Matilda held her daughter tighter and didn’t respond.
Jake crossed the courtyard and positioned himself between Kunther and the Linnam won without announcing that he was doing it. Just moved until his body was in the way of the direct line between his ninth brother and the girl Kunther had co here to take.
Kunther looked at him with the patient attention of soone willing to explain sothing to a person who didn’t understand the situation yet.
"Move," he said.
It sounded almost gently, the way you spoke to soone who had wandered into the road without noticing traffic.
"This doesn’t involve you, Jake. You’ve been in Roakan for what—a month? You don’t understand how things work here yet. You don’t understand how I work."
He tilted his head. "I’m not going to hurt you over this. You’re new. You don’t know better."
"Those guards," Jake said.
"Obstacles," Kunther said.
"They put their hands on their weapons when I ca through the gate. That was their choice."
"They were doing their jobs."
"And I was doing mine."
Kunther’s tone remained reasonable, the voice of soone explaining a transaction.
"I want sothing. I ca to get it. People who stood between and it made a decision about how that interaction would go. I didn’t make that decision for them."
"Margeret isn’t a thing," Jake said.
"Everyone is a thing," Kunther said, and there was no malice in it, just the flat conviction of soone who had organized his understanding of the world around a single fundantal belief and found it consistently useful.
"Objects, people, opportunities—everything is sothing you either have or you don’t. I prefer having."
He looked at Jake with genuine attention now, reassessing.
"You’re going to stand there," Kunther said slowly, working it out.
"You’re actually going to make this into a confrontation."
Sothing shifted in his expression—not anger, more like interest.
"You’ve been here for a month and you’re planning to put yourself between and what I want. That’s—" he paused, "—either very brave or very uninford."
"Tell which one you think it is," Jake said.
Kunther smiled, and it was the smile of soone who had just decided this situation was more entertaining than he’d anticipated. He looked at Jake with the easy confidence of Class I ability that had never found an obstacle it couldn’t remove.
"I don’t want to kill you," Kunther said.
"You’re new. You don’t know Roakan’s rules yet. You don’t know the hierarchy. You don’t know where you actually stand relative to the rest of us."
He spread his hands in a gesture of reasonable accommodation. "So I’m giving you one chance to step aside because you don’t know better. After today, that excuse is gone."
Behind Jake, Matilda Linnam made a small sound that might have been fear at where this was clearly heading.
Kunther waited with the patience of soone who didn’t doubt the outco.
Jake stood in the space between his ninth brother and a woman and her daughter, feeling the gulf between Class I and Class II like a physical thing, his bloodsense cataloguing the power differential with the unhelpful accuracy of a system that didn’t know when to keep certain information to itself.
Still, he didn’t move.
Instead, he stepped forward and said, "What will you do if I don’t move?"
As soon as he said it, Kunther dropped his head, he laughed out loud, and next, silence followed.
And the next minute, Kunther moved without warning.
One mont he was standing with his hands open in that gesture of reasonable accommodation and the next his sword was drawn and crossing the distance between them with the committed montum of a Class I strike that had been decided before it appeared to begin.
Jake’s blood sense saved him.
The ability registered the intent a fraction before the body expressed it—a spike in Kunther’s combat presence, sudden and sharp, and Jake was already moving laterally when the blade arrived at the space his torso had just occupied.
Steel cut air and Jake felt the wind of it across his ribs through his shirt.
It was a close call.
Too close for comfort, not close enough to matter.
He put three ters between them and took stock while Kunther completed his arc and reset with the simple economy of soone whose swordwork had been refined past the point of wasted motion. No frustration on his face at the miss. Just recalibration, the way an experienced fighter processed new information about an opponent’s speed without emotional investnt in the result.
Jake had raised his hand and stopped Raani and the maidens from stepping back. He intended to fight him alone, just like Kunther was doing.
"You have very good reflexes," Kunther said.
"You felt that before it started."
He sounded pleased.
"Good."
The courtyard had reorganized itself around the violence with the automatic efficiency of long practice—Raani and the Dragon Maidens had moved to flank positions, Matilda had pulled Margeret further against the wall, and the household staff had pressed themselves flat against whatever surface was nearest.
Everyone finding their place in the frawork of a fight.
Kunther ca again.
This ti slower and asured, the opening strike having been a feint, to study him rather than a genuine first offense. He moved across the courtyard with the unhurried confidence of soone who understood that distance collapsed eventually regardless of the other person’s opinion on the matter.
Jake activated Scale Armor.
The serpent scales manifested across his skin in their overlapping patterns, dark green catching the morning light, and Kunther’s eyes tracked the change with professional interest rather than concern. He’d clearly heard of his bloodline abilities before and filed them as variables rather than threats.
His sword ca in from a high angle—a diagonal descending strike aid at Jake’s collarbone and intended to ride down through the shoulder joint if the initial entry found purchase.
Jake stepped inside it, the close quarters negating the blade’s leverage, and caught Kunther’s sword arm at the wrist with his left hand while his right drove an open palm into the older man’s chest.
Kunther’s enhanced Class I durability absorbed the hit and turned with it, using Jake’s grip on his wrist as a pivot to spin and drive his elbow backward into Jake’s face.
The elbow connected with Jake’s cheekbone and the world went briefly white.
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