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The deep, mournful wail of the death horn shattered the quiet, vibrating straight through the black sand beneath my boots.

The duel had begun.

Mal didn’t charge.

He didn’t draw his broadsword with a dramatic flourish, nor did he rush across the forty yards of black sand like a wild beast. He moved with a slow, predatory composure that made every nerve ending in my body scream in red alert.

His boots crunched rhythmically against the volcanic grit—step, crunch, step, crunch—as he began to circle me. He stayed just outside the seven-foot reach of Vaelthrys, his eyes fixed on my face, tracking the slight rise and fall of my chest, evaluating the subtle tilt of my left shoulder where Soren’s staff had struck my temple the night before.

He was stalking me.

“You look tired, Tauriel,” Mal said softly. His voice carried effortlessly across the dead air of the dome, smooth, melodic, and entirely undisturbed by the looming specter of death. “The concussion from the armory... it leaves a drag in your left eye. You’re favoring your right heel.”

He took a slow, deliberate step forward, the weapon in his hand catching the light. The teasing warmth in his voice was entirely gone, replaced by a chilling, clinical certainty.

“I told you you’d be collateral,” he murmured, his dark eyes locking onto mine with a predator's absolute focus. “Everything leading up to this—the trials, the journals, the shadows—was just clearing the board. You were never meant to win this duel, Tauriel. You were only ever the cost of my admission.”

I held my ground at the center of the ring, turning with his circle, keeping the head of Vaelthrys pointed straight at his throat. My grip on the dark shaft was white-knuckled, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.

Focus, I told myself, fighting the dizzying wave of nausea that threatened to spill over from the Crescent Potion sitting heavy in my stomach. Do not let him play with your head.

“You sat at my mother’s table,” I rasped, my voice cut from glass, echoing in the dead space. “You ate her food. You rode in her car.”

Mal offered a faint, chilling smile—a dark, beautiful curve of his lips that held zero warmth. “It was necessary for the narrative. The High Council required you to leave the keep so the portal wards could be realigned. Your father needed you to fetch the spear... and my house needed you to forge the binding contract.”

He paused, taking another slow step to his right, his eyes flicking to the floating dagger of crimson crystal suspended fifty feet above our heads.

“You see, Tauriel,” Mal continued, his hand finally dropping to the pommel of his broadsword, “the spear’s gem cannot be invoked without blood. So I took the gauze from your head in the medical bay. And your loyal little guard... he left you alone with me once I told him he had been summoned.”

My stomach dropped into a cold abyss. The gauze. The blood.

“You used Soren,” I hissed, my jaw clenching so hard a muscle jumped along my cheek.

“I used everyone,” Mal corrected smoothly.

With a sharp, blindingly fast motion, Mal drew his broadsword.

SCHWING.

The dark-forged steel cleared its sheath with a lethal, metallic hiss that cut the air in half. The blade was long and etched with the crimson runes of More Alora—a weapon designed to cleave through heavy plate armor and split bones in a single stroke.

Mal shifted his weight, dropping into a low, terrifyingly perfect executioner’s stance.

“Now,” Mal murmured, his eyes flaring with an unhinged heat. “Let us see if the half-breed can bleed as beautifully as her kingdom will.”

I will not break.

He exploded forward.

The transition from absolute stillness to explosive speed was so sudden it defied physical logic. One second he was thirty feet away; the next, he was a blurring wall of dark obsidian armor and flashing steel closing the distance in a fraction of a heartbeat.

Instinct took over before my brain could formulate a defense.

I swept the bottom end of Vaelthrys upward, bringing the blackened shaft across my body just as Mal’s broadsword came crashing down in a brutal, overhead chop.

CLANG!

The acoustic impact detonated inside the dome like a thunderclap.