Chapter 372: HOLY MOTHER OF—

Kael heard Nicholas out. Considered it. His eyes moved from Nicholas to Brennan and back, running a calculation that took two seconds and arrived at a conclusion he kept to himself.

"Fine." Kael pushed his chair back and stood. "Give me a minute."

He left the war room. The door closed. Nobody spoke. Everyone was chewing on something different. Blair was chewing on murder charges. Sterling was chewing on proximity. Griffin was chewing on a question he was absolutely going to ask in about four seconds.

He looked at Blair. Looked at Damon. Looked at Blair again. "Quick question. Unrelated to anything."

Blair didn’t hesitate. "No."

"So... Damon."

"Griffin."

"I was GOING to ask if you two were a thing."

"GRIFFIN."

"What? I’m asking what everyone’s thinking."

"Nobody was thinking that."

Griffin’s filter was off and not coming back. "Ryker, did you see the arm-grabbing?"

"I saw the arm-grabbing."

"Sterling, did you see the arm-grabbing?"

Sterling said nothing. His silence was so aggressive it left a mark on the table.

"Brennan, did you see the arm-grabbing?"

"I saw the arm grabbing."

"If you two aren’t together," Griffin continued. "Can I have him? Because anyone who holds a bucket that well—"

"He is sitting right here, Griffin," Blair snapped. "If you want to go out with him, then ask him."

"I don’t want to go out with him. But I DO want you and him to KISS before tomorrow because I have twenty silver on it."

The look that Blair shot Griffin suggested she wanted to light him on fire.

Nicholas addressed the room but looked at Damon. "For the record, my Beta has never once held a bucket for me."

"It’s on the record," Ryker said, because Ryker was also enjoying this.

Damon killed the rest of his mimosa. "I’m surrounded by traitors."

"You’re surrounded by witnesses," Nicholas corrected.

Kael returned carrying a locked iron box, dark metal, warded. The runes on its surface pulsed faintly as he set it on the table. He pressed his thumb to the lock. Gold flame licked across the mechanism. The lid opened.

He lifted the parchment out and placed it in front of Brennan.

Brennan leaned forward. He didn’t touch it. His hands stayed flat on the table, palms down, the posture of a man who had learned the hard way that touching unfamiliar documents was how you ended up with a dick tattoo on your face for three weeks.

He scanned the script, eyes moving left to right. Then right to left. Then left to right again, slower this time, his brow furrowing deeper with each pass.

"This is Noxari."

The word sat on the table and every person stared at it because none of them had ever heard it before.

Kael’s expression shifted. The calculation behind his eyes hit a wall it hadn’t anticipated. "What the hell is Noxari, and why do you know about it and I don’t?"

"Because Brennan is brilliant," Nicholas answered, without hesitation, without performance, with the flat conviction of a king stating a fact he considered self-evident.

Damon: He’s about to cry again.

Nicholas: He’s fine.

Brennan’s jaw wobbled for exactly one second. He swallowed it, blinked twice, and refocused on the parchment with the composure of a man who had been told he was brilliant by a king and was choosing to be a professional about it instead of the emotional wreck he absolutely was underneath.

"I didn’t know what Noxari was until I dated one." He cleared his throat. "My ex-girlfriend was half Noxari and half mage. They keep their magic and their people buried. Secret societies and all that. I had no idea what she was for the first three months. It wasn’t until I met the Luminari Master Mage that I connected it. His magical signature kept reminding me of her brother’s signature. Same root. Same resonance. But the dark version. The Noxari are what happens when Luminari light goes underground."

"So, different from Dark Fae then?" Damon asked.

"Correct," Brennan replied. "Entirely different species. Dark Fae women can manifest magic. Noxari women cannot. My ex only could because she was part mage." He gestured at the parchment without touching it. "Her family did things with magic that would make a necromancer uncomfortable. And this script right here is what Noxari use in black markets, rune gambling circuits, and one very illegal auction house in the Ashlands that I am definitely never going back to and was only at twice."

Kael stared at him. "Rune gambling circuits."

"They’re very competitive. I placed third."

"In rune gambling."

"It’s harder than it sounds. You have to bet on which ward breaks first under stress. There’s a bracket system."

Kael closed his eyes for one full second. When he opened them, the expression on his face was the expression of a man who was recalibrating his entire assessment of Brennan Pike for the fourth time and was running out of shelf space for the revisions.

Blair jumped on the thread like a heat-seeking missile locked onto a target that had just volunteered its coordinates.

"Is this the same ex you share with Marek Navarre?"

Brennan nodded. "Yup. That’s the one."

The room went still. The connection between Brennan’s ex, Navarre, and a Noxari letter that had shown up at a Drakencrest gala drew itself across the table in a line so straight that even Griffin could follow it.

"Which is why I was going to say," Brennan continued, his voice losing its usual rambling warmth and settling into something steadier, "she left letters like this lying around everywhere. I thought they were love letters." He let out a single dark laugh that was uncharacteristic. "They were absolutely not love letters."

He looked up from the parchment.

"The signature with Emma’s letters is they always had a curse or something baked into the paper, waiting for someone specific to touch them. When I broke up with her, she made sure to plant them everywhere. Bedside table. Coat pockets. Books. I resorted to moving and wearing gloves for a while."

The silence that followed was the kind that makes a room feel smaller.

Kael looked at the parchment on the table. Then at his own hands. Then at Ryker. "So that makes seven." He ticked off his fingers. "Jaxon, myself, Ryker, Maddox, Lord Solandris, Marek Navarre, and Lux Nash."

"Eight," Sterling corrected. "I touched it too."

"Fantastic," Kael said, the word doing the heavy lifting for an entire paragraph of profanity his mouth had decided to table.

"You would know if it cursed you. Trust me," Brennan said. "They don’t do subtle."

"Emma," Blair repeated.

"Yes, that’s her name."

"Emma..." Blair muttered to herself again before her eyes went as wide as saucers. "HOLY MOTHER OF—"