But my body doesn’t care about logic. My body looks at eight feet of bronze muscle and ancient power andwants, with a desperation that terrifies me more than anything else in this arena.
They don’t break your body. They break your mind.
Is this how it starts? This unwanted heat, this shameful pull toward something I should hate? Is my biology already betraying me, recognizing him as alpha before I’ve even drawn his blood?
I reach the center of the arena and stop ten feet from the creature who’s about to become my master. Up close, he’s even more overwhelming—I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes, and the movement feels like submission even though I’m trying to project defiance.
“Hannah Mitchell.” His voice rolls across the arena like distant thunder, deep enough to vibrate in my chest. “The protector of Ironhold. You’ve invoked the ancient right of trial by combat.”
“I have.”
“You understand the terms?” He doesn’t move, but somehow his presence seems to fill the entire space. I’m aware of him in ways I don’t want to be—the rise and fall of his massive chest, the way light plays across the silver veins in his skin, the sheeroverwhelmingmalenessof him that makes something primitive in my hindbrain want to kneel.
I hate it. I hate that I’m noticing these things. I hate that my body is responding to him like a compass finding north, pointing toward something it was designed to want.
“I understand,” I say, and I’m proud that my voice doesn’t shake.
“Then select your blade.” He gestures toward a weapon rack at the edge of the arena. “The trial begins when you’re ready.”
I walk to the rack on legs that feel less steady than before. My hands are trembling as I examine the blades—good steel, well-balanced, similar enough to my own sword that the weight feels familiar. I select one, test its edge, try to focus on anything except the creature watching me with those molten eyes.
I am Hannah Mitchell. I am a warrior. I came here to draw blood, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Whatever my body thinks it wants, my mind knows the truth: the Guardian of Stone Court is not a lover, not a protector, not anything except the monster I have to wound before he can claim me.
I turn to face him, blade raised, and settle into a fighting stance.
He watches me with an expression I can’t read. He’s not even armed—his massive hands hang empty at his sides, as if he doesn’t consider me enough of a threat to bother with a weapon.
He’s probably right.
But I didn’t come here to win.
I came here to draw blood.
“I’m ready.”
The Guardian’s lips curve into something that isn’t quite a smile, and even that small movement makes heat spike through me in ways I refuse to acknowledge.
“Then begin,” he says.
And I do.Chapter 4: Karax
She’s even more magnificent in person than through the scrying crystal.
I’ve watched Hannah Mitchell fight a hundred times—studied her forms, catalogued her techniques, memorized the way she moves when she thinks no one is looking. But the crystal flattens everything, reduces her to light and shadow and the cold analysis of tactical observation. It can’t capture the way she carries herself in person, the coiled tension in her shoulders, the fierce intelligence burning in those gray eyes.
It can’t capture the way my body responds to her presence.
Something stirs in my chest as she enters the arena—something I haven’t felt in so long I almost don’t recognize it. Not just interest, not just anticipation. Something older and more dangerous, waking from a sleep measured in centuries.
I feelalive.
The crowd murmurs as she walks toward me, thousands of Stone Court Fae watching the small human woman approach their undefeated Guardian. I can taste their anticipation in the air, sharp as ozone before a storm. They’ve come to watch me crush another challenger, to see the inevitable conclusion play out the way it has for seven hundred years.
They have no idea what they’re actually about to witness.
Hannah stops ten feet from me, and I let myself look at her properly for the first time without the scrying crystal’s mediation. She’s smaller than I expected—the top of her head would barely reach my chest if she stood close enough to touch. Her fighting leathers are worn but well-maintained, the gear of someone who takes her craft seriously. Her dark hair is pulled back from a face that would be beautiful if it weren’t so carefully guarded, all sharp angles and determined jaw and eyes that meet mine without flinching.
