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I didn’t look at him. If I looked at the icy blue of his eyes right now, I was going to hurl my wooden hilt straight at his nose. Instead, I kept my focus locked on Kaelor’s chest.

He had been breathing down my neck all afternoon, his strikes deliberately targeting my bruised ribs, moving with that sharp, aristocratic malice I’d come to expect from the court’s blood-purists. He clearly believed that six months of breathing mortal fog had turned my bones soft.

Six months of mortal air hadn’t erased a lifetime of brutal conditioning. I’d spent every waking hour since my return dragging my skills back to a razor edge, and this was nothing new. More aggressive, sure, but I wasn’t about to let them think I was weak. I wasn’t just here to survive; I was here to make them bleed.

He lunged, his blade cutting a whistling arc through the heavy, sulfur-tinged air. I didn’t bother parrying. Parrying required an economy of strength I simply didn’t possess after hours on the granite floor. I dropped low, my boots skidding across the grit, letting the wind of his steel pass inches above my head. As his momentum carried him forward, I drove my elbow upward, catching him square in the hinge of his jaw.

A satisfying crack echoed off the high stone walls. Kaelor stumbled back, his hand flying to his chin, dark eyes burning with immediate rage.

“That’s enough,” Rhea’s voice sliced through the ring, sharp and final. She stood near the weapon racks, arms crossed over her dark vanguard leathers, her sapphire-scaled sentinel Vespera casting a wide, shifting shadow over the cliffs outside. “Clean yourselves up. The rings are closed for the evening.”

Kaelor spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto the stone, keeping his glare locked on me as he passed. “Enjoy the small victories, half-blood,” he whispered, low enough to bypass Rhea. “The Mani Vatn doesn’t care about sword fighting.”

I crossed my arms, hiding the faint tremor in my fingers. “And I don’t care about your opinion, Lieutenant. Yet here we are, both disappointed.”

He went rigid, his jaw locking, but Dax stepped smoothly into the gap between us. His broad frame completely cut off Kaelor’s line of sight. Dax didn’t say a word, but the heavy, casual way his hand rested on his hilt was a clear statement. Kaelor muttered a provincial curse before turning on his heel and disappearing down the western archway.

“You’re dropping your left shoulder when you go low,” Caspian said. His footsteps were silent as he approached my side, the air turning heavy with his presence. He didn’t look at Dax or Rhea; his eyes anchored straight onto the blood on my hand.

“I was adjusting for his weight,” I muttered, wiping my cheek with the back of my sleeve.

“You were getting sloppy because you’re exhausted,” he corrected smoothly, his low voice dropping into a private register. He reached out, his calloused fingers wrapping firmly around my wrist. The touch sent a sharp, localized heat straight down to the twin crescent markings hidden beneath my cuffs. He pulled my hand up, his thumb brushing over the raw skin of my knuckles with an unexpected, quiet care that completely contradicted his words. “If you bleed this much during the trials, the dragons will smell the weakness before you reach the cliff’s edge.”

I pulled my hand free. “I’ve survived worse than scraped knuckles, Captain.”

“I know what you’ve survived, Tauriel,” he murmured, his gaze holding mine with a heavy, quiet focus. “That’s why you need to fix the shoulder... Now. Against me.”

He didn’t step back when our blades locked. Instead, he drove straight into my guard, shoving his broad frame forward until the small of my back slammed hard against the wooden perimeter rail.

He pinned my steel down with his, crowding my space so completely I could smell the sharp tang of winter pine, old iron, and sweat on his skin.

“You’re fighting like a royal who expects someone to step in when you bleed,” Caspian growled. His free hand shot out, calloused fingers locking around my throat—not choking me, but holding me fixed against the timber, his thumb resting flat over my hammering pulse.

“I know how to bleed, Captain,” I spat through my teeth, forcing myself to meet his glare.

“Good,” he whispered, leaning down until his lips hovered a hair’s breadth from my jawline, his breath hot against my skin. “Because I’ve spent my entire life being twice as ruthless as every male in this keep just to keep my head attached to my shoulders. I will not watch you stumble onto that sand and die because you were too soft to bite back.”

His grip on my neck tightened just a fraction, a dark, heavy tension stringing taut between our chests.

Before I could offer a biting response, Aerynn’s voice cut through the quiet from the gallery stairs.

“If you two are finished testing each other’s boundaries for the afternoon,” my brother said, stepping through the archway. His golden hair was slightly undone from his own rotation, a silver goblet balanced casually between his fingers, but his eyes flicked between Caspian and me—lingering half a second too long on how close the High Captain stood to my flank before he stepped into the space between us. “The lower tiers are calling. Dax claims the vanguard tavern down in Naralust tapped a fresh cask of blackberry mead, and I intend to keep him from drinking the entire barrel.”

“I’m in,” Dax said immediately, his crooked grin returning as he clapped a heavy hand onto my uninjured shoulder. “Taur looks like she’s about to bite the High Captain’s throat out. A drink might save his life.”

I let out a rough breath, the tension in my chest unwinding just enough for the exhaustion to settle into my bones. “Fine. But Aeri pays.”

“Naturally,” my brother snorted.

The Stonewright’s Arms was buried deep within the lower rings of Naralust City, a tavern cut directly out of the mountain’s volcanic root.

The air inside was thick—a heavy mix of woodsmoke, roasted meats, and the sweet, fermented scent of honey and iron-spiced ale. The floorboards were dark, stained by centuries of spilled drinks and the heavy boots of the vanguard guards who crowded the long timber tables. Unlike the cold, pristine granite of the upper courts, this place felt loud, rough, and entirely alive.

We took a wide booth near the roaring hearth, the heat from the fire warming my aching joints. Aerynn sat at the head, his royal status completely ignored by the rough soldiers around us, while Dax and Rhea crowded the bench to my left.

I was about to slide into the corner when a tall shadow stopped beside the table.

Mal Varyn.