"Get close to her," Kaelen challenged. "The Rupture. The King's most wanted prize." He gestured lazily toward me. "If you're still his creature, proximity to your target will trigger every tell we know to look for. And we know themall, Crownforged. Every twitch. Every micro-expression. Every sign that the King's chain is still wrapped around your throat."
Kaelen bared his fangs.
"You want me to spar her," Eryndor said. Not a question.
The room went silent. I could feel the weight of every gaze shifting between me and Eryndor.
"I want you to fight her." Kaelen's eyes glittered. "Blades in hand. Close quarters. The kind of proximity that would make any bound soldier's shackles snap." He clasped his hands behind his back. "If you're free, it should cost you nothing. If you're not..."
He let the silence finish the sentence.
Brannick stepped forward. "And if he's lying?"
"Then our Scar-Bearer will put him down and we'll have lost nothing but a liability." Kaelen's eyes cut to me. "Unless you're not confident you can take him?"
The challenge hung in the air, barbed and deliberate.
I clamped my fangs together ruthlessly. Serenya grabbed my wrist, whispering furiously, “You don’t have to do this. You don’t need to prove yourself to them.”
I met her gaze briefly and gave a quick shake of my head. This was not the time to back down.
I knew what he was doing—trapping me into a corner where refusal looked like fear. And maybe it was. Maybe some part of me was still in those tunnels, pinned to the wall, breathing his air, carrying his grief on top of mine.
But the rest of me wanted to make him bleed.
"Fine," I said. My knife already in my hand. "Fifty heartbeats."
“One hundred,” Kaelen countered. I rolled my eyes. "Not what I meant. Count as long as you like. I’m ending him by fifty."
Eryndor looked at me for the first time since Kaelen began speaking. An unreadable shadow crossed his wintry eyes before his mask fixed back into place. Calm. Exacting. The perfect soldier.
But I had been inside his head. I'd felt what lived beneath that mask.
And I knew exactly how much it cost him to wear it.
“Choose your weapons,” Kaelen bellowed.
Eryndor moved to the weapons rack bolted to the far wall—practice blades, staffs, a row of dulled short swords hanging from iron pegs. He bypassed all of them. Of course he did. Selected a live blade with the same precision I'd watched him use in the tunnels, like practice steel wasn’t good enough for him.
He drew a cloth from his belt and began working it along the edge—measured, exact strokes that splintered the light. Each pass identical.
Maxx leaned forward, his grin wide. "Darling," he drawled, "even for a defector, that armor screams 'still trying to impress daddy.' A touch of velvet, perhaps?"
The cloth didn't pause. Eryndor's gaze lifted—found mine across the hall—then returned to the blade.
"Imperfection spreads."
Two words, flat and quiet, and definitely not aimed at Maxx.
My grip locked on my own weapon. He hadn't looked at my stance, my blade, my form. Hadn't needed to. The judgment was there anyway, settling into the space between us.
Kaelen turned to me. "And you, Scar-Bearer?"
I locked eyes with Eryndor. Teeth gnashed.
"Already armed."
Kaelen swept his arm toward the circle the rebels had formed. "Then by all means."
