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If Gerard had ever in his life met a more competitive creature than the woman who stood before him now, he might have allowed that insight to discompose him. As it was, he pressed onward. “What sort of challenges are we about to face? And which weapons are we allowed, if any?”

Sighing, Lorelei finally deigned to answer one of his questions. “There should be an assortment of challenges across the next few days, ranging from—”

“Days?” How many days could Gerard’s men hold their camp in that remote mountain pass without alerting the Emperor to his predicament? He didn’t doubt the loyalty of his officers; if that note Lorelei had left in his handwriting was even half as convincing as she’d claimed, they would all fight to keep his “secret quest” safe from even the most official of inquiries.

But he also knew his emperor’s impatient nature. Back in Fiora, Otto would be seething with bitter fury and humiliation after the anticlimax of his armies’ long-awaited march to the Kitvarian border. There, Gerard had officially agreed to a peace rather than an invasion as Otto had commanded, to seize a new territory and officially expand the Empire for the first time in decades. Under the unexpected circumstances that had arisen at that border, Gerard couldn’t have done otherwise without flouting Imperial law—but when it came to Otto’s increasingly bellicose ambitions and recent purge of the more peaceable and thoughtful advisors from his side …

May Jovar light me a way back soon!

“Oh, do stop fussing so much!” Lorelei wafted a handful of rainbow sparkles through the air as she waved away all of his serious concerns with a careless flick of one hand. “After all your studies, you must understand that time passes very differently here. Why, for all you know, we might return to Balravia less than a minute after our departure!”

“And for all you know…?” he prompted tightly.

“Darling, just relax your pretty head and let me worry about all of that. I have everything under control, remember?”

Would she ever stop trying to push him into madness? Gerard’s teeth ground together, his own control close to the breaking point …

And she returned seamlessly to her earlier explanation. “… Ranging from general challenges of wit and magic to paired duels against a variety of opponents. We’re allowed to use any weapons we bring with us.”

This time, Gerard didn’t even bother with a response. He only looked down at her with weary patience.

“Oh, very well, if you will be so humorless about it!” Reaching behind her neck, Lorelei pulled out—apparently from nowhere—the sheathed sword that had lain beside his bed when she’d abducted him. “You may have it back for now, if you’d like.”

“How very generous, Your Majesty.” He gritted the words through his teeth as he reached for his stolen weapon, the air between them almost palpably vibrating with tension.

She offered it to him by the hilt—and as he took it, his larger hand closed around her fingers. It was the first time he had touched his maddening, infuriating, mischievous captor in all their seven years of circling.

It felt like a flint being struck.

Lightning sparked against his skin where it touched hers, and then it spread like a fire that had to be smothered immediately, before it could devastate everything. Gerard braced his muscles against the sparking heat and light and dug his booted heels against the grass, fighting to keep his face under control as he drew his hand away. He could not let her see or guess how powerfully she’d affected him …

And then he saw that her own eyes had flared wide, and she was breathing quickly.

Seven years ago, she’d taken his arm in hers and pressed her lush figure shamelessly against his side, but she’d done it with cool control as part of a calculated seduction, and she’d been a stranger to him. Her touch hadn’t affected him in the slightest.

This time, his hand had closed around her fingers only for a moment—but her responsive swallow was a visible flex against her soft throat, as if his impossible, incorrigible nemesis was fighting exactly the same battle as him, after all.

… As if he wasn’t the only one who’d been burning up from the inside out from the moment he’d seen her this morning … and across so many years of private, intimate battles.

The tip of Lorelei’s tongue swept out to moisten her upper lip, her dilating gaze clinging to his—and for the first time he could remember, Gerard acted without a thought, shifting forward into her space by pure instinct. As he claimed the inches between them, his fingers tightened around the familiar leather grip of his sword.

A crack in the leather scraped against his palm, finally breaking through his mindless haze.

Jovar save me. How could he have forgotten?

Gerard hadn’t felt so much as a hint of his sword’s presence earlier, even when he’d stood nearly close enough to touch Lorelei’s back. The leather grip’s familiar, comfortable solidity in his hand was a staggering reminder of the fae queen’s powers of illusion.

No matter how desperately his body might try to pull him towards her; no matter how open and unguarded she might appear, with her blue eyes so helplessly wide before him now …

He would never be able to trust anything she showed him. It could never be anything but deception. Worse yet, trust would signal betrayal of every oath of loyalty he had sworn to the Serafin Empire.

It would make him no better than his parents.

That realization was more effective than any blow. Breathing hard, he yanked his gaze free and took a long step backwards, rebuilding his self-control stone by stone until he was as hard and emotionless as any of the cold, grey statues that had lined the galleries of his grandmother’s villa in Fiora.

When he finally met Queen Lorelei’s gaze again, he felt nothing: no reckless warmth, no dangerous yearning, and not the slightest trace of shameful temptation. His vision was focused and clear, as always, and she was only one more challenge to defeat as he had so many others.

“Regardless of what you may be scheming, I can be pushed only so far,” he said evenly. “I will agree to fight by your side in every trial in this tournament that I am called to—but only if you agree that you will return me to the mortal realm immediately after our final challenge. Otherwise, I will lay down my arms now and refuse to move another step.”