Page 358 of Commanding Blood And Bonds

It was Gio who stepped forward to address the crowd. “Form the circle.” They did. Everyone shifted to encompass the women at the center. “The rules are simple. One weapon. No magic. The Balance will choose the righteous victor.”

“Dagger,” they said in unison.

A serpent’s smile curved Mother’s lips. I couldn’t tell if it was admiration, nostalgia, or something colder.

Reyna stood at the edge of the ring. A sharp jerk of her chin called Freya closer. They exchanged a few hushed words before Freya was passed to Jax and his brother. The three embraced quickly—shoulder clasps, whispered advice—and exchanged a Grayshell salute.

No one stepped up for the queen. The men who would were gone or incapacitated.

At the center of the ring, Freya lifted her chin and saluted. “May the light falter on your blade.”

Mother sucked her teeth and turned without reciprocating the honor.

This whole thing might be fucked—but what the fuck?

Freya wouldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t lower the wall of ice between us. No words. No farewell.

And maybe I didn’t deserve them.

My heart pounded behind an indifferent mask. Calypso’s fingers found mine and squeezed. There would be no victor here.

If Mother won, I lost my mate. If Freya won, my family lost its honor.

Honor I’d spent my entire life trying to preserve.

There was no ceremony. No signal. The fight began slow, deliberate. Mother had nearly seven inches on Freya, but Freya was faster, more fluid—ducking, weaving, always just out of reach. She wasn’t just fighting. She was baiting. Drawing her closer with each swing of the blade.

I saw it. The pattern. The manipulation. Freya had learned it from her. That was Mother’s stance, her game. Judging by the sharp hiss from her lips, she saw it too.

Strike for strike, block for block, they moved as if rehearsed. Like a dance learned in secret.

It wasn’t Freya in that ring—it was Valora. And still, with every blow, my ribs constricted. Not from the fractures Jo was rushing to heal, but from the sight of them.

The first time I watched my mother execute a traitor, I was ten. She hadn’t flinched. Not once. It wasn’t cruel. Just…clinical. She gave the order. The blade fell, blood hit the marble, and she stepped over it.

“Paladins cannot afford sentimentality,” she told me afterward, like we were reviewing footwork. Had he deserved it? Had the man she killed really betrayed us—or had he just crossed her?

That same cold detachment now radiated from Calypso and me as we stood rooted, watching the inevitable unfold.

I glanced at her. Her chin was high. Her eyes locked. But it was that memory—the blood on the floor and my mother’s unblinking stare—that made it impossible to breathe. Because it begged a question: If it were me in that ring, would she be just as calculated?

Would she bleed me dry to protect the throne?

And I already knew the answer.

She had.

She’d let Nix carve his fucking name into my skin. Let me rot in a pit beneath her goddamned floorboards. One word—one—and she could’ve stopped it.

But she threw me to him like a traitor. Like I was expendable. We all were.

Freya drew first blood with a sharp hook that barely missed the Queen’s throat. My hands clenched. My chest did too. Calypso squeezed back.

One of my earliest memories was a storm, with thunder so loud it shook the windows, the rain pelting the roof like a drumline from hell.

I was maybe four, and ran, terrified, into her open arms. “Shhh, little prince,” she whispered, tucking me into her lap. “It can’t touch you. Just a storm, baby.”

“Tell me a story?” I’d begged.