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“What if he hurts you?”
“Then you boys better love me up while I’m healing. Look at me.” I cup his cheek and wait until he lifts his silver eyes to mine. “I’m not gonna lose. I’ve been taking the worst you fire-bugs got to offer for years. You told me Loyal doesn’t have any glamor. We can’t bring artifacts into the challenge, just our own magic. And I got something Loyal don’t have.”
“The spells from the Acta?”
I tip my head up and kiss the tip of his nose. Underneath his cynicism and sophistication, Darwin’s as innocent as Gabe.
“Yeah,” I confirm, even though that’s not what I meant at all. “C’mon, back to the books. You’re still shaky on Aztec symbols.”
Darwin groans. “They all look the same.”
I drag him back down onto a cushion and get him working again.
Callan pokes his head into the library an hour later. “I came to see if I could lure you to lunch with your elders. I didn’t realize the eldest of all was already inflicting himself on you.”
Dark lifts his snowy head and smiles at his son. “They’re enduring me with grace.”
“Are you going to be able to get up?” Callan asks.
“With assistance,” Dark says.
There are a lot of willing hands to help him up, but he grasps mine and holds it as everyone files toward the door.
“My son will assign someone to instruct you privately on the rules of a courtly challenge. But you and I are kindred spirits, Teddy, and we know there’s only one rule.”
“Kill or be killed,” I say quietly.
“Yes. I thought that’s what you meant when you told my grandson you have something Loyal doesn’t have. I just wanted to make sure. Do whatever you have to do to survive. If you have to make a choice, you choose yourself. Always.”
Myself and my boys. It’s not even a choice at this point. It just is.
* * *
The courtier Callanassigns to instruct me on the rules of the duel is, surprisingly, his princess. On the bright side, it spares me a tour of the goblin fruit vineyards.
Tyr drones through an elaborate set of rules which boil down to a lot of bowing. There’s nothing preventing me from killing Loyal. Nothing preventing him from killing me, either. But I’m betting he doesn’t have the spine for it.
One rule I don’t miss is that I can only use my own magic. I can’t draw on the strength of our quaternion.
Annoying but fair.
“Is there anything that prevents me from engaging with him physically?” I ask.
Tyr gives me a long, glacial stare. “No, but you’d be foolish to do so. He’ll overpower you immediately.”
I nod as though agreeing with her.
“If I knock him unconscious, I win, right?”
“Yes.”
The duel’s judged by three judges. Callan. Loyal’s great-great-great grandmother. And someone Tyr calls the Liusaidh. I don’t remember Darwin mentioning him or her during our fae crash-course and I’m not sure if “Liusaidh” is a name or a title.
Either way, it’s an interesting panel of judges. Both bizarrely biased and bizarrely balanced. Unless one of us kills or renders unconscious the other, they’ll judge us on our strengths and weaknesses in attacking and defending and declare a winner.
I don’t plan to let it get down to their decision.
“Thank you,” I say to Tyr. “I appreciate your instruction.”
