Gabriel smirked, cracking his knuckles. “With pleasure.”
The two stepped into the circle.
Storne’s voice was sharp as a whetstone.
“First to be shoved outside the circle sleeps with the livestock behind Fyreglade tonight.”
Evander froze. His face went pale as parchment.
“Livestock?” he blurted. “As in… animals?”
Gabriel barked a laugh. “What, never mucked a stall in Rhidian, castle boy?”
Evander shot him a glare, cheeks hot. “Not all of us were raised in the stables of Vykenra.”
Gabriel’s grin sharpened.
“Careful, or you’ll find out how line Draekenra teaches its sons to fight.”
Evander’s mouth ran before his nerves could stop it.
“What’s the lesson?” he asked—too late now.
“How to marry your cousin?”
The silence cracked—sharp, electric. Gabriel’s eyes flared, every muscle coiling.
Storne smothered a laugh in his fist. “Begin.”
Gabriel lunged, all brute size and fury. Evander barely braced before his boots scraped dirt—Gabriel slammed him back like a battering ram.
Panic flared.
Scrambling limbs, grit biting his palms, the circle’s edge skimming far too close.
“You’re supposed to fight, not dance,” Gabriel jeered, driving him harder.
Evander gritted his teeth, blood rising with the heat of his own recklessness. He hadn’t meant to echo Amerei, but dask—he wasn’t taking the words back now. Not with Gabriel’s pride on the line.
“I was being…polite—”
With a flash of desperation, he dropped his weight, slipped free, and kicked. The blow cracked against Gabriel’s shin.
The larger elf staggered but surged again, looping an arm over Evander’s shoulder and wrenching back. Evander gagged, neck caught in the vise of Gabriel’s elbow, toes clawing for purchase near the line.
Gabriel glanced up, meeting Storne’s eyes—a silent question:Shall I end this?
Storne gave a small nod. Permission.
Evander clawed at the arm choking him, lungs burning. Then, in one breath, his body went limp—dead weight.
The sudden sag forced Gabriel to loosen his grip.
In that instant, Evander drove a mule-kick backward, dropped low, seized Gabriel’s boot, and heaved.
The rush of air, the scrape of gravel—
then the bigger elf toppled like a felled oak, sprawling flat on his back, head lolling just past the circle’s edge.
