well put these skills to use."

"Don't you dare call yourself that, Luxanna."
Words, that out of other people's mouth might have sounded kind, or worried, sounded like she had personally offended him when her father spoke them.

"Why? It's the truth. I killed people in the war; it was necessary, and I'd do it all again. I'm not ashamed of it."

"Stop saying that. We are trying to make the world forget that you did for years now, the last thing we need is you running off on a whim and looking like a brute."

"Maybe I am a brute."

"You're my daughter, Luxanna, and you will quit talking like this!"

He had screamed the last words, and she made a step back, away from him. 'They treat you like a second-class citizen and you let them.' – the whisper in Lux' head had Katarina's voice. She was right, Lux thought, because she was willing to bet her damn staff that if Garen had decided to join the crown's guard her father would be thrilled.

"I want you to back down from the job.", he finally said, and Lux let the wave of anger wash over her.

"And how would that look? A Crownguard, backing away from guarding the crown?", she snarled. Her father looked like he wanted to hit something, and quite frankly, Lux wanted to do the same. But she had him, she realized – the thing her father feared most was the destruction of his public image,

"For how much time did you agree to join them?", he finally asked after sighing.

She fought hard to suppress the smile that was forming on her face. It wasn't a kind one.
"We didn't talk about that yet, but I made pretty clear I looked for a permanent arrangement."

"And for long exactly do they plan with you right now?"

"The crown prince will travel to the freljordian border in a week. They expect me to be a part of the guard."

Her father rubbed his temples. "You will pull out when you come back. I don't know how yet, but I will come up with something. Until then, you keep a low profile and don't make any more promises. Do you understand?"

"You can't make me."

Pieter made a step towards her until he towered over Lux. The way he stared down at her felt like he was looking at an especially disgusting insect before squashing it.

"I am the head of this family, Lux. Either you obey me, or I will see that you are no longer part of it. Your choice."

She could do it, just spit in his face and leave. She could say 'Okay then' and walk away, showing him the middle finger and watch his shocked expression as she turned her back at him and his precious reputation. But she would leave her brother behind, Sona, Katarina. And as much as she wished for her father to be gone from her life, she wasn't willing to sacrifice her relationship with the rest of her family for it.

Lux pulled her shoulders back and gritted her teeth. She wasn't going to be intimidated by a man she could, as Katarina had put it, 'kill without putting her drink down'.

"You and I both know that's not a choice.", she said, her voice cold with hatred, and he had the audacity to roll his eyes.

Lux turned and nearly bumped into him when she passed him, anger consuming her body like a fire consumed a dry forest. A single word more, she though as she slammed the door behind her, fully aware that her father was still outside; A single word more and she would have hurt him.

She needed to hit something, let out energy, before she harmed somebody. Without a detour she made her way to the training room in the cellar, stomping every step of it. She pushed the door open with too much force, let it bang into the wall with a loud sound that ripped through her body.

"This. Vile. Arrogant. Cockroach!", she cursed, insults spilling from her mouth like water from a well.

Lux threw her bag on the ground the second she entered the room and kicked the door close behind her. She ripped her jacket from her body and sent it into the general direction of where her bag had fallen.

Then, she grabbed her staff and it unfolded in her hands. Her magic flew over, the first missile hitting the targets straight up blew the wood up.

"The head of this family, my ass!"
Two more targets exploded when they made contact with the volatile light flying from her weapon.
"He can take his fucking reputation and shove it up his ass until it comes out of his -"

Lux turned around while she was ranting, her staff already raised to hit the next target as hard as she could when she realized a crucial detail about the room had escaped her until now.
It was already occupied.

"Whomever you are talking about, I'm really glad I'm not him", Katarina said with a smile on her face when Lux jumped backwards in shock.

"I'm sorry, I didn't see – I didn't mean to use such – God, Katarina", Lux stuttered out, her heart racing from the adrenaline pulsing though her body. Katarina laughed, actually laughed at her.

"Haven't heard you curse like this since I arrived. I must say, it's quite entertaining when you get mad, as long as you don't blow me up." She crocked an eyebrow. "You're not going to blow me up, aren't you?"

"Of course not. I was just -"

"-mad. Yeah, I get it. Sometimes when I'm mad, I just have to -", Katarina dropped her eyes to the dagger she was holding in one hand. "- hurt somebody. Destroy something. Anger is like fire, my dad used to say. It has to destroy, and if we don't let it, it will burn us instead."

She almost looked regretful, and Lux didn't know what to say for a while.

"My father has ordered me to pull out of the crown prince's guard."

"Why?"

Lux shrugged. "Not proper for a woman of my standing. I'm looking like a commoner. Stuff like this."

"It would make him look back."
It wasn't a question, and Lux was violently reminded that the woman she was speaking to was currently forced to marry her brother. She would be part of the family before long – suffer from the same bullshit.

"Yeah."

Katarina grabbed the dagger and threw it straight at the target Lux had been aiming at. She hit it right in the middle. Then she turned back to Lux, a challenging look in her face.

"Then fight me.", she said, grabbing another dagger. Lux raised her eyebrow.

"Why the hell would I do this?"

Katarina laughed. "You need to blow up steam and hit something. I need to stay in shape, and I promise I won't be hurt."

Lux closed her eyes for a second. They had fought each other before, using lethal force. She still didn't remember how Katarina had survived, but she did remember something. Throwing her back into a tree. Hitting her with a laser in the side, seeing her skin blister.

Lux clenched her hand to a fist. She wanted to respond that this was a horrible idea, when Katarina stepped closer to her.

"Are you thinking about the war?", she asked, her voice unusually soft.

"How can I not? I must have hurt you badly. I could kill you."

Katarina chuckled, and sat down on the ground, staring up at her, waiting. For a second Lux stared down on her, lips opened, and there was a glitter in Katarina's eyes she couldn't quite place, then she sighed at sat down beside her.

"That was two days after Riven died. I hadn't slept in nearly fifty hours at this point, I could barely see what was in front of me. If that soldier hadn't been hurt before, I would never have gotten the upper hand at all, and when you came to her help … I didn't want to fight anymore. I guess, a part of me thought – If Riven didn't survive the war, why should I?" Her voice was cheerful and light as she spoke, nearly too cheerful. "You barged out of the woods, and you aimed at me, and I saw you and thought, 'Okay, that's it, this is how I die.'"

"Why didn't you?"
Lux regretted the words the second she had said them. Katarina raised her eyebrows, her expression shifting to surprise within the blink of a second.

"What do you mean?", she asked, and Lux cursed under her breath. Katarina didn't know about her amnesia, didn't know about how black spots filled her brain sometimes.

"I – I forgot. Last year, something happened and my memories … well, they have been better. I remember charging at you, and hitting you with a spell, but afterwards – nothing.", she said, fighting to not stutter and hoping Katarina would simply accept it as it was, but the alarm that appeared in her eyes told her otherwise.

"What happened?", she asked, and there was worry in her voice. Lux faintly wondered why Katarina reacted so strong to this – almost as if Lux was somebody dear to her, which was impossible as they hadn't known each other for longer than a few days – but then her mind returned to the problem on hand. Was she really about to tell Katarina that she had spied on her country?

She couldn't.

"I had an accident at work. I lost about half a year of memories … and a few things in the years before became fuzzy. It's not this important, though. The family doctor said I'm fine."
The last word had come out more forceful than Lux had intended, and Katarina flinched back.

"What kind of work did you do that damaged your memories?", she asked with a weird voice, and Lux shrugged. She couldn't tell her, and for a second, Katarina held her gaze, the she she sighed and leaned back against the wall. When she spoke, she turned her head away from Lux.

"The soldier I attacked – she was hurt. Badly. You stopped attacking to check on her, and I ran for it. I don't know if you tried to catch me, but I imagine you carried her back instead."

Lux tried to recall it – any of it – but it was useless. She remembered charging, remembered catching Katarina's eyes as she shot the first laser, and then – nothing. But it sounded like the truth – Quinn had been hurt, after all. And maybe she had been wrong about how badly she had hit Katarina.

The other woman had no reason to lie, anyways.

"So, we agree we really need a rematch?", Katarina eventually said, and Lux rolled her eyes.

"We really don't."

"You're afraid to lose."

"I'm just not fighting people for fun."

Katarina twirled the dagger between two fingers for a second, before she flicked it up. It came to a halt at Lux' throat, the cool metal burning against her skin before Lux had even time to flinch back.

"I thought I just told you that If I'd had a little more sleep back then I'd have killed you.", she whispered, face close to Lux. "Since when is practicing protecting yourself just fun?"

Lux froze up completely. Katarina was to close – she could feel her breath on her skin, could smell her sweat, and there was something incredible hot about the gloating smile on her face. Somewhere in the back of her mind, her mind was screaming at her that there was a fucking knife at her throat, but Lux ignored it.

It was as if her body knew with absolute certainty that Katarina wouldn't hurt her on purpose. Which was ridiculous, as the other woman had literally just talked about her death.

"So, do I have a point?", Katarina asked, and Lux swallowed. That fucking grin was going to do her in. What had Katarina been asking, anyways? Oh, a sparring match.

"You're not beating me.", Lux rasped – hadn't she been opposed to fighting just a second ago? – and Katarina put away the dagger and grabbed her hand. Lux let herself be pulled up, and her hand burned even after Katarina had let it go.

Fuck, she was blushing. This was so messed up; she didn't even want to think about it.

Thankfully, Katarina didn't seem to notice. Instead, she stepped away, slowly walking backwards as she put distance between them. With every meter, Lux regained control over her breathing again. When Katarina stood on the other side of the hall, casually twisting her dagger between her fingers again, Lux bit her lip and pulled her staff.

'Because you were fucking terrifying, Lux.', rang in her ears. She wondered if a piece of Katarina still thought so, and the thought weirdly stung. Sparring with her was a horrible idea altogether – and she could still call it off. Both of them were dangerous, lethal when losing control just a little. One of them might get hurt, badly.

But Katarina was right – Lux needed practice in fighting assassins. Harriet had said that maybe, there was a noxian assassin in Demacia right now, and maybe, Lux was its target's bodyguard. It was foolish to pass up on the opportunity.

"Ready?", Katarina asked, and Lux closed her eyes for a second and felt the magic around her. It was prickling in the air already, anticipating, waiting for Lux to use its energy. Lux slowed down her breath, banished every thought about Katarina's looks and voice and expression from her mind.

She couldn't pull back now.

"Ready.", she replied, and for a second nothing happened. Then, as if one of them had given an inaudible signal, within the same heartbeat, they dashed towards each other.

Lux was determined to use no magic until she had to. She twirled her staff downwards, trying to pull away Katarina's feet, but Katarina swiftly stepped backwards, and threw two daggers at her face. Lux snapped her staff upwards within the last second, knocking away both, and ducked as a third flew over her head.

She spun around herself, aiming at Katarina's torso, and this time Katarina didn't dodge, instead blocking her staff with two daggers.
"Are you sure you want to be in close combat?"

Katarina's smile showed teeth, and her voice was smooth and confident. It made Lux shiver, and somehow, as if she had wanted to cause exactly that effect, Katarina used that fraction of a second when Lux' attention slipped to kick her in the stomach hard and send her flying.

'Well, then', Lux though, as she summoned a shield around her mid-air and stopped herself from crashing into the wall. So much about not using magic. She still stumbled hard, and fought for breath, kneeling on the ground.

Katarina didn't give her the time to get up, two more daggers forced Lux to roll out of the way. 'Where is she pulling all these daggers from anyways?', Lux wondered absently, while throwing a missile made from light Katarina's way, who dodged it effortlessly. Maybe it was a duplication spell, because there was no way that Katarina actually had these many daggers on herself.

Her stomach aching bad, Lux finally forced herself up just in time to jump to the side the second Katarina decided that she wouldn't allow Lux to bring distance between them and flew at her with alarming speed. Katarina turned direction the second she arrived where Lux just had been, and Lux had to summon another shield to block even more daggers.

Katarina dodged two more missiles while twisting and turning, and Lux found it harder and harder to keep her away. There was something inhumane about her speed, her body was nearly blurring as she moved across the room. Her hair was nothing but a red flash in the air.

It was definitively a duplication spell, Lux though as she nearly stumbled about on of these damn daggers. There was a dozen now, and barely a square meter without one of them. If they were summons, it would put a strain on Katarina's magic to even keep them summoned.

For a second, she caught Katarina's eyes, the smug, confident smile in her face, and she swallowed, then she was forced to dodge to the side. There had to be a point to the daggers on the ground, or Katarina wouldn't keep so many of them summoned.

And then, Katarina made a weird motion. It looked almost as if she was about to spin into a pirouette, but her eyes were trained on the ground behind Lux, where one of the daggers lied. Lux reacted on sheer instinct when she formed a shield around herself. Katarina disappeared, and the second she appeared right behind Lux, the shield sprang alive and slammed into her.

Katarina stumbled backwards fighting for balance, and that was the opening that Lux needed to finally hit her with a binding. Light bloomed alive around Katarina, running over her limbs like ropes as her body froze mid-air. Katarina tried to get out of the binding, but it was no use – Lux' magic didn't budge.

"Looks like close combat didn't made you any luckier, right?", Lux asked, grinning, as she was fighting for breath. For a second Katarina just stared at her, mouth open. Then she caught herself.

"Oh, you got to be shitting me, that was dumb luck.", she huffed and pulled a face. She was still stuck in the light unmoving, but she didn't seem too upset about it. Lux stuck out her tongue.

"Say's the one who just started fucking teleporting."

"Years and years of practice. You're going to let me down or should I get comfortable?"

Lux stared at her for a second, then stepped close to her and undid the spell. With a loud thump, Katarina dropped to the ground.

"Sorry", she said as Katarina winced, but the other woman just shook her head and pushed herself up.

"And? Blown off enough steam? I'd be up for a revanche."

Katarina was right, Lux realized. Her anger had disappeared like fog blown away by the wind, and she felt better – as if fighting was the most natural thing in the world to her body. The last time she had felt this good, she had been dancing with Katarina drunk on wine.

Lux forced the thought out of her head. This was getting ridiculous.

"Sure.", she answered, and there was something in Katarina's eyes that told Lux that she wasn't going to find an easy opening again.

She was right. Katarina must have been hiding her teleportation skills to surprise her in their first battle, but she was done holding back now. Their second match could barely be considered a battle at all, with Katarina porting all over the room. She forced Lux into the defensive mercilessly, barely giving her enough time to erect shields.

Lux was bound to be too slow at some point, and eventually, she lost sight of Katarina for a split second. Cold metal at the skin of her throat just a breath later confirmed, what she had known from the second their rematch had started – she had lost.

Katarina stood right behind her, her fast breath making Lux' skin break out in goosebumps.

"Alright, alright.", Lux said, breathless. "You won."

The heat that Katarina's body radiated off was overwhelming, and Lux wasn't sure if she wanted to close the distance or jump away from her. Katarina pulled back the dagger, and instead, a finger of hers ghosted over Lux' throat.

"You could be dead.", she whispered.

"You're awfully concerned about my wellbeing.", Lux responded, mouth dry like a desert.

For a second, Katarina stayed like this, then she stepped back, and Lux wasn't sure if she felt relieved or disappointed. Her heart hammered like crazy, and she bit her lip until she drew blood. The pain brought her back to the reality of her staring at Katarina as if she was the center of Lux' gravity.

Katarina stared back for a second, and there was something in her eyes that Lux couldn't quite place. A part of her imagined Katarina had a similar hard time forcing her eyes away as Lux had, and Lux felt disgust wash over her the very second the thought had formed in her mind.

Wishful thinking, already? About her brother's fiancée? What an absolute joke.

"Why wouldn't I be?", Katarina responded, and she smiled – actually smiled, not the crocked grin that she had worn during their match. It made Lux feel worse, somehow.

Because why wouldn't Katarina be concerned about the life of her future sister-in-law? Why wouldn't she want to help her train, warn her about her weak spots? Lux was the one whose mind was running away with her, who was seeing attraction when all there was was Katarina being friendly.

Lux shrugged; her good mood had vanished.

"I'd better get to bed early.", she said, faking the good mood she'd had until now. "Tomorrow will be hell."

As she turned and left, Katarina looked hurt and Lux cursed. Usually her poker face was good, but either she was getting worse or Katarina was particularly skilled at seeing though her bullshit. She wanted to apologize, but then Katarina would likely ask what had ruined her mood. Lux wouldn't be able to answer.

"We should do this again!", Katarina called after her when Lux was already half-way out of the room, and for a second, Lux froze. Her throat burned where Katarina had touched her.

'You should touch me again.', her mind helpfully responded, and she felt her face burn.

"Sure!", she called back before she fled.