He has watched my Legendborn? I dislike this. I pace toward my former opponent—and am surprised to see him glide backward. As if to avoid me.

Something is… amiss.

I glance down at his black aether spear still in the ground. Fifteen centuries ago, his aim had been sharp enough to find a man’s eye through his helm across a darkened battlefield. The Shadow King does not miss his mark.

Not unless he wishes to.

A theory forms.

I dart toward him, using Briana’s speed. Swing the aether sword—a weapon that can harm him—in a wide arc. It meets a shield, hastily shaped from smoke. I attack again—another block. A pivot, strike—and he dissipates and re-forms a few paces away.

He is defending himself only.

“Is there something you wish to share with me?” I ask. “In regard to your unwillingness to attack this body?”

The King swoops back ten paces on long, curved legs tipped with black claws. “Let us say that this girl is an investment that I would like to maintain.”

He does not move, but sends a whip of thin smoke my way. A tendril manages to graze Briana’s chestplate before I can escape it.

A flash of pain, burning, spreading.

I stumble back, clutching at Briana’s sternum. Tear the aether chestplate away, let it dissolve on the ground, and watch in horror as a branching, glowing tree grows over her skin beneath her top garment, down the brown skin of her biceps, to her wrists. It pulses red—in time with the King’s grinning, eager eyes.

An invisible mark, activated by the magic of the Shadow King, lord of demonkind.

Rage fills me. “You have bloodmarked this girl,” I snarl.

“Yes… and no.” The Shadow King makes a shrugging motion, wings rising, then settling. “I bloodmarked her ancestor. She has merely inherited it.”

Briana is not tall enough to tower over the King, but I advance on him like she is. “For what reason would you do this? Tell me!”

“You mistake me for one of your subjects, Pendragon!” The King’s wings flare wide, twice the height of a man on each side. “Demanding answers as though I have pledged you as my liege lord. As if I kneel to you. ‘For what reason’?” The King laughs, a crackling, scraping, fading sound. His voice reaches me on the wind. “My own, of course…”

With that, his black aether form swirls and dissipates, bringing light to the grass and battlefield once more.

But that does not mean he is gone. I know better than to make this mistake ever again.

I twist in a circle, both hands wrapped around the hilt of Briana’s cast blade, searching the dark corners of the open field for my oldest opponent.

“Hiding in your shadows again, old friend?”