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Camilla has always been a marvel. As Palamedes felt the cocktail of emotions run through him; frustration, pride, anger and everything in between, he watched his cavalier once more. His beautiful, strong, smart confidante, showing the other Houses what she could do.
It was so unnecessary, this moment, and was just a testament to how much of a problem the Second could be. You would have thought they’d get along with the Sixth, given that following procedure was a priority in both, but where one saw bookish weakness, the other saw uptight obstinance. Judith had just proven that the latter was true.
As his dearest unleashed a flurry of blows on the other cavalier, he couldn’t help his hands fidgeting just a little under the table. Camilla was capable, so much more so than her peers, and as he watched the fluidity of her rapier arm come forward, battering Marta, her shoulders flexing and riding on the balls of her feet at all times, he couldn’t help fretting just a bit. They’d been trying to avoid the farce that was dueling, and even though she hadn’t let on, he knew she was enjoying this; finally having an opportunity to swing out her frustration at the shit time that Canaan House had become.
She moved quickly, and only his intimate knowledge of her every movement let him keep a tab on each twitch of a muscle. It wasn’t even just her body that he enjoyed watching; it was also the mental calculations and decisions were made in a split second, more instinct than anything at this point. She had spent her life working her way into this position, knowing it was where she was meant to be.
When she was 13, she had run a couple of laps around the outer hallways of the Sixth, a nice circuit, and had timed herself, just for ‘fun’. An adult colleague had done it in 10 minutes 20 seconds. Camilla had done it in 9 minutes 46 seconds. Palamedes had been there at the end with water and a cold towel for her forehead, and he had told her he was proud of her.
When she was 16, in a tournament-style test back in the Spire, Camilla had taken out three opponents at once with a swinging kick, combined with her knives. It was a feat that had had her instructors clapping, an unusual show of emotion, but Palamedes hadn’t needed to join in, even as the Warden. He’d just met her eyes, after, filled with pride, and she had given him that little twitch at the corner of her mouth that said she was pleased.
The day before they had left for the First, she had been packing all of her weapons; a full arsenal, and had been wielding each of them for a moment as she picked them up, each and every one an extension of her body; each and every one there to protect him. Palamedes had watched from the bed over the top of his book, flowing from one movement to the next, and felt his heart swell with pride.
He watched now as she got hit, and he managed to avoid crying out himself, but the noise that escaped her was a knife to his heart. He did not flinch visibly, but his hands clenched into a fist and he felt anger start to win out. It was all so stupid.
Though he felt an uncharacteristic satisfaction at Marta getting her arm wrenched out of her socket, he still stood at the same time that the match had been called, all but vibrating with barely contained rage. The scream she let out when he put the arm back in place didn’t make up for half of what he felt, but it was something. She had hurt his Cam.
Letting out his anger at Judith directly, vocally, on display to the entire group felt good too, shocking most of them. After, as he turned to his cavalier, sitting on the edge of the table, holding her bleeding arm, his face softened and he pushed his glass back up on his nose as everyone else faded into irrelevance.
His words reprimanded her for forgetting she was wielding a rapier. His eyes said so much more. I love you. I am so proud of you.
She would be fine; she was Camilla. Nothing could ever happen to his Camilla. She was too strong, too fast and too… her … for anything else.