Natasha felt a hot wave of indignation wash over her. A duel against a twelve-year-old princess? It wasn't a challenge; it was a deliberate, searing insult to her decades of cultivation.
"Fighting a child, who the hell does that?" she snapped, her voice cutting the arena's tense silence.
"The princess is just a child! Why are you sending her to me? Are you trying to humiliate me before everyone here?" Her cold glare was locked on Sunny.
A slender, formidable figure descended from the royal platform. Ellen moved with a preternatural grace that belied her years, her arms crossed over a finely embroidered silk tunic. Her expression wasn't one of youthful arrogance, but of chilling, practiced poise.
"My father is not attempting to humiliate you, Natasha," Ellen's voice was low, yet carried an unfamiliar weight—a resonance that seemed to momentarily suppress the ambient magic in the arena.
