Five Touches, No Mercy

By the time Celia finished the cool down Iona would have approved and every impatient part of her had resented, her pulse had settled into something that could pass for discipline.

Her body had other opinions.

Sweat had dried at the base of her neck and left salt on her skin. Her right eye throbbed in time with the hall lights. Her legs held the memory of Hartford’s strips, the ugly later round, Sable’s patient attack on her retreat, and the service corridor where Nico had asked for one hour that could not help him unless wanting counted as useful.

She had given it to him.

She had not given him softness.

Celia found him near the water station after the last required check with bout committee, exactly where he had said he would be, gear bag over one shoulder, mask hooked in his hand, phone nowhere visible. He looked up when she approached. The response was immediate and contained, a tightening around the eyes, the smallest shift of weight toward her before he stopped himself from claiming space in a public hall.

Good.

He could still be trained.

“Come,” she said.

Nico did not ask where.

That, too, pleased her more than it should have.

Hartford’s main corridors had begun to lose their earlier fever but kept enough noise to turn every pause into evidence. Volunteers carried clipboards. Coaches argued in low voices. A group of junior fencers sat against the wall with their jackets open, their parents leaning over phones. Celia walked past the locker rooms, past a cracked vending machine, past a door marked Auxiliary Gym that had been propped open with a folded chair.

The smaller gym smelled of rubber, old dust, and metal from forgotten scoring reels. Only one strip had been laid down near the far wall, its cables coiled neatly beside it. A stack of folding tables leaned in the corner. Someone had left a half empty case of sports drinks on a bench, the cardboard damp at one edge from condensation.

No cameras. No crew. No family face waiting in polished concern. No Rina turning silence into angles.

Celia stepped onto the edge of the strip and looked back at Nico.

“The hour is still off camera,” she said. “Off platform. No Rina. No review. No proof. No debt. No public usefulness.”

His gaze held hers. “Yes.”

“If you brought a speech, swallow it.”

A flicker moved at the corner of his mouth. It vanished before it could become charm. “Understood.”

“Good.” Celia set down her mask. The movement tugged at her shoulder. Her headache flared, then steadied into a hard pulse. “Five touches.”

Nico went still in a different way.

She could see the moment his expectation changed shape. He had come prepared for her rules. He had perhaps expected anger, silence, a conversation sharp enough to leave marks, the dangerous quiet that came when two people wanted too much and refused to call it by name.

He had not expected her to start with a bout.

Or perhaps he had, and that was why his expression went bare for one breath before discipline closed over it.

“Full strength,” she said. “Ordinary respect. No gentling because I am tired. No turning restraint into tenderness. No stopping unless one of us calls an actual safety halt.”

His fingers tightened once on his mask.

Celia lifted her chin. “If you want the hour, fence.”

Nico set his bag down with care. He did not tell her she was exhausted. He did not say she had nothing to prove. He did not make the mistake of admiring the demand aloud before meeting it. He only stripped off the last of the public man and became an opponent.

“The only way I get the hour,” he said, “is to fence the woman in front of me.”

The words hit lower than praise would have.

Celia turned away before he could see too much. “Try to survive her first.”

He laughed once, low and rough, and began to gear up.

The ritual helped. Jacket closure. Glove. Cord. Mask. Blade test by hand, because no machine waited here to make a clean sound for them. Celia rolled her shoulders and felt the fine tremor in her quads. Fatigue was not a moral failing. It was information. Nico would see it. He would also see if she expected him to pretend he had not.

She would make him pay for any false mercy.

They saluted.

The blade line came up between them. Distance narrowed. The strip beneath her shoes felt different from the main hall, less alive with outside attention, more honest underfoot. Celia knew what Nico knew. Her back heel had a habit of wanting the floor too soon after a shortened retreat. He had seen it almost catch her in Providence. He had seen it again in private correction. She had kept it live against Sable because Sable had hunted it openly.

Nico knew more than Sable.

Celia also knew what he had been fixing. His back foot had learned patience, but learning did not erase appetite. He still wanted the confirming moment too cleanly. He still loved proof. Men who built empires tended to.

“Ready?” he asked.

“For your disappointment? Always.”

“Fence.”

He did not rush.

That was his first answer.

Nico advanced with measured pressure, blade quiet, point alive without declaring too much. The old version of him might have pressed to reclaim the center, to force her into the shorter retreat and make her heel confess. This Nico let the distance breathe. Back foot checked. Front foot restrained. He waited for her to give him a true pattern.

Celia gave him a lie with excellent manners.

She invited him forward with a retreat that looked shorter than it was, let the tip of her blade soften by half an inch, and watched his corrected patience hold for the first beat. Good. Too good. He had learned from her and resented nothing about it.

Then his back foot settled a fraction late, the restraint creating its own seam. He had waited to be certain. Celia struck through the waiting.

Her touch landed clean.

“One,” she said.

Nico lowered his point and exhaled with something that was almost appreciation. “You read the correction.”

“I read the man congratulating himself for having one.”

His eyes sharpened.

There. The hour had begun.

On the next phrase, he changed the line and came with less visible pressure. Celia felt the temptation he offered. If she attacked his improved back foot too aggressively, she would overstate the lesson and give him a clean second intention. She held. He held. Two patient fencers made an ugly silence out of steel.

Celia retreated, not enough. Her heel wanted the floor. Nico saw it.

He did not take the cheap opening.

The refusal was so precise it irritated her.

He could have driven into the early trap and perhaps scored. It would have proved he remembered the flaw, not that he could fence her. Instead he let the first opening pass and waited for her to punish the mercy she hated.

Celia did. Of course she did.

She attacked into what looked like delayed restraint, pride leading by a hair. Nico caught the second recovery, the one after her anger, not the first flaw. His blade met hers with clean timing, and his point found the target before her counter could close.

“One all,” he said.

Celia’s pulse lifted.

“Do not look smug.”

“I am looking educated.”

“Worse.”

They reset.

He scored the next touch by drawing her attack and slipping just outside the line with a patience that had become less decorative and more dangerous. She scored after that by breaking tempo twice and taking him before his blade could decide whether to search or close.

Two all.

The auxiliary gym seemed to shrink to the strip, their breath, the scratch of soles, the quick metallic conversation of blades. Celia’s headache pressed harder behind her eye, but the pain had edges she could work around. Sweat slid down her spine. Her lungs burned in a way that felt clean compared with hallway questions and family management.

Nico was sweating too. The neatness had gone from him, not the control. A damp curl had escaped near his temple. His breathing stayed even by force of will rather than ease. Every time he looked at her, the focus landed like a hand she had not permitted yet.

She lunged too early and knew it at once.

Nico took the blade, found the line, scored.

“Three two,” he said.

Celia stepped back, shaking out her hand. Her fingers ached around the grip.

“Still no mercy?” he asked.

The question carried nothing soft. It was check, respect, and challenge.

“If you offer it again,” she said, “I will be offended enough to improve.”

His smile came sharp. “I withdraw the threat.”

He did not give her mercy. He gave her pressure.

The next exchange stretched. He tried to herd her toward the back line, patient in increments, refusing the large obvious attack. Celia let herself be moved. Let him believe fatigue had made her practical. Let her back heel hover longer than comfort allowed, calf tight, balance begging for the safety of settlement.

Nico waited for the heel.

Celia refused to give it.

She took his blade on the half beat and hit before his verification finished.

Three all.

The sound that left him was quiet and not quite a laugh. It warmed the air anyway.

“Better,” he said.

“You say that after losing touches far too often.”

“I have excellent taste in losses.”

“Try developing worse taste.”

He did.

He came harder on the next point, no cheap trap, no gentle pace. His attack compressed her space until the back line threatened under her heels. Celia parried the first intention, missed the second by a breath, and took his touch against her side with a hiss she could not stop.

Four three, Nico.

Her body wanted a longer pause. Her pride wanted to deny it. Her sense, which had survived several years of Ashford rooms by being less romantic than either body or pride, ordered her to take the legal moment and breathe.

Nico remained at distance. He did not crowd the pause with concern.

Good man, she thought, and immediately wanted to stab him for earning the phrase.

“Head?” he asked.

“Attached.”

“Vision?”

“Annoyingly clear. En garde.”

His jaw worked once. Then he lifted his blade.

Celia saw his restraint again and, this time, did not punish it blindly. She gave him a slow beginning, enough to test whether he would take over from fear that she might be reaching her limit. He did not. He let her bring the phrase into being. That was more intimate than stepping close would have been.

She attacked on the preparation he thought was bait, because sometimes the answer was to make the obvious thing clean enough to become true.

Touch.

Four all.

For a second neither spoke.

The score existed nowhere except between them. No machine, no referee, no update stream, no family elder recording who owned what. Four touches each. Fatigue in her knees. Pain behind her eye. Heat under her jacket. Nico across from her, wanting her with the restraint of a man who had finally understood that wanting did not earn permission to reduce the object of it.

Celia rolled her back foot once against the strip.

Nico saw.

Of course he saw.

The last touch waited.

They saluted with their blades still up, a tiny acknowledgment that this had turned serious enough to deserve ceremony inside ceremony.

“Fence,” Celia said.

Nico came forward by millimeters.

He had learned. That was the problem and the pleasure of him. His patience no longer sat on top of appetite. It had entered the muscle. He watched her heel without staring at it. Watched her blade without believing it. Watched her breath, probably, because he was irritating and thorough.

Celia retreated.

Her back heel hovered.

He waited.

She let it hover longer, calf tightening, balance narrowing to a thin bright line. The old flaw would have settled. The easy correction would have overcompensated and made her stiff. Celia gave him neither. She gave him the living edge between.

His point began to close only after his patience asked for proof.

Too late.

Celia struck through the line he had waited to verify.

Her touch landed.

The gym went silent in the aftermath, though it had been quiet all along.

Five four.

Celia’s arm remained extended for one more beat. Her lungs dragged air through her chest. Her legs trembled. Satisfaction arrived in a hard, bright flash, followed by the more dangerous warmth of seeing Nico stand there with defeat on him and no shame in it.

He lowered his blade first.

Respect, not surrender.

Celia lowered hers after him.

They saluted.

Only then did Nico remove his mask.

His hair was damp. His face was flushed from the bout, eyes dark with more than frustration. Loss had sharpened him. It had stripped away the last hallway polish and left the man who had asked for one hour and then allowed her to make him earn each second.

“Well?” Celia said, because silence had become too much.

He took one step toward her, then stopped. His gaze went to her blade, still angled low in her hand, then back to her face.

Permission was a physical fact. He waited for it.

Celia looked down at the blade.

Then she set the tip fully toward the floor.

Nico came closer.

Not close enough to touch. Close enough that his heat entered the air around her, that she could see the faint mark on his jaw where the mask had pressed, that the public hall felt farther away than it had any right to feel.

“I want the hour more now,” he said.

Her throat tightened. “Because you lost?”

“Because you made me earn every touch.”

Celia’s fingers relaxed around the grip. “You scored four. Do not make this tragic.”

“I am devastated with dignity.”

“Debatable.”

The corner of his mouth moved, but the desire in his face did not soften into a joke. He looked at her blade, at her tired shoulders, at the heel she had kept alive beyond his expectation. When his eyes returned to hers, they carried the precise attention she had begun by mistrusting and now could not dismiss.

“You held it longer,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I waited too long to believe you.”

“Yes.”

“I will not next time.”

A sensible woman would have stepped back.

Celia stayed where she was.

“Then next time,” she said, “I will give you something else to misunderstand.”

His breath changed.

The strip between them had vanished as a useful measurement. There was distance, still. There was no kiss. No confession. No convenient sentence that could make the hour safe or clean or ready to be carried outside.

There was only the lowered blade, the private score, and Nico standing close because she had allowed him there after beating him.

From somewhere beyond the auxiliary gym, Hartford’s public noise rolled faintly through the walls.

Celia did not move away.