Page 76 of Burning Star

I stand strong, refusing to let him get to me.

“I challenged you so you can prove you’re fit to rule, and to convince you to accept the clarity I’m offering you,” I reply evenly. “Not to take your crown.”

Ice shoots up along my father’s blade.

Chatter sounds from the audience.

“The rules of combat are thus,” the Master continues, silencing them. “Magic and weapons only. Both contestants are to stay inside the fighting ring. The trial ends with surrender or death.” He pauses, his eyes meeting mine with something like pity. “May the coldest ice withstand the thaw.”

The crowd repeats his final sentence, he strikes his staff against the ground, and the trial begins.

My father’s first attack comes with no warning—a blast of razor-sharp ice shards that explode from the ground at my feet.

I leap sideways, summoning a shield that deflects the worst of it. But one shard grazes my cheek, drawing first blood.

“Too slow,” my father taunts, circling me with predatory grace. “Will you cower behind your shield forever? Or will you fight like the warrior I trained you to be?”

I launch my first attack, and from there, he fights like a hunter cornering prey. Methodical, patient, and cruelly precise. He deflects my frost-covered blade with insulting ease, barely moving as his magic responds to his will.

“Is this what the Summer Princess taught you?” he sneers. “Have you forgotten everything I beat into you—discipline, control, and excellence—because you tasted a different court’s magic?”

I grit my teeth, focusing my power into a more concentrated attack—a spear of ice that shoots toward him with deadly speed.

He sidesteps it, but I graze his arm, pushing him back.

His smile vanishes as he rights himself. “Love makes you weak,” he says, his voice dripping with venom. “Yourwifeis a liability. A burning chain around your neck. She will melt everything that made you strong.”

He glances at Sapphire in her viewing box, and I make the mistake of following his gaze.

It’s all the opening he needs.

Ice erupts in a circle around him, shooting outward in deadly spikes.

I dodge most of them, but one pierces my shoulder, pain shooting down my arm.

I don’t make a sound. I don’t even flinch.

“Your mother was weak, too,” he says with a sickly amused laugh, and I draw my sword, charging before he can continue.

His blade meets mine with a crash that sends shock waves through the arena. Ice against ice, king against prince, father against son.

“She believed in mercy. In compassion,” he hisses, each word punctuated by a strike that forces me back. “And what did it get her, other than a frozen heart?”

I block out his words, fighting back with everything I have. Ice forms at my command, turning into weapons, shields, and barriers. I’m quick, using my grace to counter his brute force, but for every successful blow I land, he counters with two more.

The crowd watches in silence, the only sounds the clash of our blades and the crackle of magic. From the corner of my eye, I see Sapphire leaning forward, her knuckles white as she grips the railing of the viewing box.

“You think you won because you married her?” My father laughs, deflecting another of my attacks. “Your little fairy-tale romance will shatter under the weight of reality. When it’s done, you’ll be alone. You already learned it once, with your mother. And look what she did? She left us. She leftyou,”he continues, each word breaking whatever remained of the wreckage her death left around my heart.“She saw how her softness was making you weak, and she chose to die rather than stay. This perverse marriage to the Summer Princess is no different. It will break you all over again. And this time, you won’t survive it.”

His words hammer into the deepest parts of my soul, and then the tip of his blade is catching my side, cutting through flesh and knocking me to the ground.

A scream pushes at the back of my throat, but I force it down, refusing to give him the satisfaction of it. Instead, I jump to my feet and strengthen my shield. The cut along my side throbs, sharp and deep as it heals, the blood already freezing on my skin.

The pain is nothing compared to the agony twisting inside my chest.

You will always be alone.

I throw more magic into my shield, making it larger, thicker, andharder.

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