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The impact rattled straight up my arms. Our blades met with a deafening metallic crack that bit deep into my bones. He was stronger than me, driven by a feral desire to humiliate the half-breed in front of the vanguard. He pressed his weight into the lock, his face inches from mine, his breath hot against my skin.
“You don’t belong here, half-blood,” he hissed, his dark eyes wide with hatred.
Instead of fighting his raw power, I adjusted. I relaxed my arms, letting my steel slide down his blade as I twisted my torso to the side. The sudden loss of resistance caught him off balance, his own weight throwing him forward. I spun on my heel, using his momentum against him. I drove the heavy pommel of my sword directly into his ribs.
He grunted as the air burst from his lungs, stumbling backward with his hand flying to his side. His face turned a mottled red as he realized the other transfers were watching. With a furious roar, he whirled, his sword swinging in a wild, erratic arc meant to take my head off.
It was an amateur mistake—letting anger make you careless. I ducked beneath the strike, feeling the wind of his blade whistle over my hair, and swept my leg out in a sharp arc. My boot connected hard with the back of his knee. The joint buckled, and Kaelor hit the granite flagstones with a heavy thud. Before he could rise, my training blade was pressed flat against the center of his throat.
“Submit,” I gasped out, my chest heaving, adrenaline turning my blood to heat.
Kaelor glared up at me, his teeth bared, his jaw clenched so hard I thought it might snap. He didn’t say the word, but he froze beneath the steel. He knew he was beaten.
“Good match,” a smooth, melodic voice called from the edge of the ring.
I pulled my blade back, turning to see Mal stepping out of the line. He walked toward me with a fluid, unbothered grace, his hazel eyes fixed on my face. He didn’t offer a glance at Kaelor, who was scrambling to his feet and cursing under his breath as he stepped back in line.
Mal stopped three paces away—close enough for me to pick out details I had missed before. A tiny silver scar ran along the edge of his left collarbone, and his leathers were laced with meticulous care. He was observing me just as closely; his eyes tracked the slight tear in the cuff of my jacket, the exact way my fingers wrapped around the leather hilt.
“You reset your balance beautifully on the turn, Princess,” Mal said, his voice smooth and measured. He watched my ragged breathing, his gaze holding mine with a heavy, quiet focus. “Most fighters from the Drakhar line try to dominate with brute force. You anticipate the collapse.”
How did he know so much about my brother and father’s fighting style?
A sharp prickle raced across the nape of my neck, stealing the air from my lungs. It wasn’t the cold threat of an open blade—it was something far more unpredictable. His gaze seemed to strip away my posture, my measured breath, and the weeks of courtly armor I had wrapped around myself. He wasn’t looking at the crown’s pawn; he was looking straight at the sharp, guarded thing hiding inside. A sudden wave of vertigo tilted the room on its axis, pulling at my pulse like the sheer drop of a cliff edge.
“I’ve had to anticipate a lot of collapses lately, Lieutenant Varyn,” I replied, my voice dropping into a tight, guarded register as I wiped a bead of sweat from my temple.
He smiled—a slow, calculating curl of his mouth that eerily matched the man I had seen near the sea windows during the coup. It was a handsome smile, but it carried an undercurrent of absolute certainty that made me want to take a step back.
“Then I look forward to watching you survive the rest of them,” he murmured. His hazel eyes lingered on my face for one last, heavy second before he inclined his head and stepped back into line.
I watched him go, my mind dissecting the exchange before I could stop myself. He claimed to be a second lieutenant from Amnethys, but everything about him—his movement, his tone, the quiet authority in his stance—screamed high court. He was an enigma wrapped in dark leather, and as the morning sun finally broke through the sea fog, I knew with absolute certainty that he was going to be a problem.
FOUR
The war chamber smelled of mountain drafts, cold iron, and the faint, ozone tang of dragon scale—a sharp, metallic scent like lightning hitting rock.
Massive, ancient charts lined the granite walls, detailing the migration routes and nesting grounds of the northern isles. I stood at the center of the heavy oak table, my training leathers still damp from the morning spar, my muscles throbbed with a persistent, dull ache.
“You’re holding tension in your shoulders, Tauriel.”
His voice carried that low, gravelly tone he reserved for quiet rooms.
I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly, turning heavy and intensely quiet. Caspian stepped through the archway, unbuckling a scuffed leather wrist-guard. He didn’t bother greeting anyone, but the sudden weight of his presence killed the chatter around the map table immediately.
Aerynn walked in beside him, his golden hair catching the light from the high lancet windows, his face unusually grim. Behind them, Dax ambled in, having decided to trail along after the morning session. He crossed his arms and leaned against a silver-veined pillar, watching us with quiet interest.
“I’m not stiff,” I said, my green eyes narrowing as Caspian walked directly into my space. “I’m thorough.”
“You’re overthinking the movement,” Caspian said smoothly, stopping a pace away. He was impossibly tall, forcing me to tilt my chin up to keep his gaze. “Dragons don’t care about your strategies, Princess. They don’t care about your courtly manners or your ‘mortal’ logic. They care about two things: your spine, and whether you’re willing to step into the dark without knowing where the floor is.”
He reached out, his calloused hand closing firmly around my forearm to adjust my posture. The touch was sudden, sending a sharp, static charge straight up my sleeve. Beneath my leather cuffs, the twin crescent markings on my wrists flared with a brief heat that caught my breath. He noticed the slight lock of my jaw—he noticed everything—but he didn’t immediately let go. His thumb pressed against the inside of my wrist, a deliberate, grounding pressure, before he finally stepped back, his blue eyes holding mine.
“Let’s review the breeds before we get into the specifics of the basin,” Aerynn said, stepping between us to break the heavy silence. His blue eyes flicked between Caspian and me with a quiet, furrowed look before he pointed to the large parchment map spread across the wood. “If you’re going into the wilds in three months, you need to know what’s out there.”
I forced my chest to even out, anchoring my focus on the ink. “Azurion—the sky sentinels,” I said, pointing to the sapphire markings near the northern coast. “Exceptionally fast, intelligent, built for high-altitude hunting.”
A brief flicker passed over Aerynn’s face—a quiet pride he tried to hide, no doubt thinking of his own bonded Azurion—before I moved my finger down the page.
