Owain’s world was simpler now.

From the moment he closed his visor, everything else in the Great Hall ceased to matter. His killing ground had been prepared, twelve paces on a side, and his prey stood before him, weak and under-protected in the antique, scavenged armor she’d brought to a duel to the death.

Owain didn’t fear her. He’d never been afraid of her, even when Jocelynn had revealed to him that she bore the mark of a witch. Witches could still be killed, especially up close, where they had no time to work their witchcraft. He’d proven it once already when he stripped her bare to reveal the proof of her corruption and bludgeoned her to death on the floor of their wedding suite.

Only she hadn’t died. Somehow, she’d come crawling back out of the grave to haunt him one more time.

But that was fine. He’d killed her once before, and he would kill her again, only this time, he would see to her dismemberment himself, and when every last bone in her body had been burned and ground to dust, he would scatter her to the wind to ensure that she never rose again.

In his mind’s eye, he could see the opening moves of their duel taking shape. The sword Ashlynn claimed to have forged from his ancestor’s treasured weapons was shorter than his own, combining with her smaller stature to give him a decisive advantage in range, and he intended to use every inch of that space to teach her why women like her had no business posing as knights on a field of honor meant for men.

He’d bring Fallen Claw down in an overhand cut, not to the crown of her helm, but dropping off to the side at the last moment, aiming for the side of her helm right next to her ear. The noise alone would be enough to rattle her, and the force of the blow would do even more.

He’d ride the rebound off her helm into a sweeping cut to the opposite side, aiming high enough on her chest to threaten her breast, provoking her into defending herself with her sword. A trained knight would take the blow on the strong curve of his breastplate, trusting in his armor to deflect a strike that wasn’t a real threat, but a woman wouldn’t react so calmly.

Two rapid, powerful strikes to rattle her and pull her off her simple, cowardly guard, and he’d be set for the first real attack of their duel, a thrust directly to her visor, slipping over the lip of the bevor that protected her lower face and aiming directly for the eyes. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

It would be unrealistic to expect it to end there, but it would be a delicious beginning to the ’education’ he intended to give Ashlynn before she met her end, and from there, he could take his time wearing her down at a distance before he finally closed for the kill.

This was his killing field, and unlike the trial before, where slippery words and inconvenient truths could drag him down, there was nothing here he couldn’t control.

"Begin!" Aubin shouted, starting the duel at last, and Owain charged forward, his blade whistling through the air exactly as he’d planned. Only, when he struck, the blow failed to land.

-CLANG!-

Ashlynn’s blade moved with impossible speed, meeting the strength of his blade with her own as if she intended to beat his blade aside.

Fallen Claw spun in his hands, already moving into the next cut he’d planned, riding the force of Ashlynn’s counter-stroke the same way he would have ridden the force of rebounding from her helm, but once again, she moved with incredible quickness to close his line of attack again.

-CLANG!-

"Die, witch!" Owain cursed as he pulled back for his thrust, but this time, he had to abandon his plan entirely as Ashlynn charged forward the instant he pulled back. Fallen Claw came up to a hasty guard, its point dropping from an offensive ox-guard to a more defensive line, and her cut at his shoulder met his blade in a hard angle of steel.

-CLANG-

The bind held.

For a heartbeat, their swords pressed together through their crossed forearms, and Owain felt the weight she was putting into the bind. The pressure she exerted on him didn’t match up wth her size and stature at all. The hilt of Fallen Claw was being driven backward against his grip, slowly, by a strength that should not have been in the body of the woman he’d married.

She was strong.

She was as strong as he was.

The realization broke through the rhythm of his planning, and his planning failed him for the first time in years. For a split second, all of the moves and counter-moves his mind normally held ready fell away. There was only the bind, and the realization that this woman really had come to kill him, and she’d brought the tip of her blade within three fingers from his visor in a move that could find his eye if the bind broke wrong.

His heart hammered in his chest, and his body moved without thought, abandoning finesse and technique as he stepped into her instead of away.

His armored shoulder drove forward with all his weight behind it, and the bind became a lever.

"Raaaa!!" Owain grunted as he shoved.

Her falchion held against his blade for an instant longer, and then her boots skidded back on the polished stone. Once. Twice. A third step, and her stance broke. The bind came apart with a final scrape of steel as her sword arm was forced wide of her body, and Owain pivoted away from her on his back foot to recover his guard at distance.

Three paces of ground opened up between them again and Owain and he took a deep, steadying breath as he struggled to regather his composure.

The entire exchange had only taken a few heartbeats, but Owain’s eyes were wide, and sweat had formed on his brow as his mind raced to understand what had happened in that opening exchange.

"Impossible," he muttered as he watched her bring her shorter sword back into the same, simple guard she’d used before.

Her stance belonged in a textbook, not because it was perfect, but because it represented the simplest starting position that every swordsman learned from their very first day with a weapon in their hand. Her counterattacks weren’t inspired; they were the same as her stance, taken from the list of sword strokes that any squire could recite from memory.

But the speed and strength at which they’d come was something no amateur could produce.

Moreover, there’d been no hesitation in her movements. She hadn’t flinched when he’d threatened her head, hadn’t panicked when he attacked her breast, and she’d advanced the instant he gave her an opening.

"You really are a witch," Owain muttered as he took the offense again.

This time, however, he didn’t charge. This time, he waded in with slow, steady strides. His fingers flexed briefly on the hilt of his sword, and his wrists turned, unleashing a rapid rain of snapping cuts to her head, shoulders, arms, and back again.

-CLANG-

-CLANG-

-CLANG-

Ashynn’s blade moved like a blur, flowing from one deflection to the next, but this time, Owain gave her no room to counterattack. He pressed onward, faster and faster, increasing the tempo of his blows as he tested the limits of her defenses, and with each resounding ring of steel, the look on his face, concealed behind his visor, grew more and more grave.

Somehow, in the nine months since he’d beaten her to death on their wedding night, she’d found the strength and speed to rival his own... and the gaps between their skills were narrower than he’d imagined possible.

She might, his mind acknowledged reluctantly... She might actually pose a threat, one he would have to take far more seriously than he’d planned.