The training began under the midday sun. They had already been practicing for a week in the cobblestone courtyard of the harem, where the air still held the fresh, clean scent of the previous night's rain. The prince wielded a wooden practice sword that mimicked the elegant curve of a scimitar; Ariadna carried an identical one, rough and heavy, but she was already beginning to handle it with greater ease.

  Mariane watched from the edge of the courtyard, arms crossed, her gaze sharp and calculating. Something essential has changed in just a few days, she thought. She no longer tries to win through sheer strength. She deflects, looks for weak points, waits for the mistake. The instinct is there; it only needs polishing. From the very beginning, she had decided that training Ariadna alongside the prince was the best strategy: the friendly rivalry would push both of them, and if the girl proved to be as good as she seemed, she would become a loyal, almost inseparable guardian. The prince had solid foundations, but months without consistent practice had left him at a basic level; Ariadna, on the other hand, possessed a raw gift, a near-masculine mobility in her roughness, yet paired with an agility the prince still could not match.

  Mariane gave the signal. Both saluted with a formal touch of swords.

  The prince attacked first, direct as always: a frontal thrust to the chest, shouldering forward, trying to claim ground. Ariadna did not meet it head-on. She pivoted on her left foot in a clean turn, her body tracing a fluid semicircle. Her sword slid underneath in a low parry, deflecting the prince’s blade toward the ground with barely a graze. The attacker’s momentum betrayed him: he stumbled a step, and Ariadna, without hesitation, hooked the guard with a quick wrist twist and pulled upward in a circular disarm. The wooden scimitar flew and landed with a dry thud several meters away.

  Mariane nodded, holding back a smile. Perfect. She no longer forces the disarm; she provokes it.

  “Well done,” she said aloud. “But remember: this isn’t about breaking bones with direct impacts. Here you will learn adapted fencing. Elasticity, ingenuity, and cuts that bleed you out without wearing you down. Strength is for those who don’t know how to think.”

  The prince merely nodded, lips pressed tight, saying nothing. His pride was bruised, but this was not the moment for words.

  They resumed. Mariane corrected Ariadna’s stance: feet shoulder-width apart, knees soft, weight evenly distributed, sword in middle guard with the tip slightly forward.

  “Do not meet force with force,” she repeated. “Redirect.”

  The prince attacked again, this time with a wide lateral cut from the right shoulder, aiming for the flank. Ariadna leaned back in a controlled arch, the blade passing centimeters from her torso. She immediately counterattacked with an upward cut from below, simulating a deep slash to the inner thigh: femoral artery, rapid bleeding, lethal with minimal effort.

  The prince, frustrated but learning, changed tactics. High guard, powerful vertical downward cut like an axe. Ariadna did not block. She took a quick sidestep—right foot crossing behind the left—gained angle, and slid her sword in an oblique deflection, letting the enemy blade glide into emptiness. She extended her arm in a precise thrust toward the exposed shoulder, stopping a whisper from the skin. A cut there would weaken the arm in minutes; blood would drip slowly but steadily.

  As the sun climbed higher, Mariane introduced more demanding drills: circular parries followed by immediate ripostes. Deflect with a wide arc, then slash diagonally downward to wrists or neck. Ariadna repeated them again and again, each time more fluid. The prince tried to imitate her, but his style remained linear, predictable: frontal thrusts, straight advances. She evaded them with elastic zigzags, wearing him down without hardly breaking a sweat.

  By the end of the session both were panting, clothes soaked. The prince, humiliated yet impressed, picked up his sword and looked at her with something new in his eyes: genuine respect. Ariadna, exhausted, felt more alive than ever.

  Mariane approached slowly, a faint smile on her lips.

  “Good work today,” she said, and then, as if just noticing, lowered her gaze. “But what a shame… your trousers have torn.”

  She pointed. At the crotch, the fabric had ripped in an irregular line, revealing the masculine-style undergarments Ariadna still wore out of habit. There was no surprise on Mariane’s face; she had anticipated it. Still boy’s underwear, she thought. But that will change. Little by little.

  Ariadna blushed slightly, crossing her arms over the tear in an instinctive attempt to cover herself, heat rising to her face.

  Mariane didn’t stop. Her finger moved upward naturally.

  “And look… your shirt too. It’s come open a bit at the side.” —The fabric had indeed split—. “We should get you proper clothing.”

  “What kind of clothing?” Ariadna asked, her voice tinged with doubt and a faint challenge, though the blush lingered.

  Mariane smiled more openly this time, her eyes gleaming with plans that went far beyond fabric.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “Like this one,” she said, gesturing to Ariadna’s training outfit: fitted soft leather trousers, a cinched but free-moving linen shirt. “Only it should be made with a special fabric.” Her smile widened a fraction more. “We’ll continue tomorrow. I’ll order the slave girls to weave you that suit… but one that won’t tear so easily.”

  Ariadna didn’t answer right away. She looked down at the tear, then at Mariane. Something in that smile made her nervous… and at the same time, intrigued her in a way she couldn’t name.

  Mariane turned and walked toward the exit arch. As she moved away, she glanced back at the prince lying beside Ariadna.

  “There’s an old saying… If you put a frog in hot water, it jumps out and escapes. But if you put it in cold water and then, little by little, heat the pot… it won’t notice until it’s too late.” —European princesses were very modest and prudish; in the harem, it was easy to get them used to wearing Persian clothes. It only took time.—

  Ariadna stood still, sweat cooling on her skin, her heart beating a little faster than usual. Across from her, the prince was beginning to realize something.

  .

  .

  Ciro collapsed onto the cushions in his private chamber, his body still humming with the aftershocks of training. Every muscle screamed: his shoulders burned from the deflected impacts, his forearms trembled from the repeated effort of holding a high guard, and in the small of his back he felt a hot knot that reminded him of every stumble, every humiliating disarm. But it wasn’t just physical pain. It was something deeper—a strange mixture that churned in his stomach and, at the same time, made him feel… awake.

  He felt good. No—more than good: he felt alive in a way he hadn’t felt in years.

  His previous training sessions—those of his childhood and early adolescence in his former life—had been an elegant farce. One hour a day at most, under the gentle morning sun, with masters who let him win. Always. A well-placed thrust, a wide cut they “failed” to parry, and the instructor would drop to his knees in an exaggerated bow, praising his “prodigious improvement.” Ciro had known since he was thirteen: it was all theater. A performance designed to feed the ego of a prince. At first he had enjoyed it—the applause, the courtiers’ smiles, the pride in his father’s eyes when they recounted the fictional victories—but over time it had turned into boredom. Emptiness. Contained rage. He wanted to fight for real. He wanted to feel the risk, the true sweat, the fear of making a mistake and paying for it. He wanted someone to beat him without mercy so he could learn never to lose again.

  And today… today he had finally had it.

  Ariadna—Ardeshir, as he still called her in his mind when no one was watching—had disarmed him again and again. Not with brute strength, but with that damned fluidity that seemed to mock every one of his predictable attacks. Every time she pivoted, every time her sword slid like water beneath his, Ciro felt a double sting: frustration and admiration. There was something insulting about being defeated by someone who, until recently, had been his comrade in mischief, his equal in every masculine sense. Losing to Ardeshir would have been bearable; a brotherhood-of-arms rivalry, harsh but clean. But now… now she was a girl. A girl who made him trip, who left him gasping, who deflected his most powerful cuts as if they were the clumsy swings of a child.

  That hurt in a place that wasn’t the body. Yes, wounded pride—but also something more confusing: an affront he didn’t know how to name. How was it possible that she, with those almost feline movements, with an agility he still couldn’t match, left him sprawled in the dust over and over? And yet… every defeat had taught him something. For the first time in a long while he had seen how linear his style really was. His frontal thrusts, his straight advances, his wide cuts that practically shouted “here I come.” She read them like an open book. And as he tried again, he began to understand: it wasn’t just about strength or speed. It was anticipation. It was patience. It was thinking before you struck.

  He wiped a hand across his sweaty face, still smelling of leather and courtyard dust. Tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow he would return to the Great Sardes.

  The old master was a living legend across the empire. Twelve generations of feared generals and warriors had passed through his hands: he took rough diamonds and forged them into living blades. Even Ciro’s own father, the Shah, had trained under that severe gaze in his youth. Sardes granted no favors. He faked no defeats. If he beat you, he did it with the same cold indifference as the sun scorching the desert.

  Ciro rose with a grunt, ignoring the lash of pain through his muscles. He walked to the window overlooking the night garden, where torches flickered like fallen stars. He rehearsed mentally what he would say. He couldn’t arrive stammering like a child. He had to be direct.

  The next day, beneath the stone vault of the private armory hall—the air thick with the scent of sandalwood oil and tempered steel—Ciro stood before the Great Sardes. The master, his white beard braided, the scars crossing his left forearm like ancient battle maps, watched in silence as the prince drew his training shamshir.

  “Master…” Ciro began, his voice steadier than he had expected. “I want you to train me for real.”

  Sardes raised one white eyebrow, unmoving.

  “I can’t keep ‘winning’ against you forever… because I don’t win. I never truly win. I can’t reach this level if everything is… mercy. Yesterday I fought against my friend Ar…” He stopped. The name almost slipped out: Ardeshir. But he corrected himself in time. “Against Ariadna.”

  The master didn’t blink. Only a slight tilt of the head, as though he already knew everything.

  “Ariadna the tomboy,” Sardes said in a deep voice, without mockery—merely stating a fact. “I’ve seen her walk, but I can deduce the rest. Raw movements, but with hunger. Enormous hunger.”

  Ciro gripped the hilt until his knuckles turned white.

  “She beat me. Several times. Not with strength. With… ingenuity. With patience. I want that. I want you to break me until I understand why I lose. I want you not to let me win even once. Not out of pity. Not because of my blood. Please.”

  For a long moment the silence was so thick that Ciro could hear his own heartbeat. Then Sardes stepped forward, took his own wooden shamshir from the rack, and spun it once through the air, testing the balance.

  “Good,” he said simply. “Then we begin now. No mercy. No theater. If you fall, you get up. If you bleed, you learn. And if you ever ask me to stop… I won’t.”

  A cold electric shiver ran down Ciro’s spine. It wasn’t fear. It was anticipation. For the first time in years, he was going to fight for real. Against the best. And in some dark corner of his mind he knew that sooner or later he would have to face Ariadna again… but this time, not to lose.

  He nodded, assumed the high guard Mariane had corrected the day before—though now it seemed laughably inadequate—and waited for the master’s first attack.

  The pain from yesterday no longer mattered. It was only the beginning.