The Crimson Tournament doesn't fuck around.

That becomes apparent in the preliminary rounds, where they pack us into a stone arena that smells like centuries of blood and desperation. The crowd roars like a living thing—thousands of voices blending into a single, hungry beast. I've faced worse odds. I've faced worse odds while chained.

But this is different.

This time, I'm choosing to be here.

My first match is against a woman built like a battering ram, all bulk and momentum. She charges at the opening bell like she's trying to break through a wall. I let her come, step aside at the last second, and watch her crash into the arena wall hard enough to crack stone.

She doesn't get up.

The crowd loses its collective mind.

I stand in the center of the ring, breathing steady, and don't let myself look up at the stands where I know he's sitting. The knowledge of Draconis's presence is like a physical weight—a pressure against my skin I can't quite shake. I can feel his eyes on me. Molten gold tracking every movement, every breath.

It's infuriating.

It's intoxicating.

"Focus," I mutter to myself as I walk back to the preparation area. "He's just a man."

A lie. He's never been just anything.

My second match comes two hours later. A scarred veteran with more experience than sense. He tries to grapple, which is his mistake. I'm faster, meaner, and I've spent the last five years learning exactly where to apply pressure to make a person's body betray them.

He taps out after four minutes.

I'm not even breathing hard.

Between matches, I catch sight of Draconis in the royal box. He's wearing black—of course he is—and the fabric seems to absorb light rather than reflect it. He looks like a hole in the world, dark and magnetic and absolutely wrong for someone like me.

Someone like me doesn't get to want things that badly.

Someone like me learned that lesson the hard way.

Sera finds me in the competitors' tent, toweling sweat from my face. My sister moves through the chaos of fighters and handlers like she's navigating her own private space, untouchable through sheer force of will. It's something she's learned—how to make people give her room. She's better at it than I am, which is saying something.

"You're moving like a machine," she says, settling onto the bench beside me. "Like you're trying to prove something."

"I'm trying to win the tournament."

"No." She studies me with those sharp obsidian eyes—my eyes in a softer face. "You're trying to prove something to him. There's a difference."

I don't answer because she's right and I hate when she's right.

"Kael." Her voice softens. "Be careful."

"I'm always careful."

"No," she says quietly. "You're not. You're reckless about things that matter. You always have been."

Before I can respond—and I don't have a good response, because she's annoyingly perceptive—the tent flap opens and a man strides in like he owns the space.

Lyrian Blackthorne.

My former sword-master. My former everything, if I'm being honest about the year we spent together. Before I realized that what I'd mistaken for devotion was actually possession wearing a gentler mask.

He looks exactly the same as he did six months ago when I walked away from him. Dark auburn hair, scarred knuckles, that cruel smile that used to make my pulse race. Now it just makes my hindbrain scream warnings.

"Kael." He says my name like it's a prayer. "You came."

"I came to win."

"And you will." He moves toward me with the confidence of someone who's never been told no in his life. "I knew you would. You're the best fighter I've ever trained. Better than me."

He says it like it's a compliment. Like it doesn't bother him that I surpassed him. Like his ego can handle being eclipsed.

It can't.

I know it can't because I know him.

"I didn't know you'd be here," I say carefully.

"Where else would I be?" His eyes are intense, focused entirely on me. It's the kind of attention that used to feel like worship. Now it feels like a cage. "You're here. That's all that matters."

Sera stands abruptly, smoothing her skirts. "I'm going to get water."

She leaves before I can argue, which is very deliberately not helping me.

Lyrian sits where she was, close enough that I can smell leather and iron on his skin. It used to comfort me. It used to feel like safety.

"You look good," he says. "Stronger than when you left."

"I've been training."

"With who?"

There it is. The question underneath the question.

"Myself."

He smiles, and it doesn't reach his eyes. "You always were independent. That's what I loved about you. What I still love about you."

The past tense/present tense confusion is deliberate. It's a tactic. Everything about Lyrian is tactical.

"You should go," I say. "I need to prepare for my next match."

"I'll stay." He reaches out and tucks a strand of hair that's escaped my braid behind my ear. It's a gentle gesture. It's also a claim. "I want to watch you fight. I want to see what you've become."

My entire body goes rigid.

I've learned to read violence in every micro-expression, every shift of weight. I've learned to sense danger before it manifests. What I haven't learned—what I'm still failing at—is how to handle it when it comes from someone I once trusted.

"The competitors' tent is off-limits to spectators," I say flatly.

"I'm not a spectator. I'm your—"

"You're not anything anymore, Lyrian."

The smile doesn't waver, but something dangerous flickers in his eyes. "That's not what you said six months ago."

"Six months ago I was an idiot."

"You were vulnerable," he corrects. "You needed someone to take care of you. Someone strong enough to handle you."

This is the moment where I should throw him out. Where I should make it clear that whatever he thinks we were, we're not that anymore. Instead, I find myself saying, "I don't need anyone."

"Everyone needs someone." He stands, and I recognize the movement—the particular way he shifts his weight, the angle of his shoulders. It's the stance he taught me. "Even you."

He leaves before I can respond, which is probably smart of him.

I sit alone in the tent and try to slow my racing pulse.

---

My third match is against a man who smells like desperation and poor life choices.

He's fast, I'll give him that. But he's fighting like he has something to prove, and that's always a liability. People who need to prove things make mistakes. They take risks. They let emotion override strategy.

I'm not that person.

Except I'm starting to realize that I might be.

I catch sight of Draconis in the royal box again, and something in my chest clenches. He's leaning forward slightly, his absolute focus on me. The cedarwood and smoke scent of him reaches me even from this distance—or maybe I'm just hyperaware of everything about him now. Maybe my body's decided to betray me completely.

The man in the ring with me tries a feint I see coming from a mile away. I sidestep, spin, and use his own momentum against him. He hits the ground hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs.

The crowd roars.

I bow to the royal box without meaning to.

Draconis's eyes flash gold, and even from here I can see the predatory satisfaction in his expression. He's watching me like I'm the only thing in the arena worth seeing.

It's dangerous.

It's addictive.

After the match, I'm heading back to the preparation tent when someone grabs my arm. Not hard—never hard enough to leave marks—but firm enough that I can't ignore it.

I spin, instinct screaming, and find myself face-to-face with a fighter I don't recognize. He's older, weathered, with the kind of scars that come from a lifetime of violence.

"You're the one with the dragon," he says.

My entire body goes cold.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"The exile. Draconis Ashenmoor." He leans closer, and I can smell cheap ale and desperation on his breath. "I know who he is. What he is. And I know he's watching you like you're the only thing keeping him tethered to this world."

I wrench my arm free. "If you have a point, make it."

"The point is that he's a liability." The man's smile is all teeth. "And I'm going to use him to beat you."

He walks away before I can respond, leaving me standing in the corridor with my heart hammering against my ribs.

I know what he means. In a tournament like this, leverage is everything. If someone can threaten something you care about, they can distract you. They can make you make mistakes.

And I care about Draconis.

The realization hits me like a physical blow.

I care about him enough that someone could use him against me. I've created a weakness. I've handed someone a weapon with my own hands.

This is exactly what I swore would never happen again.

---

Draconis finds me after my matches, in the quiet moment when the arena's emptied and the crowd's moved on to evening festivities. I'm alone in the preparation tent, wrapping my knuckles, when the temperature in the space shifts.

I don't look up, but my entire body knows he's there.

"You fought well," he says. His voice is low, carrying that undertone of something not quite human. Something that makes the predator in me recognize the predator in him.

"I always fight well."

"Yes." He moves closer, and I can smell cedarwood and rain and something wild underneath. "But today you fought like you were trying to prove something."

I finally look up at him, and it's a mistake because he's standing close enough that I can see the gold bleeding into his eyes. Close enough that I can count the places where his pulse shows beneath pale skin.

"I'm trying to win a tournament."

"No." He crouches in front of me, and the movement is too fluid, too predatory. Too dragon. "You're trying to prove something to me."

"Fuck off."

"Is it working?" His eyes search mine, and there's something vulnerable underneath the arrogance. Something that looks almost like hope.

I want to lie. I want to tell him he doesn't matter, that his opinion is irrelevant, that I'm doing this entirely for myself. But I'm tired of lying, at least to myself.

"Someone tried to threaten me using you," I say instead. "Told me he was going to use you as leverage."

Something dangerous flickers across Draconis's face. "Who?"

"A fighter. I didn't catch his name."

"It doesn't matter." He reaches out and traces his fingers along my jawline, and the touch is so gentle it makes me want to scream. "Nothing he does matters. Nothing anyone does matters except you."

"Don't say things like that."

"Why not? It's true."

"Because I can't afford to care about you." My voice comes out rougher than I intended. "Because I can't afford to have weaknesses."

"I'm not a weakness." His hand slides to the back of my neck, and the pressure there is firm enough to ground me. "I'm a weapon. I'm the most dangerous thing you have access to, and I'm yours."

"You're not mine. You're a life debt that—"

"Fuck the life debt." His eyes are fully gold now, burning with something that makes my hindbrain recognize him as the apex predator he actually is. "I don't want you because I owe you. I want you because you're the only person who's ever looked at me and seen something other than a prize to be claimed."

He leans closer, and I think he's going to kiss me. Every nerve in my body is screaming for him to kiss me. My hands are already reaching for him, already pulling him closer, and—

The tent flap opens.

Lyrian stands in the entrance, and his expression cycles through surprise, anger, and something that looks dangerously like possession.

"I didn't realize you had company," he says, his voice pleasant in a way that makes my skin crawl.

Draconis doesn't move. He's still close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his skin, still close enough that I can smell him. But his eyes have shifted from gold to something darker, more dangerous.

"I was just leaving," Draconis says, and there's something in his tone that promises violence. "Unless you have a problem with that."

"No problem." Lyrian's smile is sharp. "Kael and I have some catching up to do. Don't we, Kael?"

I stand, putting distance between myself and Draconis, which feels like the worst decision I've made all day. Possibly all year.

"We don't have anything to do."

"You're being cruel." Lyrian steps into the tent fully, and I recognize the movement—the way he's positioning himself, the angle of his shoulders. He's measuring distance, calculating angles. He's preparing to fight. "I came all this way to support you, and this is how you treat me?"

"You came here to control me," I say flatly. "There's a difference."

"Is that what he told you?" Lyrian's eyes flick to Draconis. "That I'm controlling? That I'm the bad one in this scenario?"

"I don't need him to tell me anything. I have eyes."

"You have trauma," Lyrian says, and his voice softens in a way that's probably supposed to be comforting. "And trauma makes it hard to trust the people who actually care about you. I understand that. I've always understood that."

The words are poison wrapped in concern.

"Get out," I say.

"Kael—"

"Now."

Lyrian looks at me for a long moment, and I can see the calculation happening behind his eyes. He's weighing his options, measuring the distance between himself and Draconis, deciding whether this is a fight he can win.

He apparently decides it's not.

"I'll be watching your matches," he says as he turns to leave. "I'll be here when you're ready to stop running from the truth."

He leaves, and I'm alone with Draconis and the overwhelming realization that I've somehow managed to complicate my life even further.

"He's dangerous," Draconis says quietly.

"I know."

"He wants to own you."

"I know that too."

"And you're still considering—"

"I'm not considering anything." I turn to face him, and I'm angry now. Angry at Lyrian, angry at myself, angry at the way my body won't stop betraying my mind. "I'm trying to survive this tournament without getting killed or losing my mind. I'm trying to figure out how to exist in a world where I'm not in control of anything, least of all myself."

Draconis steps closer, and I don't move away. I'm done moving away.

"You're in control of me," he says. "You have been since the moment you saved my life. Everything I am is yours to command."

"I don't want you like that."

"I know." His hand finds mine, and the touch is electric. "That's why I'm giving it to you anyway."

He leaves before I can respond, and I'm left standing alone in the preparation tent with my heart hammering and the scent of cedarwood and rain lingering in the air.

Tomorrow I have to fight again.

Tomorrow I have to face Lyrian's threat, Draconis's intensity, and my own desperate need to prove that I'm worth more than the sum of my traumas.

But tonight, I let myself sit in the wreckage of my carefully constructed walls and acknowledge the terrifying truth:

I'm falling for a dragon prince who's promised me everything, while my former mentor circles like a predator who's convinced himself he's the only one who can save me.

And I have no idea which one is actually the threat.