Elana stiffened when Valkyrie spoke, seeming to read her mind. She hadn’t banked on anyone but Marlena watching her closely enough to read her expressions—was she really so transparent, even to a stranger? That’s going to be a problem at the Academy. 

She schooled her expression back into a well-practiced mask of indifference, turning her attention back ahead. Antoine and Gerard both stood in a ready stance in the dead center of the courtyard, feet apart from one another. 

“Whenever you’re ready,” Antoine said, facing Gerard with his sword in a neutral, resting position. 

Gerard ran his thumb over the edge of his sword, forged from rare obsidian steel, letting it bite into his skin. The ritual was smooth and well practiced as he smeared it across the black steel. As quickly as he bled, the blade absorbed it. 

Dark flames danced along the edge of his blade as his magic brought it to life. One swing and they surged forward in a clean arc. They crashed against Antoine’s energetic shield, scattering in a rain of embers. Plumes of black fire spread where they fell, rapidly spreading across and obscuring the training grounds.

Amazing. Elana had heard countless tales of her father’s battle prowess, but she’d never seen it in action before—small conflicts, sure, but nothing like this where his magic was completely unfettered. 

Antoine met Gerard’s next blow with a clean parry, a spell on his lips as he shoved back his father’s sword. Lightning sparked from Antoine’s hand, crashing against Gerard’s mana barrier. 

“You’ve gotten stronger. I almost felt that,” Gerard grunted, taking a quarter-step back—and Elana’s careful control of her expression slipped. He’d been pushed back? 

“Your skills haven’t aged a day.”

Gerard snorted. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

The two spared no further time for banter, meeting each other with swords raised. Elana followed their movements with rapt attention. She’d assumed that her father would subdue Antoine in a heartbeat, just as he had anyone else who stood up to him, but that wasn’t the case. From where Elana was standing, they seemed almost evenly matched. 

On one side, bursts of lightning arced through the air. On the other, torrential darkness, growing steadily with Gerard’s blood.

It had been a long time since Antoine had had an opportunity to spar with his father. Though he supposed that under the circumstances, this could hardly be called a spar. 

This was effectively a Trial—albeit with looser rules and subjective victory conditions. And after the last decade of enduring, designing, and proctoring them, Antoine could safely call himself an expert in those. 

The rules of engagement that had gotten him this far were simple: 1) Every fight is a fight for your life and 2) Fighting with anything less than the intention to kill will get you killed. 

It didn’t matter who he was up against—though there was admittedly little risk of actually killing his old man. There was a reason that Gerard de Vanquise had been given a duchy and a title, and it wasn’t because he was of noble birth. In his youth, the old man had single-handedly ended the siege of the Imperial Castle and put an end to the War of the Roses, all but crowning the current King. 

Antoine wasn’t arrogant enough to think he could put an end to his father’s legacy—but he was certain he could make the old man acknowledge him. He looked forward to it, even. When was the last time he’d had an opportunity to go all out, let alone against the grizzled war hero?

He grinned as he was surrounded in a spiral of dark fire. He could feel the heat, threatening to swallow him whole. A spell gathered in his hand, dousing enough of the flames to carve an exit. 

Gerard was there, meeting him in a crash of steel that sent sparks flying.

Lightning danced with Antoine’s movements, charring the earth in tandem with his father’s dark flames. A spell on his lips summoned spears of ice above him. A flick of his wrist sent them flying, one after another. 

Gerard cut the first down with ease. It was rapidly replaced with a second. A third. “A childish distraction,” the old man grunted, knocking them back with a swing.

Another. Another.

Shards of ice shattered across the battlefield. 

Faster. 

More.

Antoine was breathing hard, but so was his old man. Gerard had more in his arsenal than just flames; he was holding back his more powerful magic and making this fight harder on himself. Sure, even like this the challenge was exhilarating—but it wasn’t going to be enough to earn him Gerard’s blessing. 

Antoine leapt back, an inferno of darkness missing him by inches. The resulting heatwave hit him with a whoosh. “Augh, damn it—” he hissed, his eyes stinging. 

He drew a line with his sword, conjuring a wall of solid ice that he ducked beneath. He swiped his forearm over his eyes, casting a simple spell to soothe the burn on his corneas. 

How long had it been since collateral from someone’s spell had broken through his magic defense buffs? His old man really was the best of his generation. And he wasn’t even pulling out all the stops yet. And Antoine needed him to, if he was going to show Gerard how far he’d really come. 

“Is that all you’ve got?” Antoine called. 

He glanced up as the sky above him darkened. Unnatural, dark clouds gathered. Antoine tensed. He’d seen this before—

Gerard gave him no time, appearing in front of him in the blink of an eye. Blood scattered in an arc from his blade, each drop sizzling where it landed. They burned through the earth, leaving inky gorges in their wake. 

Gravity magic. One misstep into one of those pitfalls and he would be trapped in an endless freefall.

Tens of demonic, clawed arms descended from the clouds, lunging towards Antoine. Each was larger than life, reptilian scaled hands large enough to crush buildings. Their steel claws left deep scores in the earth as he wove between them. 

His lightning scattered harmlessly off of them, repelled by their magic defense. Tsk, still can’t break through that? But he had to keep going. 

Gerard gave him no room to breathe. The duke was there, inches away from him, meeting him blow for blow. They ducked and wove between fire, lightning, and ice, with Antoine forced to work around the inky pitfalls of darkness scattered across the field that Gerard passed harmlessly through. 

Gerard pressed him back, steel and magic crashing against each other in blows loud as thunderclaps. Both danced between the unholy steel claws that formed cages around them as they went for Antoine. 

His father was finally getting serious. Good. Antoine’s eyes blazed. Now he could really show the old man how far he’d come.

Dodging between steel claws, he called forth his own higher level magic. Glowing white chains erupted from the earth, consuming all magic in their wake, eating through Antoine’s and Gerard’s barriers alike.

The chains wrapped around the unholy arms, binding them to the earth. A flick of his wrist and they changed direction, surging towards Gerard with a mind of their own. Antoine let them, counting on them to keep his father occupied while he immobilized the arms of Gerard’s unholy summons with pillars of ice.  

“Shit—” He lunged sideways, narrowly missing being swallowed by the vortex of swirling dark flames that appeared in his wake. He swung his sword, sending an arc of electricity that bit through the flames, sparking towards Gerard. 

Gerard went to deflect it with his blade, but Antoine’s quiet incantation instead triggered an explosion upon impact, sending a surge of lightning across the field. Gerard staggered, his expression darkening. He raised his hand and this time the ground beneath him darkened, crimson runes surrounding him in a circle as he activated a higher level summoning circle. 

He’s not holding anything back anymore, is he? The ground rumbled ominously beneath them and Antoine narrowed his eyes, biting his thumb hard enough to draw blood as he called forth—

“That’s quite enough,” Marlena’s chilling voice cut across the field. 

Both Antoine and Gerard froze. Around them, the magical barrier exploded, shattering into thousands of pieces.

The shattered barrier dispelled the field upon impact, erasing every magic effect in its wake. In the blink of an eye, it nullified the raging flames and sparking electric currents that wrought havoc over the training grounds. Gerard’s summon vanished, along with the binding chains and pillars of ice that Antoine had used to control them. 

“Did you intend to kill each other or all of us?” Marlena asked, with ice in her voice. “Are you both out of your minds, using high-level summoning magic like that at our home?”

Her husband and son had the decency to shut up and back down without a fight.

Marlena smoothed her hand over her brow, sighing heavily. “Good grief,” she muttered. “Shame on the both of you.” She made eye contact with Gerard from across the training grounds. “And, dear? Your verdict?”

“I’ll turn a blind eye,” Gerard said, begrudgingly. He turned his back to Antoine, without sparing him a second glance. “You have three days to do what you need to do—and then you’ll leave, in peace.”

Marlena shifted her gaze to Antoine, who shrugged. 

“Doable,” he said. “Just tell him to stay out of my way.”

Marlena would have protested her son’s refusal to speak to his father, had this not already been a marked improvement on the past decade of stony silence. As it was, she pursed her lips and said nothing.