Page 276 of Commanding Blood And Bonds

“Oh?” Her arms wrapped around her ribs. “I’m sure that went well.”

“About as well as you’d expect.”

“Hence, the gauntlets?”

Full armor. Full speed. No breaks. In front of a crowd, of course. A public lesson in obedience from a woman who’d weaponized shame.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

I snorted, hunched forward with my elbows on my knees. My hands hung useless, fingers too sore to even curl. “Wasn’t your idea.”

“Still.”

“Look, Freya…I gotta ask. What the fuck happened between you and my mother? Why does she want you so badly?”

“Nothing,” she said. Flat. Fast. Eyes like shuttered windows.

“Clearly. My mistake,” I bit out. “Just assumed between the blood on the walls and, you know, dismantling the hierarchy, something might’ve gone down. Something worth avenging.”

Her throat bobbed, but she stayed silent.

“Was it Lonan?” I pressed. “You said he tried to get Mother to fetch the crown. Did she send you to do it for her?”

Still nothing. Not even a flinch.

“That’s what it feels like. Like all these pieces fit if I just had the last few. I couldn’t stop picturing him showing up, taking you⁠—”

“Aww, shucks, cowboy,” she cut in, but the words had no teeth.

“Don’t overestimate Reyna’s shadows,” I warned. “They’re easier to navigate than you think—if you know how to use them.”

“Clearly,” she muttered, sighing like the conversation had exasperated her. Coming here was a mistake. Two steps forward and three steps back. “Lonan doesn’t scare me. Not anymore.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I was betrayed, Cyrus.”

She turned to face me then, gaze dead flat, like I hadn’t watched her burn half her life to the ground to claw justice from its ashes.

“By someone with security clearance high enough to know about a calling,” she said tightly, “and the op I was running to track him down. I finally got good intel. Showed up. He was already dead. Throat slit. Obvious signs of a struggle.”

Her jaw clenched. I didn’t breathe.

“I searched every inch of that safehouse. Found a raven-hilted blade I recognized. Then I arranged a meet with your mother, but instead, I got my throat slit, and the last thing I remember is sinking into the muddy river on the divide. I don’t know what drowned me first. The water or my own blood.”

“You’d already beaten the Crucible?”

“And earned my Wings,” she said. Cold as stone.

Fuck.

The first Accord protected shadow magic. The second—the blood. Our brotherhood. That law extended to callings. Mates. Sacred ground.

If she was telling the truth, we had a traitor. In the highest ranks.

“Who was the calling?”