(Ross POV)
The success of the "menacing elegance" lesson had injected a dangerous, fizzy optimism into my veins. Landy had walked a little taller for the rest of that day, the set of his shoulders less a burden and more a bearing. I, in turn, had felt the giddy thrill of a puppeteer whose puppet had just performed a perfect, unexpected pirouette. It was an illusion, of course. I was pulling my own strings, dancing in a prison of my own making. But for a few hours, the walls of that prison had felt less like stone and more like stage curtains.
Today’s curriculum was trickier. More intimate. More likely to shatter me into a million pieces.
“Alright, Poet,” I began, finding him where I knew he’d be—at the cypress grove, adding a new line to his arboreal epic. “Time to move from the non-verbal to the verbal. Lesson two: The Art of the Compliment.”
Landy finished carving a curling flourish on the letter ‘R’ and lowered his knife. He looked wary, like I’d just suggested we juggle live coals. “Compliments.”
“Yes. Words. Strung together in a pleasing order to make a person feel seen. Appreciated. Not terrified.” I leaned against a tree opposite him, crossing my arms. “Your turn. Go on. Compliment me.”
His brow furrowed in concentration. He looked me up and down, his gaze so intensely analytical it was a miracle my bindings didn’t combust. He was seeing Ross, all angles and grime and boyish defiance.
“Your… hair,” he began, slow and deliberate. “It is like a… tangled, but… beautiful… swamp vine.”
I stared at him. I couldn’t help it. A snort of laughter escaped before I could choke it back. “A swamp vine? Landy, if you compare a woman’s hair to swamp flora, the only thing she’ll feel is the urge to bathe in lye. And ‘but beautiful’? The ‘but’ cancels out the ‘beautiful’. It’s an apology, not a compliment.”
He scowled, defensive. “It’s honest.”
“It’s terrible. Try again. And this time, less… botanical.”
He took a deep breath, his eyes scanning my face again, searching for a feature that wouldn’t inspire metaphors of the bayou. They landed on my nose.
“You have a strong nose,” he stated, with the finality of a man announcing the weather.
This time, the laughter came from behind a nearby thicket of palmetto. CeeCee emerged, wiping tears from her eyes. “Oh, sweet mercy. Strong? Ross, he says you have a strong nose. That’s what men say about a good plow horse.” She mimed wiping down a beast of burden. “There, there, Betsy, you have a strong nose for turning up them stubborn roots!”
Landy’s scowl deepened into a genuine glower. “I’m trying.”
“You’re failing,” CeeCee chirped, settling on a mossy log to enjoy the spectacle. “Spectacularly.”
I shot her a look that promised retribution later, then focused back on my frustrated student. “She’s not entirely wrong. ‘Strong’ is for describing fortifications and whiskey. The goal is ‘sincere, but not desperate. Specific, but not creepy.’” I stepped closer, lowering my voice, making it just for him. “Think about Rose. Not her hair in general. One specific time her hair caught the light. Not her nose’s structural integrity, but the way it crinkles when she laughs. Find the detail. The memory. That’s where the sincerity lives.”
I saw the shift in him. The frustration melted away, replaced by that inward focus he got when he was carving. He was no longer looking at Ross; he was diving into the treasure chest of his memories, sifting through the jewels.
“She had a freckle,” he said softly, his voice losing its defensive edge. “Right here.” He pointed to a spot just beside his own eye. “You could only see it when the sun hit her face just right. In the summer, it would darken. I used to… I used to watch for it.”
The air went out of my lungs. My freckle. The one I’d always been self-conscious about. He’d noticed. He’d cataloged it. He’d watched for it.
My throat tightened. I had to force Ross’s voice through the sudden, painful lump of emotion. “That,” I croaked. “That’s the stuff. See? Specific. Sincere. Not creepy.”
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“Debatable,” CeeCee singsonged from her log.
I was about to tell her exactly where she could stick her commentary when the world exploded.
There was no warning twig-snap this time. Just a sudden, simultaneous rush from two different points in the tree line. Two men, bigger and meaner-looking than the last one, burst into the clearing. They weren’t disoriented or chatty. They were professionals. Their eyes, cold and flat, locked onto Landy. They had machetes.
“The Chevalier,” the larger one grunted. “The price on you just doubled.”
Time seemed to slow, then fracture. The lesson in compliments shattered, replaced by the raw grammar of survival.
Lady moved like lightning, shoving me behind him as the first man swung his blade. It whistled past where my head had been, embedding itself in the cypress tree with a sickening thwock. The poem he’d been carving was now bisected by cold steel.
The second man came in low, trying to flank him. Landy was a whirlwind, all blocking arms and devastating kicks. He disarmed the first man with a brutal twist of his wrist, sending the machete clattering to the ground. But the second attacker used the distraction to lunge, not at Landy, but at me.
A meaty arm hooked around my neck from behind, yanking me off my feet. The world swam, spots dancing in my vision. I clawed at his forearm, but it was like iron. I couldn’t breathe. I could hear CeeCee screaming, the sound distant and muffled.
Through the roaring in my ears, I saw Landy. He had the first man in a headlock, but his eyes were wild, fixed on me. He was about to abandon his subdued opponent, about to charge and get us both killed.
And in that moment, hanging on the edge of consciousness, the most insane, brilliant, and utterly Riordan-esque thought shot through my panic.
The lesson wasn’t over.
I gasped, the sound a ragged scrape. “Landy!” I choked out.
His eyes met mine, wide with terror.
“Now!” I wheezed, my vision tunneling. “A compliment! Remember… specific and sincere!”
The look on his face was one I will treasure until my dying day. It was a perfect, sublime cocktail of pure ‘what-the-actual-hell-are-you-talking-about’ confusion, layered over abject terror.
The man choking me tightened his grip. “What’s he on about?” he snarled.
Landy, still holding the first man in a headlock, stared at me, his mind visibly short-circuiting. Then, something in him snapped. Maybe it was the absurdity. Maybe it was the training kicking in. Maybe he just decided to trust the insane boy who was currently turning blue.
He looked directly at the man who was choking me, his gaze intense, focused.
“You…” Landy grunted, straining against the struggling man in his arms. “You have… a really good… survival instinct!”
It was delivered with the same earnest, constipated effort as his “strong nose” compliment. It was, without a doubt, the most bizarre and poorly timed piece of praise ever uttered in the history of human conflict.
The man choking me froze. His grip loosened by a fraction of an inch. “The hell?” he muttered, utterly bewildered.
It was the opening I needed. I drove my elbow back into his gut with all my remaining strength. He oofed, his arm slackening enough for me to suck in a glorious, burning gasp of air.
It was also the opening Landy needed. In that split-second of the man’s confusion, Landy slammed the head of the man he was holding into the tree, dropping him like a sack of potatoes. He then spun, his movement a blur of controlled fury.
He didn’t go for a punch. He simply stepped forward and, with a sharp, concussive crack, headbutted my attacker directly in the face.
The man’s head snapped back. A fine mist of blood sprayed the air. His grip vanished completely, and he crumpled to the ground, joining his partner in unconsciousness.
Silence returned to the grove, broken only by the sound of my ragged breathing and CeeCee’s hyperventilating pants from behind the log.
Landy was at my side in an instant, his hands on my shoulders. “Ross? Breathe. Just breathe.”
I nodded, gulping down the humid air, my throat on fire. I looked from the two unconscious bounty hunters to Landy’s concerned, blood-spattered face.
A wheezing laugh escaped my bruised throat. It hurt, but I couldn’t stop it.
“We’ll…” I gasped, clutching my neck. “We’ll… work on the delivery.”
A slow, incredulous smile spread across Landy’s face. It was a real one, born of shared insanity and survival. He shook his head, a low chuckle rumbling in his chest. “You,” he said, his voice full of a wonder that had nothing to do with romance and everything to do with the sheer, unpredictable weirdness of me, “are the strangest person I have ever met.”
Behind us, CeeCee finally emerged from her hiding place, her face pale. She looked at the scene of carnage, at the two felled brutes, and then at the two of us, standing there laughing in the aftermath.
“You’re both insane,” she declared, her voice trembling. “Certifiably, swamp-fever insane. He gives a compliment mid-murder attempt, and you critique it.” She threw her hands up in the air. “I give up. I’m just going to start selling tickets.”
As a few Maroons, alerted by the noise, arrived to haul the new prisoners away, Landy’s smile faded, but the warmth in his eyes remained. He clapped a hand on my shoulder, a solid, brotherly gesture.
“The freckle,” he said, his voice quiet. “That was the right one, wasn’t it?”
I looked at him, at the man who fought like a demon and remembered the smallest speck of pigment on a girl’s face. My heart did a thing it really shouldn’t have, a full, aching squeeze that had nothing to do with the strangler’s arm.
“Yeah, Landy,” I said, my voice hoarse. “That was the right one.”
It was the most honest thing Ross had ever said to him. And as I watched him walk away, I pressed my fingers to the tiny, invisible spot beside my eye, feeling the ghost of a sunbeam that only he had ever truly seen.