The Commander steps into my cell. The flickering torchlight lights his scar, throwing the rest of his face in shadow.

“You thought you could outsmart me, didn’t you?” He flexes his right hand into a fist. The light slides along the golden circle of his ring, glowing within the olive-sized red stone and highlighting the wicked ridge of the raised talon through its center.

I brace myself and gather up a length of chain as quietly as I can, ignoring how bruised and battered I feel from the swordfight on the Claiming stage.

“You were always so sure of yourself. So convinced no one could outwit the great Logan McEntire.” His lip curls as he spits my name at me.

Maybe I shouldn’t engage him. Maybe I should keep my silence and let him talk, hoping to pick up nuggets of information along the way.

Or maybe pushing him to his limits is the best way to peel back the mask and see what I’m truly dealing with.

“How would you know?” I ask. “You’ve never bothered to have a proper conversation with me.”

His fist plows into my gut, slamming me back against the wall. I double over and take the opportunity to gather more lengths of chain while catching my breath.

“I don’t have proper conversations with the sons of those who’ve been disloyal.” He kicks my feet out from under me.

I hit the floor hard, and nearly lose my grip on the chain I’m holding like a rope. Pushing myself back to my feet, I say, “My mother wasn’t disloyal.”

His fist slams into my shoulder, spinning me to the side. I narrowly keep from hitting the wall with my face.

“I wasn’t speaking of your mother.” His breath is a harsh pant against my ear.

I take a deliberate step away from him. He’s playing games with me. He knows I have no idea who my father was, and he’s using it against me. Still, part of me wants to ask, just to finally have that gap in my past filled in.

“You knew my father.”

He laughs. “You’re just like him. Two men cut from the same cloth.”

“And what cloth would that be?”

His face, bathed in shadow and firelight, is lit with malice. “Unworthy. Disloyal. Without honor.”

I straighten and brace my feet. “You wouldn’t understand honor if it was branded into your skin.”

He lunges for me, but I duck back. Swinging the chains up, I wrap them around his arm. One swift jerk and I fling him onto the filthy floor of the cell. He lands hard, and I drive my knee into his back, but the guards outside the cell are already on me.

They pull me from him, toss me to the ground, and attack. I swing the chains, brutally slashing one guard’s face and knocking out another’s tooth. One draws his sword, but I duck out of the way. Looping the chains around the sword’s hilt as I go, I yank back hard. The sword goes skidding across the cell.

Two more guards arrive, and I’m fighting for my life. Dodging blades, absorbing blows, and doing as much lethal damage as I can with the lengths of chains in my hands.

It’s four on one, and I know I can’t keep it up much longer. I’m hoping I won’t have to.

The Commander rises from the floor and screams at his guards to stop. They back away, bleeding and cursing.

I’m bleeding and cursing too, but I hold my head high as he approaches me. I have to make his next actions seem like his idea.

“Go ahead and kill me, if you can,” I say, rattling the chains in my hands as if I’m ready to go another round with the guards. “You’ve given me all the weapon I need.”

He spews venom at me. “The second I no longer need you to ensure the girl’s cooperation, you’re dead.” He closes the distance between us, stopping just out of range of the chains. “She’ll die thinking she saved you. Melkin will see to that. But you, you get to live long enough to know you haven’t saved anyone.”

I’ve got the answer I needed about Melkin’s arrangement with the Commander. Ignoring my anger at the thought of Rachel traveling the Wasteland in the company of a man tasked to assassinate her once her usefulness is finished, I focus on getting the second thing I need.

I rattle the chains as if I still have the energy to use them. The Commander gestures at the closest guard. “Get those things off him and remove them from his cell.”

I put up a fight, make it look like I mean it, and it takes three of them to get the shackles off me. The instant I’m free, I back into a corner like I know I’ve been beaten at my own game.

The Commander laughs and waves at his least-injured guards. “Teach him a lesson. Just make sure you leave him alive.”

Two guards advance, fists raised. I parry the first punch and absorb the second as it plows into my shoulder, but see stars as one guard’s booted foot slams into my ribcage and sends me sprawling. Pain flares to life within me, and it’s all I can do to curl up in a ball and endure as the guards use me as their punching bag.

I’ve lost track of time when the Commander calls them off. I’m bleeding from my nose and mouth, my body feels like I’ve been run over by a wagon, and a rib on my right side feels like someone is skewering me with a lit torch every time I breathe.

The Commander strides over to me, grabs a handful of my hair, and wrenches my face around to his. “You’ve lost your little game. And everyone you love will die because of it.” He gestures to a guard, and I hear something sizzle and spit in the flames of the nearest torch. I can’t crane my head to look because the Commander holds my hair in a vicious grip.