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A public oath could never be withdrawn in the fae realm … not without losing her entrance to Efaelen forevermore.

“Tournament of Leaves, Your Majesty?” Gerard asked quietly, his breath brushing against Lorelei’s hair.

She shook her head—a quick, jerky movement—in answer but didn’t dare shift her gaze from Oberon’s victorious figure as fae hurried to follow his commands. On one side of the field, a handful of healers gathered by the tent that was prepared to store any necessary bodies along the way.

One or two combatants were killed in these games every year, it was true. But when Lorelei had come up with her brilliant plan, she’d done so with the understanding that neither her mother nor Reynard would allow any such fate to befall either her or her tournament partner. She might have been discarded from the line of Efaelen’s royal succession, traded away to Balravia like a royal chess piece; her mother might barely even remember her most of the time, their early attachment lost long ago; but both of those judges would have scrupulously honored Lorelei’s dual relationships to Efaelen, both by blood and by vital political alliance.

Entering the tournament with Gerard as her partner, today, was meant to be a mere simulation of peril to prove that they could fight together as allies, not an actual exercise in mortal danger …

But from the smirk on Oberon’s face, Lorelei knew that the rules of combat had just shifted.

He must have been waiting all these years for such a perfect opportunity for revenge.

“Players, assemble!” Bells jangled in glorious accompaniment to his command, and Oberon raised his robed arms high, the Crown of Autumn glowing upon his head like a victorious taunt. “It is time for the games to begin!”

6

Gerard had spent the last fifteen years of his life dominating brutal battlefields. He knew one now when he stood atop it, no matter how many magical, festive fae adornments swirled around it. By the time Lorelei finally turned to face him, she wore a smile full of confident, dazzling mischief …

But he’d been studying her for years, too.

“Precisely how much danger are we in?” He had to lean tantalizingly close to ask the question under his breath. The assorted members of the crowd were giving the two of them space at the moment, but he wasn’t fool enough to underestimate fae hearing—or the hatred on that ruling fae lord’s face. “I take it you had not factored Lord Oberon into any of your clever plans?”

For once, he managed to provoke a visible reaction; Gerard savored the brief, telltale twist of her lush lips and the flash of frustration in her impossibly blue eyes. But of course this woman would never allow him an easy victory. Instead, she tipped her head back and batted her eyelashes up at him with saccharine pity. “My, my, General de Moireul. Are you actually afraid of a little physical challenge? All those stories in the newspapers made you sound so fit and agile—but then, ever since you took up command years ago, you’ve never had to risk your own skin, have you?”

Jovar save him, how did she find every gap in his armor with such pinpoint precision? Gerard would never be one of those smug, careless generals who hid behind their medals or risked their men unnecessarily! His jaw tightened at the accusation, but he forced himself onward. “What is your true relationship with Lord Oberon?”

“Isn’t that patently obvious?” She rolled her eyes. “Deep contempt, of course. Have you seen the pattern on his robes? I could never approve of anyone so lacking in good taste.”

The Queen of Balravia herself was notorious across the continent for showering rainbow-colored sparkles everywhere she went without the slightest regard for good taste, decorum, or royal dignity … but Gerard chose not to follow his tormentor down that temptingly laid path of distraction, either.

“What makes him consider you his sister, then?”

Her eyelashes flicked mocking glitter at him. “Oh, trust me, darling. No matter what dearest Oberon may say now, neither of us has ever thought of it as a fraternal connection.” Her voice was poisonously sweet, but he caught a note of real tension underneath.

Ah. One of her many former lovers, then. Gerard’s muscles tightened instinctively as he lifted his gaze once more to look across the rapidly clearing battlefield.

The man who sat atop a gilded throne on the open grass was, of course, a perfect specimen of aristocratic fae beauty, from his shining locks of long, bark-brown hair to his tall, spare figure, which looked as lean and tensile as an arrow string. No doubt he and Lorelei had made a striking pair for whatever length of time she’d indulged him in her bed.

No wonder he was so bitter now, witnessing what he had lost.

Gerard took in the hungry gaze still fixed on Lorelei—and felt a sudden, almost overpowering instinct to shift between them and turn his own bigger body into a wall to protect his nemesis’s small, curvaceous figure from the other man’s view.

Utter madness. Lorelei was Gerard’s captor; his enemy. She would never need or want any help from him. He certainly shouldn’t want to give it.

Still, it took all the willpower he had to lock himself in place and keep his voice low and uninflected. “Will you at least tell me the rules of this tournament you’ve chosen to enter us into? It seems unnecessarily complex as a method for disposing of your prisoners.”

“Oh, but you’re not my prisoner while we’re here, remember?” Her glittering eyelashes fluttered low, hiding her eyes.

Gerard raised a single, pointed eyebrow. “Then I may turn and go home now?”

“And abandon me to fight alone?” She gave a dramatic pout. “That would hardly be noble or gentlemanly behavior from the famous Golden Beacon.”

A wave of exasperation rolled through Gerard’s body as he gazed down at her. Was she really so certain of her control that she didn’t even feel a need to leverage her most obvious and effective threat? They both knew he could never find his way back to the mortal world without a fae guide … and judging by her earlier conversation with Lord Oberon, she was clearly bound by some ancient fae rule of etiquette not to back down from this ridiculous venture.

“Enough.” He infused iron into his voice. “Just tell me: Have we any chance of actually winning this tournament?”

Her lips twitched as her eyes flashed open with what looked like sudden, real amusement. “Of course you want to win, even now. I should have known the Serafin Empire’s most famous general wouldn’t limit his competitive urges to the mortal realm! You just can’t bear to lose at anything, can you?”