The dining hall was filled to the brim. Leanor’s siblings sat shoulder to shoulder, talking as he entered. He met Tristana’s eyes with trepidation as a smile curled at the corner of her mouth.

  Leanor felt like a trapped animal, with no clear path out. Not yet. But his mind kept working anyway, searching for cracks, for leverage.

  Then he saw his mother.

  Her eyes were hollow, the bright blue from earlier drained down to pale shells. She’d been with Father when he’d found out. Something in Leanor’s stomach sank at the sight, cold and heavy, but his mask didn’t slip. Not even for her.

  He took the last open chair and let his gaze settle on his father as Father stood to speak.

  “Welcome,” Father said, voice smooth as polished stone. “As you may have noticed, the Challenge is progressing at a slower pace than expected. The humans have not been participating since the additional rule.” His fingers tapped once against the table, and for a moment his smile went sharp around the eyes. “Therefore, I find it necessary to hold a tournament of the strong.”

  Leanor didn’t even break a sweat. He watched the room instead, watched Father realize it.

  For a single heartbeat, his father’s words faltered when their eyes met. Then the pause snapped shut like a trap.

  Leanor swallowed and forced confidence into his voice. “Sounds like a fun idea. Let me pick my ten champions, and we can begin.”

  Father’s mouth opened, as if the answer didn’t want to form, then it spilled out too quick and too easy. “Sure. Why not.” He flicked his hand in dismissal. “Let’s eat. In the meantime, think about it.”

  As the festivities began, food started appearing from thin air, conjured dish by dish as the power in the room thickened.

  Leanor excused himself.

  Once he was behind a wall and out of sight, with the noise of celebration dulled, he pulled the black communicator Civitas had given him from his storage. He brought it close to his mouth and spoke anyway, knowing Civitas and his minions would be listening.

  “Kill the Heralds on Earth. Leave the boy, the glitch, alive. Put the necklace in his hands.”

  Leanor closed his fingers around the chain, then snapped it away. He teleported it to where it needed to be for his plan to work.

  The gods loved clean rules and predictable winners. The boy was neither. He didn’t chase his power like it was a prize. Half the time he looked like he was afraid of it.

  That was exactly why Leanor wanted him. The necklace was not jewelry. It was a conduit. If the Heralds fell and the transfer triggered, the points would not scatter. They would pour straight into the glitch.

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  A manufactured miracle. A risk, yes. But if the boy walked into Lithra carrying stolen momentum, then Leanor might finally get a move the gods hadn’t already planned for.

  The words came out coarse and dry. An order, nothing more.

  Leanor knew he would have felt something once. Pain. Empathy. Anything. But now there was only emptiness, clean and quiet as a butcher’s block. Like the slaughter of cattle.

  Just a task to be done.

  Leanor waited until his face settled into something neutral, until the plan slid out of reach and out of sight. Then he stiffened, squared his jaw, and pulled a false smile over his mouth as he returned to the table. His eyes locked on his father, then on Tristana.

  His father was laughing like someone had just said the funniest thing in the world, and yet his gaze never let Leanor go. A predator watching the moment its prey stopped running.

  Leanor slid onto the bench.

  His father’s hands struck the table.

  The impact shuddered through the room. Plates rattled. The air thickened, heavy and pressing, and conversation died as if someone had cut a cord. Silence spread until the only sound left was the slow breathing of Leanor’s father.

  That was all that mattered.

  “Why don’t we have a little bet, my boy?”

  Leanor held his gaze, smile still in place, even as certainty curdled in his gut. This was a trap. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Pick someone to win the tournament. Pick the right person and I’ll give you something you want. Anything.”

  Leanor kept his expression rigid. “I don’t want anything from you.”

  It was a lie, and he tasted it, but it was the only way to keep his instincts from screaming, to keep his mind from reaching for the one thing that would ruin him.

  His father’s sly smile split into something wilder, almost delighted. “Really? Nothing?”

  Around them, bodies went still. Hands tightened on cups and table edges. Everyone waited for what he would say next.

  His father whispered a single word.

  It filled the room like a blow.

  Leanor had to grit his teeth to keep his muscles from tensing, from surging forward, from lunging across the table to kill him.

  “Leah.”

  Leanor’s vision went black. For a heartbeat, his mind was empty, as if someone had reached in and wiped the slate clean.

  Then her name hit, and memory rushed back in.

  Leah. His wife. His best friend. Hidden from him for so long it had started to feel like grief with no body to bury. Taken because his father could not stand that she chose Leanor. She had been one of the three Originals, one of the true gods, and she had loved him anyway. That love had been her sentence.

  Leanor’s teeth cut into his tongue. Blood warmed his mouth, metallic and thick, the only thing he could use to leash the rage that wanted to surge up and drown the room. His hands curled so hard his nails bit into his palms.

  He had already bet everything on the glitch. Now he would have to bet even harder on one person, one outcome, one thin chance.

  He was willing to do it.

  Leanor nodded, even though pain lit every inch of him. “Fine. What do you want in return?”

  The words came out flat, as if his body had locked everything else behind bone.

  His father did not blink. Did not shift. “A loyalty oath.”

  The room froze.

  Everyone knew what that meant. Leanor would not be Leanor anymore. He would be property. A leash wrapped around his will, a command sitting behind every breath. The oaths had been stripped away years ago because of what they did to a person, because of what they turned a person into, but if his father demanded one, no one here would defy him.

  Leanor swallowed blood and forced his voice to work. “Fine.”

  Spittle clung to the word as it left him.

  Then Leanor turned and vanished, already building the next steps in his mind.