The Knight-Commander stared at him, shock and outrage clear even though his face was hidden behind his helm. “Have you gone utterly mad?”

“Brother, no,” John’s sister called weakly, so exhausted she could not even rise from the ice. “Do not throw your life away.”

“Stand down, John!” Neridia tugged at his arm. “As your Empress, I order you to stand down!”

John’s sword never wavered. “My mate, I told you that the one thing you could not command me to do was to leave you in pain.”

“It’s okay, really,” Neridia insisted, though the mate bond put the lie to her words. “I’m choosing to go back willingly. You don’t have to do this.”

John shook his head gently, never taking his eyes off his seething opponent. “I do not know why, but the thought of returning to Atlantis makes your soul cry out in anguish. I will not allow you to be dragged back there.”

The Knight-Commander tried to press forward, but John angled his hand slightly, making the razor-sharp edge of his blade glint in warning. His superior was forced to stop, his eyes flashing as angrily as the steel.

“I will have you executed for this,” the Knight-Commander spat. “This is treason!”

“No, sir.” John shifted to a two-handed grip, setting his feet. “This is a challenge.”

Well, finally! His inner human cheered. Skewer the fucker!

“Knight-Commander, you would force the Empress-in-Waiting back to her Throne, in the name of honor and duty.” John carefully picked the most respectful harmonies he could manage in human form. “I contest that the Throne is the Empress-in-Waiting’s, to do with as she pleases. That includes the right to relinquish it. In all honor, we cannot stand in her way.”

“She must return! I have already forced the Sea Council to accept her!” The Knight-Commander’s gauntleted fists clenched. “Would you have me made a laughingstock? Already the other lords grow arrogant, seeking to challenge sea dragon rule. The politics-”

“Are irrelevant,” John interrupted, his tone hardening. “This is a matter of honor. I accuse you of acting dishonorably, sir. Will you answer the challenge…or yield?”

The Knight-Commander answered with a wordless snarl of rage. In a single fluid movement, he drew his own swords.

“No!” Neridia grabbed a strap of John’s armor, trying to haul him back. “Don’t, John! He’ll cut you to pieces!”

Catching the Knight-Commander’s eye, John lowered the tip of his sword. “A moment, sir. Then we may begin.”

“By all means,” the Knight-Commander sneered. “Make sure to kiss your mate goodbye.”

John pulled off his helmet, casting it aside. By tradition a formal duel was fought bare-headed, face to face with one’s opponent without concealment. The Knight-Commander made no move to follow suit. Instead, he flicked his blades through a complex sequence of dizzying, flashing figures, loosening his wrists and shoulders.

He made that look easy, his inner human muttered. You sure we can’t just stab him now, while his back is turned?

From Neridia’s expression, she was having much the same thought. “Please, John, don’t go through with this. I’d rather live with you in Atlantis than see you die here.”

John cupped her cheek in his gauntleted hand. Without speaking, he bent down, gently pressing his mouth to hers. Her lips were cold, but they still ignited a fire in his blood. He closed his eyes, feeling that warmth fill him with strength.

She was his mate. He would protect her.

He would win her freedom…even if it meant losing her himself.

“Do not fear for me.” With one last kiss, he drew back, tightening his grasp on his sword. “I have honor on my side.”

Neridia took a deep breath, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, their sky-blue depths were resolute. Her mouth set in a determined line.

“Yes,” she said, her tone so clear and commanding that the very waves seemed to fall still to hear her. “You do. If you would challenge the Knight-Commander, do it for the right reason.”

“Yes!” John’s sister called, her own tone fierce. “Tell him, Neridia!”

The Knight-Commander wheeled on his heel to confront Neridia, muscles bunching in rage. “Don’t you dare-!”

Neridia faced him down without a trace of fear, her spine straight and her head up. “You sent assassins to kill my father, the Pearl Emperor. You tried to kill me too, and when you could not, you sought instead to force me to do your will by threatening my mate. You are an honorless traitor, and at last you will pay for your crimes.”

Now, now he understood why she had fled, what she had not been able to tell him. The mate bond opened wide, showing him her whole soul.

He had thought to protect her…but she had been protecting him.

“Oh my mate, my heart,” he whispered. “My Empress.”

Words failed him. He could only open his heart to her in return, showing her all that he felt. His sorrow at the burden she had been forced to carry alone. His fierce, awestruck pride at her courage. His love for her, wider and deeper than the ocean itself.

The sea wind blew her hair back from her face as she turned to him. She stood proud as a queen, as an Empress, as a very goddess.

“My Champion.” With steady hands, she removed her pearl pendant. “Take this as a mark of my favor. Punish the traitor. Avenge the Emperor. Uphold my honor.”

“Vile lies,” the Knight-Commander snarled, as John knelt so that Neridia could fasten the chain around his own neck. “I deny them all. Make what accusations you will, human. It will make no difference. I will wash my honor clean in your Champion’s blood.”

John rose. The Emperor’s pearl rested in the hollow of his throat, warm from the heat of Neridia’s skin. Setting his feet, he looked levelly across at the Knight-Commander.

“You may try.” He swept his blade up to a guard position, deliberately forgoing the customary salute to an honorable opponent. “Traitor.”

The Knight-Commander leaped forward with a fierce sequence of strikes. John did not even try to follow the dazzling flicker of the twin blades. Instead, he concentrated on the Knight-Commander’s eyes, half-hidden as they were beneath his helm. He let himself flow as easily as water, without thought.

The power of the Knight-Commander’s blows vibrated down John’s blade and through his bones…but he blocked every one. The Knight-Commander hesitated for a moment, as though surprised that his first assault had failed. His left blade dropped fractionally.

Suspecting that it was a trick to lure him out, John firmed his own stance. Though he had seen the Knight-Commander duel many times—and even sparred with him, during his own training—it was all several years in the past.

He will have mastered new techniques unknown to me, while I was away on land. I cannot rely on my memory. I must bide my time, until I have learned his style.

Until I can find a weakness.

“You will be waiting a long time, Knight-Poet,” the Knight-Commander taunted. “Drop your guard, and I will at least allow you a swift death.”

As a powerful Seer, the Knight-Commander could read thoughts directly from the tides of a person’s blood. It was another of the things that made him such a dangerous opponent. John tightened his own mental walls, and waited.

The Knight-Commander sighed. “And to think that I once thought you might become a worthy opponent, in time. How disappointing.”

He attacked again, faster this time. His swords spun in interlocking patterns. John caught and deflected the right blade, but the left was already darting in to strike at his exposed side.

On pure instinct, John pivoted. The Knight-Commander’s sword missed him by a hair, passing so close that he felt the whisper of it against his skin. Distantly, he thought he heard his sister stifle a shriek of fear, but he could not spare her a glance. All of his attention had to be fixed on his opponent.

He didn’t need to spare a glance for Neridia. He felt her presence at his back like the heat of the sun. Her courage filled him, more powerful than the tides.

The Knight-Commander pressed his attack, seeking to catch him off-balance. John danced away on the balls of his feet, his own sword a blur as he parried. He still had yet to venture an attack of his own…but a deep, calm certainty was forming in his mind.

Sea dragon duels were always in human form, with blades. The vast majority of duels—unlike this one—were only fought to first blood, and a dragon’s natural form was too powerful, too deadly, to allow safe combat. Thus, all sea dragon knights trained scrupulously with the sword. Serious duelists might spend as much as two hours a day in human form, practicing.

But John had lived two years as a human.

He knew the reach of his human limbs as instinctively as the span of his talons. He moved as easily on two feet as he could through the sea. He had worn this form for so long, its instincts had become his own.

The Knight-Commander was a master of the blade, winner of countless challenges. He was hailed as the most skilled duelist in the entire Order of the First Water.

And John…was better than him.

The Knight-Commander realized it at the same moment as John himself. His aggressive storm of blows faltered.

Now John struck, taking advantage of the longer reach of his own greatsword. For the first time, the Knight-Commander was forced to raise his blades in defense rather than attack. He crossed his swords, only barely managing to catch John’s between them.

Their hilts locked, and the contest became one of strength rather than finesse. John dug his feet into the gritty ice for purchase, his biceps straining as he struggled to keep both the Knight-Commander’s blades trapped. They were so close that John could see the Knight-Commander’s rictus snarl beneath his helmet…and the fear in his eyes.

The Knight-Commander had the powerful arms and shoulders of a swordsman. But long shifts hauling heavy hoses and firefighting equipment had honed every muscle in John’s body. His own strength came from more than just endless practice drills and polite, formal combat.

He drove forward with that strength now, bringing to bear all the coiled power of his legs and back. His heavier blade smashed through his opponent’s guard.

Only the Knight-Commander’s diamond-studded armor saved him from being sliced in half from shoulder to hip. John’s sword screeched off the edge of one pauldron, striking sparks. It gave the Knight-Commander enough time to leap backward—but not before the tip of John’s blade scored a thin red line across his chest.

“First blood!” John’s sister called, exultant. She and Neridia had drawn back to a safe distance, clutching each other’s hands. “First blood to you, my brother!”

“First blood?” The Knight-Commander sounded positively indignant, as if he could barely believe the outrageous affront of it. “To him?”

“Yes.” John resettled his grip on his sword hilt. “And I will claim the last, too.”

He powered forward again, his leaping blade as swift and eager as a dolphin. The Knight-Commander fought back furiously, defending with one sword even as he struck with the other. John twisted aside from some attacks; caught others on his armored forearms and shoulders.

His sword tasted the Knight-Commander’s blood twice more, and still he himself was uninjured.

The Knight-Commander broke off, retreating a few paces. He circled, keeping his blades warily upraised. His ragged breath hung in the freezing air. He cast a quick glance around, as though searching for an escape route.

“There is no fleeing from dishonor, traitor.” John’s muscles burned with effort, but his own chest still rose and fell evenly. “You cannot escape. And you cannot win.”

The Knight-Commander’s shoulders set. His blazing green eyes glared at John from behind his visor, filled with hate.

“I might not win,” he spat. “But neither will you.”

The Knight-Commander reversed his grip on his left sword, raising the weapon to shoulder-height with the blade sticking straight out in front of him. It was such a bizarre stance, John instinctively angled his own sword across his body, ready to defend himself from any possible attack.

Which meant he was caught completely unprepared.

In a swift, vicious movement, the Knight-Commander hurled his sword straight at Neridia.