Chapter 8: The Blood Duel Invoked
The silence in the war room was absolute, a physical weight pressing down from the obsidian ceiling. The words Blood Duel seemed to hang in the air between them, shimmering with ancient, brutal finality.
Feyre felt the bond in her chest go icy, then white-hot. It wasn’t fear for herself. It was a glacial, terrified certainty of what Rhys would do.
Rhysand did not move, but the air around him darkened, swallowing the light from the faelights hovering near the maps. The temperature dropped. Azriel’s shadows fled from him, recoiling to cluster at the edges of the room. Rhys’s face was a mask of cold, beautiful fury, but his eyes—his eyes were voids where stars had gone to die.
“He can’t,” Feyre heard herself say, the words brittle. “The law… it’s for unmated disputes over territory or artifacts. Not for…”
“For a female,” Rhys finished, his voice deceptively soft. It was the softness of a razor against a throat. “The law is archaic, but it exists. A challenge for a contested mate, when one party claims the bond is false or forced. Combat to the death. The winner takes all.” He finally turned his head to look at her, and the pain in that violet gaze was worse than any anger. “He’s claiming I stole you. That the bond is a fabrication of my mind magic.”
A laugh, sharp and ugly, ripped from Feyre’s throat. “He locked me in a house. He watched me wither and did nothing.”
“And now he wants to correct his mistake by killing me and dragging you back to your gilded cage,” Rhys said, the words dropping like stones. He looked to Azriel. “When? Where?”
“The challenge was formalized at the Spring Court border at dawn. By the old rules, he has the right to name the time and place. He chose three days from now. The Stone Clearing, in the neutral forest between our territories.”
The Stone Clearing. She knew it. A flat, circular expanse of granite, ringed by towering oaks, where no magic but that of combat could be wielded. A place for endings.
Rhys nodded once, a warrior accepting a deployment. “Prepare Cassian. We’ll leave at first light to survey the ground.”
“No.”
Feyre’s voice cut through the grim planning. She stepped forward, away from the desk, putting herself squarely in the space between the two males. She felt Rhys’s attention snap to her, a focused, predatory intensity.
“No,” she repeated, clearer now. Her heart hammered against her ribs, but her hands were steady. “I will not be a prize. A piece of property to be fought over and handed to the victor. I am not a fucking trophy.”
“Feyre,” Rhys began, a warning in his tone.
She turned on him. “If Tamlin wants me, he will face me. Not you. Me.”
The silence that followed was deafening. Azriel had gone preternaturally still. Rhys stared at her as if she’d spoken in a forgotten tongue.
“Absolutely not,” he said, each word clipped.
“It’s the one thing he won’t expect! He thinks I’m still the broken girl in his manor. He thinks you’ll shield me. He wants a grand, dramatic duel with you, the villain who stole his bride. So we don’t give it to him.” She was pleading now, her logic fighting against the dread in his eyes. “I am a High Lady. I have power he doesn’t understand. I can end this.”
“By dying?” Rhys’s voice cracked. He took a step toward her, and the raw, unfiltered terror on his face stopped her breath. “He will kill you, Feyre. Not because you’re weak, but because he will have nothing left to lose. He will see you as mine, and he will want to destroy what he cannot have. He will not fight with honor. He will slaughter you.”
“Then you’ve trained me poorly,” she shot back, desperation making her cruel.
He flinched. It was a minute movement, but she saw it. The hurt flashed in his eyes before the wall of impenetrable command slammed down again.
“This is not a debate. You will remain here. Azriel, leave us.”
The spymaster vanished into a swirl of shadows without a sound. The door sealed shut, locked by a whisper of Rhys’s power.
They were alone in the cavernous room. The maps on the walls seemed to mock them, the torn parchment from Tamlin’s past rage a stark contrast to the fresh, bold lines Rhys had drawn for their future. A future now balanced on the edge of a blade.
“You cannot forbid me,” Feyre said, low and fierce.
“I can. As your High Lord, and as your mate, I am telling you: you will not set foot in that clearing.”
“Then you make me a prisoner again!” The shout echoed off the stone. “You hand Tamlin a victory before a single blow is struck! You confirm his every twisted thought—that I need to be controlled, that I am not capable of choosing my own fate!”
“I am trying to keep you alive!” he roared, the control finally shattering. The force of his power rushed through the room, a wave of darkness that snuffed half the faelights. The remaining ones flickered wildly, casting jerking, monstrous shadows. “Do you have any concept of what it would do to me? To see you there? To feel it through the bond if he… if he…”
He couldn’t say it. He turned away from her, his shoulders taut, one hand braced on the map of the mortal lands. His head bowed.
The anger drained from her, leaving a cold, clear resolve. She walked to him, placing her hand over his where it lay flat against the map. His skin was icy.
“You once told me we were a team,” she said softly. “You told me I was your equal. Not just in title, but in truth. Don’t make a liar of you now.”
He was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was hollow. “If you fight him, I will be there. Not just in the trees. I will be on that stone. We fight together, or not at all.”
“The rules of the Blood Duel are one-on-one combat. You know that. Interference forfeits the challenge and cedes the claim.”
He turned then, his eyes blazing. “Fuck the rules. I would burn every law, every treaty, and every court to ash before I let him touch you. Let them call me a forfeiting oath-breaker. Let them come for me. You are worth the wrath of the world.”
The declaration should have thrilled her. It only carved a deeper ache in her chest. This was the precipice. His love, vast and terrifying, ready to unravel everything they were building to keep her safe. Her need to stand, finally, for herself.
She reached up and touched his face. “And you are worth my freedom. Not just from him. From this. From the fear.” She took a shuddering breath. “Train me. For three days. Train me as if my life depends on it—because it does. And when the time comes… you have to let me try.”
The conflict in his gaze was a tempest. He searched her face, his own etched with a torment that mirrored the carvings in the library wall. He saw her stubbornness, her hard-won strength, the ghost of the huntress who had survived alone in the woods for years. He also saw the woman he loved walking toward a blade.
Finally, he leaned down, resting his forehead against hers. A concession. A defeat. A prayer.
“Three days,” he whispered, the words a vow and a curse.
The training was not like anything with Cassian. There was no laughter, no teasing, no building on fundamentals. It was pure, unadulterated ruthlessness.
They winnowed to a isolated mountain ledge within the Night Court, a place of biting wind and sheer drops. Rhys faced her, his expression unreadable.
“He is stronger than you,” he began, his voice cold, clinical. “Faster. He has centuries of combat instinct you lack. Your advantages are your unpredictability and your unique magics. We will focus on those. You will not beat him in a contest of strength. You will end him before he has a chance to use it.”
He attacked.
Not as a teacher, but as Tamlin. He used no Illyrian techniques, no complex swordplay. He came at her with brute, overwhelming force, a simulation of Spring’s raw, punishing power. The first blow, a swipe of shadow-shaped claws, sent her flying into the rock face.
“Get up!” he snarled, and the sound was so foreign, so hateful from his lips, that she scrambled up, panic and fury warring in her gut.
He came again. She threw up a shield of starlight, but he shattered it with a concussive blast of pure winnowing energy, the force knocking the air from her lungs. She hit the ground, tasting blood.
“He will not give you time to breathe. He will want you down and bleeding as quickly as possible. What do you do?”
Gasping, she didn’t try to stand. She flung a hand out, not attacking him, but attacking the ground at his feet. Her power—the tendril of decay, of unraveling—shot from her fingers. It didn’t aim to kill, but to dissolve. The granite beneath his boots turned to sand, crumbling away.
He lurched, off-balance for a fraction of a second. It was enough. She winnowed—not far, just behind him—and drove a hardened spike of ice, conjured from the mountain’s moisture, toward his kidney.
He vanished, appearing ten feet away. A flicker of approval in his eyes. “Good. Use the environment. Unmake his footing. Blind him. He relies on solid ground and clear sight.”
For hours, it continued. He pressed her relentlessly, a storm of simulated violence. She learned to fight dirty, to use her smaller size to slide under swipes, to target knees and eyes and throats. She learned to layer her magics: a blinding flash of light, followed by a coil of water to freeze around an ankle, followed by a whip of pure spirit to lash at his mind.
She fell. She bled. She got up.
Through the bond, she felt his heart breaking with every bruise he gave her, with every pained gasp. But his face remained that of a merciless stranger.
At the end of the first day, she could barely stand. He carried her back to the townhouse, straight to the bathing chamber. He washed the grime and blood from her in silence, his hands gentle now, trembling. He healed the worst of the bruises, his magic a warm, soothing balm.
When he lifted her from the water, wrapped in a soft towel, she saw the tears he would not shed gleaming in his eyes. He carried her to their bed, laid her down, and simply held her, his face buried in her hair, his body curved around hers as if he could absorb her into his very bones.
“I hate this,” he whispered into the dark.
“I know.”
“I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t.”
The second day was worse. He incorporated weapons. He taught her how to dodge the arc of a massive, phantom broadsword, how to use its weight against the wielder, how a thin, sharp dagger to the armpit or the groin could be more effective than any heroic blow. He taught her to fight through agony, to ignore a dislocated shoulder, a slash to the thigh.
“Pain is a message,” he growled as she clutched a numbed arm. “Acknowledge it, then tell it to shut the fuck up. You can scream later.”
She vomited from exhaustion after a particularly brutal sequence where he’d mimicked Tamlin’s beast-form, a terrifying onslaught of tooth and shadow. Rhys held her hair back, wiped her mouth with a cloth, and handed her a glass of water without a word.
That night, the terror morphed into a desperate, hungry need. It was she who initiated it, rolling toward him in the dark, her body aching and alive. She kissed him with a ferocity that was almost violent, her teeth scraping his lip. He responded instantly, a dam breaking.
There was no tenderness, no slow exploration. It was a collision.
He rolled on top of her, pinning her wrists to the mattress above her head. His kiss was consuming, a claim and a brand. She arched against him, wrapping her legs around his waist, meeting his desperation with her own.
“I need to feel you,” she panted against his mouth. “All of you. Right now.”
He didn’t need telling twice. He released her wrists, his hand sliding between them. He was already hard, straining. He positioned himself at her entrance, and with a single, powerful thrust, he sheathed himself to the hilt.
She cried out, the sudden, brutal fullness a shock that chased away every thought of the next day. He didn’t wait for her to adjust. He set a punishing pace, fucking into her with deep, possessive strokes that rocked the bedframe against the wall. The slapping sound of skin on skin, their ragged grunts and gasps, filled the room.
“Mine,” he snarled, his breath hot on her neck. “You are mine. Say it.”
“Yours,” she gasped, her nails raking down his back. “Always yours.”
He shifted, hooking an arm under her knee, spreading her wider, diving deeper. The angle changed, hitting a spot that made her vision blur. She was already coiled tight from the day’s adrenaline, and the raw, carnal friction tipped her over the edge with shocking speed. Her climax ripped through her, a silent, shattering wave that clenched around him, pulling a guttural groan from his throat.
He followed her over, his rhythm fragmenting into hard, desperate thrusts. He came with a shuddering roar, spilling into her, his body collapsing onto her, a heavy, sweating weight. He was still inside her when he turned his head, his lips finding her ear.
“If you fall tomorrow,” he whispered, the words raw and ragged, “I will tear the world apart until there is nothing left. Then I will follow you.”
She held him, her fingers carding through his sweat-damp hair, and believed him.
The third day was not for training. It was for strategy. They sat in the war room with the Inner Circle. Mor’s face was pale, Cassian’s a mask of grim focus, Azriel’s etched in shadow. Amren merely watched, her silver eyes assessing.
Feyre laid out her plan. It was not a plan to defeat Tamlin in fair combat. It was a plan to dismantle him.
“He expects a straight fight. He expects rage, or fear. He expects me to try to match his power.” She pointed to a diagram of the Stone Clearing Azriel had sketched. “I will let him think that’s what’s happening. I’ll engage, I’ll use my multiple magics to confuse him, to make him think he’s wearing me down.”
She took a steadying breath. “My power… the unraveling… I’ve been practicing its precision. Not to destroy a wall, or a weapon. To sever a very specific, internal connection.”
Rhys went still beside her. “What connection?”
She met his gaze. “The tether between his power and his mind. The spring that feeds his magic. I’m not going to kill his body. I’m going to unmake his gift. I’m going to leave him utterly, completely mortal.”
The room was silent.
“That’s…” Cassian whistled low. “That’s colder than killing him, kid.”
“It’s justice,” Mor said quietly, her eyes gleaming. “To take from him what he valued most: his power, his immortality. To leave him as he tried to leave Feyre: helpless.”
“It is also infinitely more difficult,” Amren remarked. “Like using a scalpel to perform surgery on a tornado. One slip, and he rips you in half.”
“I won’t slip.” Feyre’s voice held a certainty she felt in her bones. She had practiced this in the mountains, not on Rhys, but on the rock itself—finding the core of its structure, the seam of its existence, and gently, precisely, persuading it to come apart. “He’s all brute force. His power has no subtlety, no fine control. It’s a flood. I just need to find the source and dam it.”
Rhys had been staring at the map. He looked at her now, and she saw the High Lord, the strategist, aligning with her idea, weighing it. “You’ll have to get close. Dangerously close. His claws will be out.”
“I know.”
He held her gaze for a long moment, then gave a single, sharp nod. “Then that is the plan.”
The meeting broke up. Final preparations were made. Cassian and Azriel would be hidden in the trees, not to interfere, but to ensure no other Spring Court forces lurked.