My father’s face the night he died. The sound my mother made when the chaos-beast’s claws found her throat. The weight of a sword in my sixteen-year-old hands, too heavy and too necessary.
You have to protect them now,my father had gasped, blood bubbling on his lips.Promise me, Hannah. Promise me you’ll keep them safe.
I’d promised. What else could I do? He died with my promise still warm in the air, and I’ve been keeping it ever since. Keeping it even when it hollowed me out, even when the weight of it crushed everything else I might have been.
I wanted to be a blacksmith. Before. Wanted to learn my father’s craft, to coax beauty from iron and steel, to build things instead of destroying them. I was good at it—had the hands for it, he said, and the patience.
Now my hands are only good for holding weapons, and my patience has been ground down to nothing but endurance.
The sword catches the fading light as I move through the forms, and I wonder if this is the last sunset I’ll see as a free woman. If tomorrow I’ll be dead or worse—claimed by a Fae lord, transformed into something that smiles and simpers and writes letters about how happy she is.
The thought should terrify me. Instead, it just makes me tired.
“You’ll need more than determination.”
I spin into a defensive stance before I’ve consciously processed the words, blade up and ready. A woman stands at the edge of the ridge—older, gray-haired, wearing the simple clothes of a traveling healer. But she doesn’t move like a healer. She moves like someone who’s seen violence and learned to dance around it.
“Who are you?”
“Someone who’s watched many brave young women walk into Fae territory.” Her eyes are kind but sad in a way that suggests the kindness has cost her something. “Most of them never came back the same.”
“I’m not planning to come back at all.”
“No.You’re planning to die heroically and save your village.” She moves closer, and I track her approach with my blade without quite threatening her. “But what if there’s another way?”
“There isn’t.”
“You haven’t heard my offer yet.”
Something in her manner makes me hesitate. She doesn’t feel like a threat—doesn’t feel like anything I can easily categorize. Too calm for a refugee. Too knowing for a simple traveler.
“What offer?”
“Information.” She settles onto a flat rock as if we’re about to have tea and gossip, not discuss life and death. “About Stone Court’s champion. About the law you’re invoking. About what it really means to draw the Guardian’s blood.”
“I know what it means. First blood wins the trial. I wound him, the tribute demand is nullified, my village goes free.”
“First bloodendsthe trial.” Her correction is gentle but firm. “What happens after that is… complicated.”
The way she sayscomplicatedmakes my stomach clench. “Explain.”
“The law you’re invoking is ancient—older than Stone Court itself, from a time when challenges between Fae were settled with honor and blood.” She pulls her worn cloak tighter against the evening chill. “The terms are very specific. First blood ends the combat. But there’s another provision, one that hasn’t been relevant in seven centuries because no one has managed to wound the Guardian.”
“What provision?”
Her sad eyes meet mine. “Anyone who draws the Guardian’s blood in honorable combat becomes his personal responsibility. His claim. His property, bound by laws older than human memory.” She pauses to let that sink in. “It was meant asa mercy, originally—a way to protect the rare warrior skilled enough to wound a Guardian from the wrath of the court. But it was written when the Fae still respected such warriors.”
The blood drains from my face. “You’re saying if I wound him—”
“You become his. Completely, legally, irrevocably his.” Her voice is soft with something that might be pity. “The village goes free, yes. But you don’t. You belong to him in a way that makes the cultural exchange look gentle. You become his to do with as he pleases, forever.”
I sit down heavily on the nearest rock. My legs don’t feel steady enough to hold me.
“So either I lose and get taken as tribute with the others—”
“Or you win and get taken as his personal prize.” She nods. “The law was designed to be impossible to invoke. No one was ever supposed to actually wound the Guardian. The provision exists because the Fae never imagined anyone would trigger it.”
I stare at her. “Then why tell me? If there’s no way to win, why not let me walk into the arena with hope?”
