Page 133 - Fourth Wing

pull my knife away so I don’t accidentally slit his throat.

“He yields,” Professor Emetterio declares, his face contorted in revulsion.
I sheathe my blade and climb off him, dodging the puddles of sick. Then

I take the dagger Oren dropped a few feet back as he continues to vomit.

The knife is heavier and longer than my others, but it’s mine now, and I
earned it. I sheathe it in an empty place at my left thigh.

“You won!” Rhiannon says, clasping me in a hug as I walk off the mat.

“He’s sick,” I say with a shrug.
“I’ll take being lucky over being good any day,” Rhiannon counters.

“I have to find someone to get this cleaned up,” Dain says, his own

complexion turning peaked.
I won.

…

Timing is the hardest thing about my plan.
I win the next week when a stocky girl from First Wing can’t concentrate

long enough to throw a decent punch thanks to a few leighorrel mushrooms

and their hallucinogenic properties that somehow wind up in her lunch. She
gets in a good kick to my knee, but it’s nothing a few days in a wrap won’t

heal.

I win the week after that when a tall guy from Third Wing stumbles
because his large feet temporarily lose all feeling, courtesy of the zihna root

that grows on one outcropping near the ravine. My timing is off a little,
though, and he lands a few good punches to my face, leaving me with a

split lip and a bruise that colors my cheek for the next eleven days, but at

least he doesn’t break my jaw.
I win again the next week when a buxom cadet’s vision turns blurry mid-

match, on account of the tarsilla leaves that found their way into her tea.
She’s fast, tossing me to the mat and delivering some overwhelmingly

painful kicks to my abdomen that leave colorful contusions and one distinct