10. Chapter 10 #2
The floor was sand. Dark. Volcanic. It crunched beneath my boots as we filed into the spectator area.
Eryndor walked to the center of the ring.
He'd stripped off his tunic and rolled his shoulders once. Cracked his neck. Then went still.
By then, Dragonborn had filled the benches, word spreading fast in a place like this.
Korvash entered from the opposite side, and the crowd went quiet.
The champion moved like an avalanche. Slow. Inevitable. He carried no weapon. Neither did Eryndor. This was a reading, not an execution. At least not yet.
They faced each other across twenty feet of black sand.
"Son of the false king." Korvash's voice was a rockslide. The first words I'd heard him speak. "Prove you're not his shadow."
Eryndor said nothing.
Korvash charged.
The first blow should have shattered bone. A massive fist swinging in an arc that could have cracked stone. Eryndor stepped aside—just barely, sand spraying beneath his heel—and let the strike whistle past his face.
He didn't counter.
Korvash spun. Faster than a male that size should move. Another strike, this one low, aimed at the kidneys.
Eryndor blocked it. Absorbed the impact with his forearm. He staggered and pain flashed across his face.
He still didn't strike back.
The crowd murmured.
Korvash pressed forward. A flurry now—fists and elbows, each blow carrying enough force to kill. Eryndor moved through them like water. Deflecting. Redirecting. Taking the hits he couldn't avoid without complaint.
One caught his shoulder. His arm dropped for a second before he recovered.
Another grazed his temple. Blood welled at his hairline.
He kept moving. Kept watching. Every strike Korvash threw, Eryndor studied. He was calibrating—tracking patterns, timing, the tiny tells that preceded each attack.
"He's not fighting back." Maxx's voice at my ear. Tense. "Why isn't he fighting back?"
I didn't answer. I understood.
He was letting them see him take the pain. Letting them land the blows he'd earned—for his father's sins, for the princess, for every dragon that had died while he wore Crown colors.
This wasn't a fight. It was a confession.
Korvash shifted tactics. The brawling gave way to a calculated dismantling of anatomy—a style built on torque and unnatural angles. He caught Eryndor's wrist, locking it against his chest to isolate the elbow, then drove his weight down to force the joint against its natural bend.
Eryndor went with the motion instead of against it. Turned the lock into a roll. Came up on his feet, arm still intact, sand clinging to his sweat-slicked skin.
The crowd leaned forward.
Korvash's eyes narrowed. He'd expected that to work. Expected the Crown princeling to fight like a noble—rigid, predictable, married to his training.
Eryndor circled without attacking, his posture relaxing into a deceptive, liquid loose. He had deciphered the pattern of Korvash’s violence and was matching it beat for beat.
The champion lunged.
Eryndor sidestepped. His hand shot out—not a strike, just a redirect—and Korvash's own momentum carried him stumbling forward.
A murmur from the benches. Someone laughed. Quickly silenced.
Korvash rounded on him. Fury in his eyes now. He came in fast, hard, abandoning technique for raw power.
The opening appeared.
That fraction of a second where Korvash's guard dropped, where his weight shifted wrong, where a single strike to the throat would end this.
Eryndor clocked it. He didn't take it.
Instead he caught Korvash's wrist. Twisted. Used the big man's momentum against him and swept his legs in one clean motion.
Korvash hit the sand hard.
Eryndor followed him down. Knee on his chest. Forearm across his throat. Pinned. Controlled. Decisive. Not cruel.
He could have driven the pressure past the point of surrender, holding the grip until the lack of oxygen became agony.
He held for three seconds. Then released.
Stepped back and offered his hand.
The proving grounds went silent.
Korvash lay sprawled in the sand, fighting for breath, but his gaze locked onto Eryndor with a heavy, calculating weight.
The moment stretched.
Then Korvash reached up.
Gripped Eryndor's forearm and let himself be pulled to his feet.
"Your father fights behind walls. You fight like a male with nothing left to hide."
The words carried across the ring. Eryndor didn't deflect them. He just absorbed them, exactly as he had the blows.
He inclined his head. Said nothing.
Korvash turned to the crowd. To Morrha, now seated in a place of honor at the ring's edge.
"He stays." Two words. A verdict delivered in the only language Skal'Varin trusted.
The crowd exhaled. Not cheering—the dragonborn didn't seem like the cheering type—but something shifted in the way they looked at Eryndor. Less like prey. More like a problem that had resolved itself into something unexpected.
Eryndor walked back toward us. Blood drying at his temple. Sand in his hair. Bruises already darkening on his arms.
He stopped three feet away. Our eyes met.
I'd watched him fight a hundred times. Sparring matches. Real combat. Life-or-death scrambles in the dark. I knew the way he moved, the way he thought, the way his body became a weapon.
This had been different.
Every strike he didn't take and opening he refused. Every blow he absorbed because he believed he deserved it.
He'd shown them exactly who he was. A man trying to carve something new out of the ruins of what he'd been.
And I couldn't even touch him after.
"That was—" My voice caught. I cleared my throat. "That was good."
The corner of his mouth twitched.
"High praise from the female who once stabbed me."
"You deserved that stabbing."
"I did."
The corners of his eyes crinkled. It was a real smile—rare and ruinous. My stomach bottomed out.