The Assassin Princess (The Legacy Novels Book 1) by Blake Rivers

change her, and whatever she thought now, she had been turned and changed from how she’d been. That was clear.
    But the most significant change had happened before Adam, and he’d not known about that . He hadn’t known about the mirrors.
    The nothing was changing now, and she had to pay attention. He was coming into her thoughts, invading her mind—best to stay quiet. Think later.
     
    *
     
    “Keep them closed.”
    All was dark, and she did as he said.
    “Trust in what I tell you.”
    She couldn’t do that, but knew she would anyway. It was part of the change.
    “Feel the air around you, sense it, know it’s there. Know that it’s power to control, and that it’s yours to control.” His voice was penetrating. She felt her body responding, relaxing.
    “Good. Now, just stay, very, still.”
    The reaction was simple. Just a reaction, without a thought.
    She’d blocked Adam’s blade, holding it tight in her hands. It cut her flesh deep.
    “Open your eyes.”
    The cloudless blue was back above her, the sunlight hurting her eyes. She squinted, watching the deep red of her blood drip from her hand to the brilliant white marble beneath.
    The columns that she’d seen before were beside her, archways incomplete, rising unfinished into the sky. Through one, Ami saw green grass, a dark wood beyond. A rosebush grew against a sheltered walkway that joined two unseen buildings, the same she had already walked.
    There were steps in front of her, the very ones she’d raced down before. Further steps lead onto the grass. It was warm, close, and her hands stung with cuts.
    Adam was in front of her, his sword in his grip, the blade angled at her neck. His smile was manic.
    She pulled away from him.
    “That was so small,” he said, his skin more luminous in the light, as white as the marble beneath them. “So small an action and reaction. One simple slice through the air. I wouldn’t have stopped, and you would’ve been dead—and oh, how that thrills me—but you stopped it, easily. Too easily.” Adam took her hands and clasped them in his. A pulse of green flame and the cuts were gone, leaving only the stains of blood on her skin. “Count yourself lucky,” he sneered. “I usually don’t care to stop the bleeding of others. I prefer to cause it.”
    Without warning, Adam raised his sword and swooped to attack. His blade moved fast, cutting through the air, and Ami, taken by surprise, could only step and counter-step between the columns, ducking through the archways. He struck her, stabbing again and again, his eyes mad, his hair flying across his face. She ran from him, down the steps and onto the grass.
    Adam stopped his pursuit and stood on the last step, leaning upon his sword, Ami’s blood running down the steel. “You’re a bloody mess, yet still standing.” Her forearms and hands dripped red, blood oozing from cuts and gashes, but it hardly hurt at all—he was right, she should have been on the floor dying, but all she felt was a mild irritation and a dull ache.
    A voice said her name through a storm far in the distance. Hero. She pushed the thought away. Not here. Not now.
    “You aren’t fatally harmed,” he said, coming toward her. He took hold of her wounded arms, squeezing the deep cuts; that hurt, and the grass stained red between them. “I strike, and you block. Very good. You have defended yourself without a weapon, against a man with a sword. And you are still alive.” Tiny flickers of light rushed from his fingers, running over her and into each bloodied cut. Ami felt only a tickle as her wounds were healed.
    “I must have you heal me?” She wiped the blood from her arms, inspecting them, her stomach and chest too. Her skin was unblemished, but pale.
    “For now,” he said, “but soon you’ll be powerful enough to heal yourself, and then you’ll be invincible, like me.”
    A flash of purple sparked behind her eyes, and she looked to the rosebush, remembering her fight here before,