“Oh. Right. Right. Um, well met. Uh—”

Grace hit her in the face.

Margrit’s heartfelt bellow of pain and outrage was cut short by another blow, this one to her midriff. Grace released her arm and Margrit doubled, choking. It was only toppling to the side that saved her from a knee in the face. She hit the floor with as breath-taking a thud as the fist to her diaphragm had been. For a bleary instant she could only think how lucky she was that Biali hadn’t set a gargoyle on her, and then Grace’s foot caught her in the ribs and lifted her a few inches up and back. Margrit heard a thin wheeze and realized it was from her own throat. She hadn’t realized a kick could actually move someone that way; she’d thought that was a dramatization of movies, if she’d thought about it at all.

Oxygen flooded into her starved cells before Grace landed another kick. Margrit rolled across the floor, trying to escape the long-legged, heavily booted vigilante. Everything tasted of copper, and when she wiped a hand below her aching nose, it came away smeared with blood. It seemed incongruous to the point of impossibility: she had never been in a fistfight, even as a child. To encounter her first one now was absurd.

Grace moved vampire-fast to Margrit’s bewildered senses. Instinct curled her in a ball, protecting her head and torso. The fight was over. Tony had always denigrated on-screen fracases, pointing out to Margrit the moment at which the fight would really have ended, usually only one or two blows into the sequence. She’d always elbowed him in return, telling him it was fiction and to be quiet and enjoy the choreography. Nothing about an extended battle seemed enjoyable now. A kick smashed into her forearm, pain a blinding reminder that that arm had been recently broken.

She felt it like a switch flipping. Determination colder than anger or fear rose up in a ruthless refusal to be as helpless now as she’d been against Ausra. Margrit coiled tighter, rolling onto her knees with her hands still knotted protectively over her head. She was suddenly aware of how that opened her ribs up for attack, and Grace obliged, kicking her again. Margrit twisted away, skittering far enough to the side that the kick had less impact than its predecessors had, and putting Grace’s booted feet almost directly in front of Margrit.

She shot out of her ball headfirst, regretting that she didn’t have time or leverage to get her legs fully under her and use their strength to drive herself upward.

The top of her head crunched into Grace’s groin. For the first time since the fight had begun Margrit heard something outside her own labored breathing: a gasp of horror and surprise and approval rushing around the audience. Grace herself, always peaches and cream, whitened further and staggered back a few steps as Margrit scrambled to her feet.

She knew nothing about fighting. Rather than dwell on that, she let momentum carry her forward, all her energy redirected as she charged Grace and caught the taller woman in the rib cage with her shoulder. The tribunal scattered as Margrit crashed toward them, slamming Grace into the wall that had seconds before been at the tribunal’s back. Grace made a small pathetic sound, then shoved her hands between bodies and forced Margrit away, using the wall to brace herself against.

Some quick instinct warned Margrit of what Grace intended. She ducked her head, and when Grace’s forehead smashed down, it wasn’t against Margrit’s fragile nose, but the solid bone of her cranium. White light exploded through her vision, sparked with red and blue, tiny bits of dancing color.

When she could see again, streams of brightness still shooting through her sight in time with heartbeat-paced throbs of pain, she’d released Grace and had staggered back a few feet. Grace still sagged against the wall, no more functional in the aftermath of a failed head butt than Margrit was. For a moment rationality took over and Margrit wondered what in hell she was doing, but then Grace’s expression cleared, turning feral with primitive delight, and she charged Margrit again.

They hit the floor together, rolling and kicking, elbows and fists flying everywhere. Margrit threw a punch she was sure would land and it skittered by Grace’s cheek, so close it seemed to have gone through the vigilante without touching her. Outrage at her miscalculation shot the fight beyond any clarity of thought and into a mindless search for vengeance: a chance to get back at someone, anyone, for the chaos Margrit’s life had become. Yes, she had welcomed it in many aspects, but Cole’s fear and anger rose up, reminding her of what was unwelcome. The attack on her mother drove her onward, taking what comfort she could in something as useless and ill directed as a physical battle. Russell’s death gave her reasons of her own to hit, and hit, and hit again. There were no answers to be found in bloodying Grace’s nose or taking a fist so hard she felt her jaw slide dangerously out of socket, but it was something, action permitted where she had been useless before.

Until she felt tears that had nothing to do with her own pain sliding down her face. Hot tracks cut through grime and blood, Grace’s features swimming into view for the first time in whole minutes. The beautiful blonde’s face was beginning to swell, bruises and muck ruining its lines. Margrit could see in Grace’s eyes the battle madness that had overtaken Margrit, the need to dominate that had nothing to do with why they were fighting or what ends they sought. It was simpler than that, one animal trying to survive an encounter with another.

But Margrit’s pain was fading, blood no longer flowing from scratches or her bruised nose; her ribs no longer hurting from the blows Grace had landed. Even the headache from smashing skulls together had faded, and a simple clear thought finally broke through.

Grace couldn’t win.

Grace couldn’t win, not with Daisani’s blood flowing through Margrit’s veins. Margrit would heal too quickly, and Grace would never stop fighting. That thought seemed suddenly, briefly, to define the blond vigilante, and Margrit liked her for it. Admired her for it, even though the mindless rage in Grace’s eyes was currently for her. They could kill each other on the match floor, but Grace would never yield shy of that, and she could not, in the end, defeat Margrit.

Margrit took a deep breath, and when the next hit came, let it spin her away into oblivion.

Darkness didn’t last nearly as long as she pretended it did.

At first it was for Grace’s sake. If Margrit’s eyes popped open again a few seconds after she’d gone down, the fight wouldn’t be over. Then it was for her own as she lay in a boneless heap, listening to voices both worried and angry rising around her as her body knit itself back together. That felt distinctly horrible: bones that were slightly out of place, though not broken, seemed to jerk back to where they belonged, making twisted pops. Nausea rose in Margrit’s belly and she worked not to swallow against it, afraid that would look too awake. A spurt of coughing took her so hard she had nothing left but to collapse again when it was over, and that was as much a relief to her as it concerned those around her. Exhaustion sat on her like a living creature, weighing her down and slowing her thoughts.

She’d been exposed to more violence in the months since she’d met the Old Races than in her entire previous life, at least on a personal level. What she’d encountered before them had been violence done to or by others, and she had abhorred it without entirely understanding it. Human nature took ugly turns; that she could comprehend. She recognized the impulse in herself often enough, reaching for the least palatable, most extreme solution in moments of exasperation or frustration. It was recognizing them and choosing not to act on them that made the difference between a man and a thug. Very few people managed to stay on the side of the angels all the time. Margrit could pick out too-clear moments in the past months when she’d failed to, some of them sending squirms of embarrassment and apology through her. She’d never imagined her veneer of civility could break down as far as it had in the last few minutes. If she could convince herself she’d fought for Alban’s freedom, she might believe she’d at least had the moral high ground, but that comforting lie was beyond her. She’d fought and hit and beaten Grace mostly out of fear and anger and a desperate wish to come out on top just this once.