THE BLOODSTONE TOUCH

Four Words

She already knows you.

Amara read the line three times before her mind accepted it wasn't a warning about the arena.

It was a warning about herself.

She was still kneeling in the mud when Garrick found her, his boots splashing to a stop inches from Elias's outstretched hand.

"Your father sent for me," he said. "Told me to bring you inside before you froze."

"He's lying to me."

"About which part?"

Amara looked up sharply, and Garrick's expression didn't so much as flicker, though something in his eyes had gone carefully blank in a way she recognized from years of training under him.

He knew something.

"You knew my mother," she said. It wasn't a question.

Garrick's jaw tightened. "Not here."

"Then where? When, Garrick? I've asked you nothing for twenty-six years. I'm asking now."

"Inside," he said. "Not in the rain, with half the estate watching."

He hauled her upright, steady hands under her arms despite the years of drink that should've made them shake, and half-carried her back toward the estate through rain that had only grown colder.

Inside, the halls stood empty. Every servant who might've witnessed Elias's corpse open black eyes and speak had apparently decided silence was safer than gossip tonight.

Garrick didn't stop until they reached her room, and even then he checked the corridor twice before shutting the door behind them.

"Talk," Amara said. "Now."

"Your mother's name was Elira." Garrick's voice had dropped low, careful, like the walls themselves might be listening. "She served this house before you were born. Before your father made the mistakes that gave him you."

"That's not an answer. That's a history lesson."

"It's the only place I know how to start."

"Then start faster."

"She discovered something about the tournament," Garrick continued, ignoring her. "Something the seven houses have spent generations burying. I don't know all of it. I know enough to recognize the look on your father's face tonight, and it's the same look he wore the night she disappeared."

Amara's stomach dropped. "Disappeared."

"Nobody ever found a body."

"You think she's alive?"

"I think," Garrick said carefully, "that whatever took her wanted something specific, and I think it's still waiting for it."

Amara's hand closed instinctively around the parchment still crushed in her fist.

"It wants me."

Garrick didn't confirm it. He didn't need to.

"You cannot enter that tournament," he said instead. "Whatever your father promised you tonight, it isn't worth what you'll lose."

"He said Elias's death opened a door."

"Then close it. Refuse."

"And let House Vale fall?"

"Let it," Garrick said, sharper now than she'd ever heard him. "Amara, I trained you to survive. Not to march willingly into the one place your mother never walked back out of."

"You trained me for something, Garrick. Was it ever really survival, or were you always preparing me for this specific night?"

He didn't answer right away, and the silence told her more than she wanted to know.

Amara stared at him, rain still dripping from her hair onto the floor, and felt something cold settle deep in her chest that had nothing to do with the cold outside.

"You're afraid," she said.

"Yes."

"You've never once admitted that to me."

"I've never had reason to before tonight."

"What's different about tonight?"

"Tonight, you're old enough to walk toward the exact danger I spent your whole life trying to keep you away from."

Before she could answer, a horn sounded somewhere beyond the estate walls, low and formal, cutting through the rain with an authority that made even Garrick go still.

"That's the entrance summons," he said. "Early. They're not supposed to call it until dawn."

"Why would they move it?"

Garrick's face had gone the color of old ash.

"Because something inside that arena already knows Elias is dead," he said, "and it isn't willing to wait for House Vale to send a replacement on schedule."

Amara's heart slammed against her ribs.

"You're saying the arena is calling for me specifically."

"I'm saying you need to decide right now," Garrick said, "whether you walk through those gates on your own terms, or whether you wait for something to drag you through them instead."

"That's not a real choice."

"No," he agreed. "It stopped being one the moment your brother stopped breathing."

The horn sounded again, closer this time, and Amara realized with sudden, sick clarity that the choice her father had framed as a mercy hours ago had never really been a choice at all.

She was going to that arena either way.

The only question left was whether she'd arrive standing, or already broken by whatever had learned her name tonight before she'd even stepped through the gate.

"If I do this," she said quietly, "you tell me everything you know. Not tonight. Not eventually. The moment I ask."

Garrick's jaw worked once before he nodded. "The moment you ask."

Amara shoved the parchment into her coat and reached for the blade Garrick had trained her to never be without.

"Then I choose standing."

Garrick's expression didn't soften, but something in it shifted, resignation layered over something that might've been pride.

"Then let's get you dressed as a dead man."