“Because you deserve to know what you’re choosing.” She stands, brushing dust from her cloak. “And because I’ve seen too many brave women walk into that arena thinking they understood the stakes, only to discover they never had a chance at all.”
“Why do you care what happens to me?”
She pauses, something flickering across her weathered face. “I had a daughter once. Strong-willed, like you. She thought she could beat the system too.” Her voice goes flat. “She writesme letters now. Says she’s very happy. Says she’s found her purpose.”
The words hang in the cold air between us.
“Go home, Hannah Mitchell,” she says quietly. “Let them take the three girls. It’s cruel mathematics, but at least those girls don’t know what’s coming. You do. You’ll feel every moment of what they do to you, knowing you chose it.”
“I can’t.”
“I know.” She sighs—a sound heavy with old grief. “That’s why I told you the truth. So at least you’ll walk into that arena with your eyes open.”
She turns and walks away into the gathering dusk, her gray cloak disappearing into the mist like she was never there at all.
I stay on the ridge until the stars come out.
My sword rests across my knees, but I don’t practice anymore. I just sit and think, turning the old woman’s words over in my mind like stones in a river, trying to find a shape I can hold onto.
The blood debt law. A trap disguised as a chance. Wound him and you don’t win—you just become his in a different way.
I think about the omegas I’ve seen over the years. The ones who come back with Fae delegations, glassy-eyed and soft-voiced, touching their swollen bellies with mindless contentment. They always say the same things:I’m so happy. I’ve found my purpose.The words never reach their eyes.
That’s what’s waiting for me. Not death—something worse. The slow erosion of everything I am until there’s nothing left but a creature that smiles and breeds and writes letters home about happiness she can’t actually feel.
The old woman’s daughter.She writes me letters now. Says she’s very happy.
The thought should send me running. Should make me slip away in the night like so many others have, taking my chances with the chaos-beasts and the lawless roads rather than walking willingly into that fate.
But if I run, they take Lily and Sara and Sera. Three girls instead of one. Three families destroyed instead of mine alone.
And I don’t have a family anymore. There’s no one who’ll mourn me the way Marta would mourn Lily, no one whose life will be hollowed out by my absence. I’m already hollowed out. Already emptied by eight years of carrying burdens that should have broken me.
The math hasn’t changed. It’s just uglier now that I can see all the numbers.
One woman who knows what she’s losing, or three girls who don’t.
I think about Lily’s gap-toothed smile. About Sara’s fierce concentration when she stitches my wounds. About Sera, who stopped bringing me wildflowers when she got old enough to understand what the flowers were for—small gifts for the woman who kept the monsters away, because there was nothing else a child could offer.
They deserve a chance to become something. To fall in love with village boys, to have children they actually want, to growold surrounded by people who remember their real names and not just the titles the Fae gave them.
I’ve already given up on becoming something. Gave that up the night my parents died and I picked up a sword instead of a hammer. The blacksmith’s daughter with clever hands and patient eyes—she’s been dead for eight years. What’s left is just a weapon that learned to walk and talk.
Weapons don’t get to complain about how they’re used.
The stars wheel overhead, cold and distant, offering no answers. They never do.
When the night has grown so cold I can’t feel my fingers anymore, I finally stand. My legs are stiff, my body aching, but my mind is quiet for the first time in hours.
I’m going to walk into that arena tomorrow. I’m going to wound the Guardian of Stone Court, something no one has done in seven hundred years. And then I’m going to become his property, his claim, his omega.
And Ironhold will be free.
The sword slides into its sheath with a soft whisper of steel on leather. Tomorrow, I’ll use it one last time as a free woman.
Tonight, I walk back down to the village and try not to think about what comes after.Chapter 2: Karax
The scrying crystal shows me everything I want to see.
