That rocked him in place. Or at least, he acted as though it did.

Which was exactly the problem. Lindon couldn’t tell how much of Eithan was real.

“Apologies,” Lindon said, “but it’s true.” He had never trusted Eithan as much as he did Yerin. Despite knowing him almost as long, Lindon knew next to nothing about Eithan.

Eithan closed his eyes again and took a long breath. His madra stirred and smoothed itself out.

“This is…an area in which I regularly fail. I suppose I should take steps to work against that mistake, shouldn’t I?” He cleared his throat and opened his eyes.

“Please help me.”

It sounded so unlike Eithan that he might as well have spoken a different language. Lindon felt lost, and Yerin’s eyes were wide.

“Now,” Eithan said, “I suppose you need to understand me in order to offer me your advice. I do not know the identity of my opponent. I can stretch my bloodline perception outside, but not to the point of penetrating the other room, and of course I have had no time to investigate the other competitors since last night.”

“Can you win?” Yerin asked.

“I don’t know who’s out there, do I?”

“Still asking.”

One side of his mouth quirked up. “Yes. It is possible for me to defeat anyone in the Uncrowned King tournament. But any of the three young women I might face right now are also capable of defeating me.”

“Then draw swords,” she said simply. “It’s a tournament. Play to win.”

Lindon considered his own response. He thought over what he knew of Eithan, and what Eithan had expressed only moments before.

“It has to be hard,” Lindon said at last. “Hiding what you can do, I mean. Keeping people unsure.”

“Sometimes it is. It can be fun. Sometimes it’s both.”

Lindon reached into his pocket and felt Suriel’s marble. “Then let fate decide. I want to see what you can really do.”

Eithan reached into his own pocket for something that Lindon couldn’t sense. His own Abidan marble.

Constructs in the doorframe activated, and the stone door started to slide upward. The roars of the crowd filled the waiting room.

So did power from Eithan’s spirit. “You are both in agreement?” he asked.

“You need to ask? Whoever it is, cut them in half.”

[This is a good plan,] Dross whispered. [Now we’ll be able to train against a model of him. Our uprising will be swift.]

Eithan loosened his shoulders. He hopped in place, rolling his neck. “Well then, who am I to deny the request of my two adorable subordinates?”

The door slid upward, and Eithan tilted his head as though listening to something. Then he slipped his scissors back into his pocket.

“I won’t be needing those. Lindon, since we’re not keeping secrets any longer, you should pay close attention.”

The door slid up enough so that Lindon could see the arena floor was covered in white sand, unlike the dark domain that had sealed off Lindon and Yerin.

“This,” Eithan said, “is the Path of the Hollow King.”

The Ninecloud Soul’s voice boomed out across the stadium. “Sacred artists, I present Eithan Arelius, chosen of Akura Malice!

And his opponent, the champion of our very own Ninecloud Court: Sha Miara!”

As Eithan marched out onto the sand, he narrowed his perspective.

He could see Lindon and Yerin taking a cloud up from the waiting room to the shadow-shrouded Akura viewing tower, but he pulled his attention back from them. And away from the other crowds surrounding him, though he would have been interested to hear more of House Arelius gossiping about him.

He withdrew his awareness from House Shen’s tower, where the average audience members mocked him as though they had been personally involved in bringing down the Arelius Monarch. It had been Reigan Shen alone, and Eithan could sense nothing from the floating palace where the lion watched.

Eithan rolled up the spiderweb strands of his awareness and concentrated himself entirely on the arena.

Northstrider stood in the center, shaggy and unkempt as usual. He radiated power with his spirit completely restrained, his golden glare and massive frame doing the talking for him.

Across from him, Sha Miara waited.

The girl was maybe fifteen or sixteen, with bright bloody red hair and nine-colored eyes that she had inherited from a long line of Celestial Radiance Monarchs. She wore a bright red set of sparring robes that matched her hair, and she managed to look down on him despite being head and shoulders shorter.

Long-honed instinct and his own sense of mischief urged him to give her a beaming smile and sweep her a bow, to flatter her as a princess before they did battle.

But that wasn’t needed now. He needed to focus.

He spread his bloodline legacy out, but only to the bounds of the arena. As far as the sand stretched, he could see and hear everything.

With a sharp blade, he cut off his good humor, his sympathy, and his plans for the future.

Miara was under Northstrider’s protection. It was time to kill.

As the Ninecloud Soul continued their introduction overhead, Northstrider spoke to them both. “The eyes of heaven are on us. All of us.” That was clearly directed to Sha Miara, and she gave him a condescending look. “Conduct yourselves accordingly.”

Eithan watched his opponent.

Though Eithan didn’t tend to show others his preparations, he did prepare. He had done his research on the Path of Celestial Radiance, with its various techniques to control the madra of others. He had abandoned his scissors because the power inside them would only be another point of vulnerability.

Besides, she wouldn’t be using a weapon. She hadn’t at any point in the competition. He suspected it was one of the terms that allowed her to compete.

Sha Miara had inherited her powers from a Monarch. Though they were sealed down to the Underlord level, she would be in every way an ideal Underlady. Her physical and spiritual abilities would have reached the limit of what her body and soul were capable of handling.

Her madra capacity might be no less than his, her control would almost certainly be better, her regeneration faster, and she had inherited some measure of her mother’s long experience. She was almost an impossible opponent to defeat one-on-one.

She knew he was an Arelius. Still wearing that expression of icy royal detachment, she took over the surrounding space with her rainbow madra.

Eithan’s bloodline powers went dark as the lines of madra he typically spread all around him left his control. He could still feel, see, and hear everything in most of the arena, but a chunk around Sha Miara was a void.

He would have to do this with his normal senses.

The invisible wall separating the two contestants vanished as Northstrider’s command echoed: “Begin.”

Eithan kicked off, Enforcing his body.

As he dashed into action, he used a whisper of madra to activate a simple device in his pocket. It was not a weapon, and was in fact useless in combat, so the Ninecloud Soul had allowed it.

But thinking about that device was a distraction, so he put it out of his mind and gave himself entirely to the fight.

While the Monarch’s voice still echoed, Eithan launched a punch at Miara’s face.

Nine-colored eyes tracked him easily, and her hand pushed his aside. In the same motion, she spun into a technique with her other hand.