Chapter 367: Maple Syrup Mage Manipulation

Kael closed his eyes and pressed both palms against his face.

"She thought we were in a committed domestic arrangement. The fucking part was implied."

Nicholas’s shoulders were shaking. His face was doing something between a smile and the wreckage of one.

He looked at Kael the way a man looks at another man he has just decided to stop fighting, and the decision wasn’t surrender. It was strategy. The most important kind. The kind where two people realize the game they’re playing has a common enemy and the common enemy is the distance between them and the woman they both want to protect.

"She’s going to remember," Kael said. "Eventually. The memories are going to come back."

"Agreed."

"Which means we stop being idiots."

"You first."

Kael snorted. "Fair."

"This doesn’t mean I like you," Nicholas said.

"Christ, no. I can barely look at you without wanting to throw a chair. You’re all doom and gloom and responsibility with a side of martyrdom. No thank you. Pass."

"You’re an ass. And your brother’s the deluxe edition"

"On that we agree." Kael paused. "He’s also a good man who just hit the woman he loves and is currently falling apart in a chair. So we’re going to give him the same grace she did, because she would want that and we’re going to start doing what she wants instead of what our dicks want. Agreed?"

Nicholas’s jaw worked once.

"Agreed."

The word cost him.

Kael could see exactly how much. He pushed himself off the floor. Extended a hand to Nicholas.

Nicholas looked at the hand. The hand of a dragon. The man who had marks on his body that matched Nicholas’s own, put there by the same woman, for the same reason, through the same teeth.

He took it.

Kael hauled him up. The grip lasted one second longer than necessary and the second carried a handshake’s worth of meaning without the formality.

They stood in the corridor. Two men. Same height. Different species. The same runes fading on both their forearms like matching receipts from a woman who had claimed them without knowing she was building something none of them had a name for yet.

"For the record," Kael said, "I could kick your ass."

"For the record, my wolf just started laughing. He has never been wrong."

The mandatory post-truce dick-measuring lasted exactly two sentences. Kael claimed he could win. Nicholas’s wolf laughed. Both statements were bullshit. Both men needed them. The ritual was complete.

Neither of them were aware that the Dragon Princess of Velkaris had just returned to the torture chamber after taking a quick breakfast-and-bucket-refill break with the team that had been recruited against their will.

✦✦✦

DRAKENCREST - DUNGEONS

While the Dragon King and his wife were having an honest conversation and two mates had a heart to heart on the other side of the door, a dragon who thought he had been robbed of a threesome mindlinked one of the heart-to-heart mates.

The mindlink from Griffin sounded like a distress flare fired from inside a circus hostage situation written by someone who had failed hostage school.

Kael Ashenvale was already moving before the mindlink finished and Nicholas Shadowfell followed, knowing it probably had something to do with Guinevere Lunaris because Kael Ashenvale only moved like that when it came to her.

They descended into the dungeon just in time to hear a decorating dictator clap her hands three times in front of a prisoner’s bagged face.

They both stopped outside the door frame, where Ryker and Griffin were.

Kael looked at Ryker like he expected an explanation. Ryker looked at Kael like a hostage who had developed Stockholm syndrome for his captor’s decoration and interrogation management skills.

"CUT THE SHIT, NAVARRE," Blair snapped.

Damon handed her a bucket. No hesitation. No judgment. Full professional commitment to whatever was about to happen.

"Wait! I’ll talk! I’ll tell you everything!" the mage screamed.

"Too late."

WHOOSH.

She dumped the contents of the bucket on the mage’s bagged head.

"AHHHHH! IT BURNS! I CAN’T FEEL MY FACE. THIS IS A VIOLATION OF MY RIGHTS AS A PRISONER!"

"Oh, I had not realized. I should just set you free then because I violated your rights," Blair said sweetly.

The sweetness lasted exactly long enough for hope to germinate. Then she ripped it out by the root.

"Do I sound like I give a flying fuck about your RIGHTS, Navarre? You lost those the moment you attacked me. The next bucket is loaded. Your move."

"PLEASE NO. PLEASE DON’T. I’LL DO WHATEVER YOU SAY. JUST STOP THIS," the mage sobbed. "I’LL COOPERATE. I’VE CHANGED. I’M A DIFFERENT MAN THAN I WAS FIVE MINUTES AGO."

Nicholas looked at his Beta, who was holding another bucket and did not notice his Alpha looking at him because his eyes were on the princess.

Next to him, Kael opened his mouth. Closed it. Ran a hand down his face. Opened it again. Closed it again. The fish cycle lasted four rounds before Ryker grabbed both of them by the arm, pulled them into the corridor, and shut the one-way soundproof door behind them with the efficiency of a man who had been wanting to debrief someone with authority for six hours.

"Before you say anything," Ryker started. "Your sister is terrifying."

Kael pinched the bridge of his nose. "What the fuck was in that bucket?"

"Maple syrup and warm water," Griffin replied. "She told him it was tree sap harvested under a blood moon with alchemical properties that causes permanent baldness."

Nicholas tipped his chin at the one with green water in the hall. His wolf was objecting to the smell of it. "And that?"

"Bath salts," Griffin replied.

"Why is it green?"

"She showed him the buckets as a preview before starting. She said, and I quote, ’nobody trusts a green liquid.’ He thinks it is a Fae nerve agent that enters through the pores and will turn him green for a year."

"What’s in the one behind it?"

"Pickle brine."

"And what did she tell him that was?"

"Acid that castrates as a side effect. That’s the last one."

On the other side of the door, Blair started counting.

"Five. Four."

Nobody in the room knew what she was going to do at zero. It could be a bucket or a clap or something else entirely.

"Three. Two. One."