My chest was heaving and my hands were on my knees and I was staring up at Phoenix through a curtain of sweaty hair, my legs shaking from the sustained effort of the last half hour. My heart was pumping hard and loud and every breath felt like it was being pulled from somewhere quite far away. He was standing in front of me with his arms loose at his sides and that particular smirk sitting comfortably on his face, looking entirely too comfortable for someone who had just been sparring.
"Giving up?" he said.
"No," I said, straightening up and shaking the hair from my face.
His grin widened at that, which was the exact wrong response, because it made something in me decide to stop playing by the rules he had set. He had said no shifting. He was going to get shifting.
