Prologue #3
“Stone Court law allows for trial by combat,” I say, and the words taste like ashes in my mouth. “Any challenge to tribute demands can be settled in single combat with the Court’s champion. If the challenger wins, the tribute is nullified.”
“The Court’s champion is Guardian Karax himself.” The blacksmith’s voice is rough—smoke damage from a forge fire I helped him put out four years ago, back when we both still pretended things might get better. “He hasn’t been defeated in seven centuries. No one’s even wounded him in living memory.”
“I know.”
“You’d be walking to your death.”
“Maybe.” I meet his eyes steadily. “But the law says first blood ends the trial. If I can wound him—even a scratch, even once—the demand is nullified and Ironhold goes free.”
“And if you lose?”
I take a breath. Let it out slowly.
“Then I pay the tribute myself. One woman instead of three. The village is spared for another year, at least.”
The silence that follows is absolute. I watch understanding dawn on their faces—the realization of what I’m offering. My life, or at least my freedom, in exchange for their daughters. Another sacrifice laid on the altar of keeping this dying village alive for one more season.
“You can’t.” Marta’s voice trembles. “Hannah, you can’t throw yourself away for—”
“I’ve been throwing myself away for this village since I was sixteen years old.” The words come out tired. So bone-deep tired. “Every chaos-beast I’ve killed, every negotiation I’ve walked into alone, every night I’ve stood watch while the rest of you slept. What’s one more sacrifice?”
“Your parents wouldn’t want—”
“My parents are dead.” I cut her off more sharply than I mean to.
“They’ve been dead for eight years. And for eight years, I’ve been doing what needs to be done because no one else would do it.
Fighting what needs to be fought. Carrying everyone and everything because there’s no one else strong enough. ”
My voice cracks on the last word, and I hate myself for showing that weakness.
But I’m so tired. Tired of being strong.
Tired of being the one everyone depends on.
Tired of standing between this village and destruction while they look at me with expecting eyes and never once ask if I’m okay. Never once offer to share the weight.
“I’m invoking trial by combat,” I say, forcing iron back into my voice. “Tomorrow, when the delegation arrives. If anyone has a better idea, now’s the time.”
Silence.
Of course it’s silence. There’s never anything else.
“Then it’s settled.” I roll up the scroll and tuck it into my belt. “Prepare to evacuate the children and elderly to the lower caves, in case things go badly. I have training to do.”
I’m out the door before anyone can respond.
The eastern ridge offers the best view in Ironhold—the valley sprawling below with its scattered buildings and terraced farms, the winding mountain paths that connect us to a world that’s mostly forgotten we exist, and in the distance, rising from the highest peaks like a monument to everything humanity has lost, the dark spires of Stone Court.
I come here when the weight gets too heavy. When I need to set it down for a moment and pretend I’m just a woman watching the sunset, not the only thing standing between forty-three people and oblivion.
Tonight, I come here to face what I’ve done.
Trial by combat against the Guardian of Stone Court. An immortal Fae lord who’s been fighting since before my great-great-grandparents were born. A warrior who’s never been touched in seven hundred years of challenges.
I’m going to lose.
I’ve known it since the words left my mouth.
The odds aren’t against me—they’re laughable.
I’m a self-taught fighter from a dying village, and he’s a legend made flesh.
I’ve survived thirty-seven chaos-beasts through luck and stubbornness and a complete unwillingness to die, but that’s not the same as skill.
Not the kind of skill you need to face an ancient Fae warrior in his own arena.
But I had to try. I couldn’t watch them take Marta’s daughter, couldn’t see Lily’s gap-toothed smile disappear into Stone Court’s fortress and emerge years later as an omega’s vacant contentment. Couldn’t sacrifice three girls when I could sacrifice one.
Myself.
The math is simple, even if the equation is heartbreaking.
I draw my blade and run through the forms I’ve developed over eight years—strikes and parries, footwork patterns designed to maximize speed against larger opponents.
Everything I’ve learned from fighting chaos-beasts and desperate bandits and the occasional Fae scout who wandered too close to the village.
My muscles remember the movements even when my mind wanders, and my mind keeps wandering to dark places.
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 blood ends the trial.” Her correction is gentle but firm. “What happens after that is… complicated.”
The way she says complicated makes 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 as a 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?”
“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 writes me letters now. Says she’s very happy. Says she’s found her purpose.”
The words hang in the cold air between us.