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The forest here was so choked with interlocking thorns that every yard demanded a strategic negotiation against the needle-sharp vines. We ducked beneath a massive, overhanging shelf of volcanic basalt; finding a narrow crevice cut into the cliff face that seemed isolated enough to break our line of sight from both the sky and the valley floor.

Mal dragged a heavy breath into his chest, his hazel eyes checking our backtrail through the canopy before he finally turned to me.

“I didn’t get a chance to mention it earlier,” Mal rasped softly, his voice a low thread in the shadowy alcove as he wiped a streak of ash from his cheekbone. “Thanks for the tackle back at the skull. I would have hated to end up as dinner.”

I leaned my head back against the freezing rock, letting out a dry, humorless breath as I adjusted the straps of my gear. “Don’t flatter yourself, Mal. If a titan like that considers a six-foot male ‘dinner,’ I’m surely a snack.”

A slow, arrogant smirk played at the corner of Mal’s lips. The lingering adrenaline from the dragon fire was still humming through his veins, bringing out that cocky edge.

“A snack?” Mal echoed, his gaze sweeping over my battered frame with a mocking light. “A bite-sized half-blood princess. Though with that volatile shadow show you pulled back there, you’re more like a poison pill. You still look like you’d snap in half if a cold wind hit you.”

I stared at him, green eyes narrowing as my hand tightened around the hilt of my dagger. “You know, Malice, I was actually thinking you look like a knuckle sandwich.”

Mal’s brow furrowed in genuine confusion. “A what? What in the gods is a knuckle—”

CRACK.

My right fist drove straight across his jaw with every ounce of momentum I had left.

The force of the blow snapped his head sideways, the loud impact echoing off the basalt walls. Mal stumbled back a step, his shoulder hitting the stone, his eyes wide with utter shock.

I smoothed out the leather of my gauntlet, offering him a sweet, venomous smile. “That.”

Mal slowly raised his gloved hand, pressing his fingers against his jawline where a deep red mark was already blooming against his tan skin. He tasted his lip, spitting a speck of crimson onto the volcanic ash at his feet. His hazel eyes flared a shade of red, turning dark and sharp as he straightened to his full height, taking a slow step back into my space.

“You should be exceptionally careful, Tauriel,” he growled, his voice dropping an octave, laced with a dangerous edge. “Out here in the dark? With no High Captain to shield you? It would be remarkably easy for a royal like you to be left for dead... and not a single soul in the court would ever question it.”

The air between us tightened into a taut, lethal wire. I didn’t back down. I held his gaze, my chin raised, my thumb resting on the pommel of my obsidian blade.

Mal’s dark gaze flickered, a slow, razor-thin smile touching his bruised jaw, “I do hope you don’t regret saving my life, it would be a shame if you did.”

Then, the island reasserted itself.

A sudden, freezing gust of wind swept through the crevice, carrying with it the distant, haunting moan of northern air rushing through empty dragon bones. The brief spark of human conflict vanished instantly, incinerated by the crushing reality of where we were.

We weren’t in the sparring rings. We weren’t in the Great Hall. We were on Isath Nalore, and the night had officially claimed the sky.

Mal broke the stare first, his eyes flicking up toward the iron-thorn canopy above our heads. The arrogant smirk was completely gone, replaced by the grim mask of a warrior who knew we were walking on a razor’s edge.

Without another word, we pushed deeper into the crevice, searching for a place to endure the dark.

We found a shallow hollow pressed into the root system of a massive, petrified obsidian tree. It was tucked against the base of the granite cliff, protected on three sides by thick walls of rock and dense iron-thorns. It was as close to a safe haven as this hellscape was going to offer.

The rules of the night on Isath Nalore were unwritten, but they were etched into our marrow:

No fires. No light. No speech.

Fire was a beacon. Light was an invitation. Speech was a death warrant.

The moment we wedged ourselves inside the hollow, the cold set in with brutal violence. Without a campfire, the sub-zero northern night seeped through our layers, chilling the sweat on our skin until it felt like needles pressing into our pores.

Mal sat on the left side of the hollow, his back pressed flat against the fossilized bark, his broadsword unsheathed and resting across his thighs. He was completely swallowed by the shadow, marked only by the faint, rhythmic sound of his breathing.

I sat opposite him, my knees pulled tightly to my chest, my arms wrapped around my shins. My daggers lay unsheathed on the dirt beside my boots, ready to be drawn in a fraction of a second.

The darkness inside the hollow was absolute. It wasn’t the soft, familiar dark of my bedchambers in the citadel; it was a heavy, suffocating weight that pressed against my eyelids. I opened my eyes wide, but there was no difference between sight and blindness. The world was rendered in pure, unbroken void.

And with the loss of sight, my hearing turned into a hyper-sensitive weapon.