“Dawn nears,” he spits the words through clenched teeth.
Celine dips her chin and unlocks the gate. The membrane of golden magic quivers before dissipating beneath her touch. “Come on in.”
She turns her back on S’lach and the others and strides toward the dueling ground. It communicates confidence, but I refuse to leave her unguarded. What her father lacks in honor, he makes up for with depravity. No one will slip a knife in her back while I’m around.
The walk to the courtyard is short and strained.
Once there, S’lach makes a show of squatting to examine the course, running the flat of his hand over the ground. In his youth, he was renowned for his dueling abilities. It helped distinguish him as athatshafrom a lesser-known family. He never would have been permitted to marry Valenara without it.
My stomach twists.Celine is better. Celine is stronger.I lean into the reminder, making it my mantra and refusing to letmy fear paralyze me.
“Who will serve as your second?” Celine asks.
S’lach smiles, and the hair on my arms stands on end. He’s the one scenting blood on the wind now, gearing up to make a preemptive strike.
I finger the hilt of my sword. He waves his hand. The small crowd parts, and everything in me grows cold as I take in my father’s familiar shape.Why is he here? How?
My stomach churns with nausea and bitterness I can’t show.
He’s aged since I last saw him, and the grim expression on his face is as unfamiliar as the silver in his hair. This is wrong. He’s meant for jokes and pranks—not S’lach’s calculated machinations. I never wanted him involved.
“Gavin will serve as my second.” S’lach looks at me with fake sympathy. “In circumstances like these, old friends are the only ones you can trust.”
Bullshit.They despise each other. Dad always warned me against getting involved with Celine because of his distrust for her father—a product of their youthful rivalry.
My feet move without instruction, and I grip Dad’s arm, speaking in our family tongue to maintain some semblance of privacy. “Are you safe?” I demand. “What does he have on you?” I’m tempted to lift his shirt to see if he wears the same brand of silence that S’lach forced on me, but there are too many eyes on us.
He claps his hand against my arm, and the warning in his eyes is clear as he responds to me in the traditionalthatshadialect. “Son, I understand your loyalty to Celine, and I applaud it. You grew up together, but I simply can’t stand aside while athatshawho squandered her home returns to claim it.”
The urge to drive my fist into his face takes me off guard. The heat, the pressure in my roaring ears... I can’t let this stand, even if it is part of S’lach’s scheme to tear us down.
“Thrak vel’kar ven. Yet thren vas kor. Vareththal?”I hear myself shouting. Demanding he prove where his loyalty lies. Using our family language to tell him how S’lach cut the wings from my back.
I had hoped to tell my family about my severed wings in private, but there’s no hiding it now. My father needs to know. He can accuse me of childish fancy all he wants. I stand with Celine, not only because I love her, but because it’s the right thing to do.
“Ni vartel...”He swallows heavily, his gaze cutting to where S’lach watches us with sick delight.“Kor’ven na varyk thren.”
I suck in air and replay his words.My son. I cannot let him take you.He used the permanent word for take.He means death.
Sweat trickles down my back, running over the scars where my wings used to be. Angels will die today; and everyone knows it. Dad may think whatever deal he made with S’lach will keep me safe, but he’s wrong. Now we’re both standing in the line of fire.
Gods alive and dead, not my father. Haven’t I lost enough?
“A touching reunion.” There’s an edge to S’lach’s voice that’s impossible to miss.
Dad drops his hand from my arm and moves to S’lach’s side.
“Dawn blooms,” S’lach says. “Shall we begin, Daughter?”
Celine tosses me a worried look, then nods at him.
I swallow a mouthful of sour bile.S’lach with my dad as his second, and Celine with me as hers. The story of this duel will be told in every corner of every tier—shouted acrosseluunfields and whispered in the sickrooms of thesalum.
It’s time to find out how it ends.
FIFTY
Unspoken Rule of the Fringes #59:
