Chapter 389: Monkey See, Mage Do

"You are a GUEST in this Keep," Kael seethed, face three inches from Damon’s, hands on his collar. "You are a BETA. My sister is a PRINCESS. And you put your MOUTH on her MOUTH in a CLOSET during a CRISIS."

"Let go of him, Kael," Blair snapped. "Him being a Beta has nothing to do with me kissing him."

"She put her mouth on my mouth," Damon clarified, voice level.

"OH, SO NOW HE SPEAKS," Kael barked. "Ten minutes of statue cosplay and NOW words come out. Where were these words BEFORE the kiss, Damon? Where was this verbal capacity when she was walking towards you? When her hand was on your shoulder? When her face was APPROACHING your face at a speed that gave you PLENTY of time to step backward?"

"I didn’t want to step backward," Damon said.

The honesty detonated in the closet like a flashbang in a confessional.

Kael’s left eye twitched. The twitch was involuntary, neurological, the specific spasm of a man whose brain had received input it was rejecting at the cellular level. His hands released Damon’s collar. His fingers spread. He stepped back one pace. Two.

"He didn’t want to step backward," Kael repeated to the room. To Ryker. To the unconscious Sterling. To the tapestries. To whatever deity was still watching this particular screen and was absolutely losing their collective shit.

"I heard him," Ryker confirmed.

"He said it to my face. This wolf looked me in the eye and told me he didn’t want to step backward from kissing my baby sister."

"I’m an adult, Kael," Blair interjected. "And I was running a military operation before you decided to have a meltdown about mouth contact."

✦✦✦

DRAKENCREST THRONE ROOM - NOT THE CLOSET

Emma’s dark magic split into its defensive channels, holding all three streams at bay. Her grin hadn’t left. Grins like that paid rent and had a lease.

"Baby Brennan," she called across the ring, her voice carrying the specific warmth of a woman who burns down houses and leaves a casserole on the porch. "You were the one I almost felt bad about. Almost. The guilt lasted about forty-five seconds and then I got over it. Whole grieving process. Very efficient." Her eyes swept him head to toe. "Tell me, how are your little contracts going? Still taking the ones nobody else wants? Still sleeping in inns that smell like feet and ambition?"

"That’s Master Mage to you, Lady," Nicholas growled, teeth gritted, both hands locked on Guinevere’s shoulders, white light streaming from his palms into her back.

Emma’s head swiveled to Nicholas with the delighted surprise of a woman who had just heard a puppy bark for the first time and found it precious.

"Biscuit speaks. And he’s defending Brennan’s honor. That is so sweet I could vomit." She looked between the five of them. "Genuinely, though. Can we talk about the math in this ring right now? Five against one. Two kings, two mages, and one queen. Five adults. Against me. And I’m still standing. Does that embarrass any of you, or have we all just accepted the group project energy and moved on?"

"Tell us, Emma," Brennan called from her flank, adjusting his angle, magic rebuilding between his palms. "You love your little evil monologues. Biggest fan of your own voice I’ve ever met, and I dated you, so I have extensive data. How did you trigger the memory loss? It has your fingerprints all over it."

Emma pressed a hand to her chest. "Fingerprints. He said fingerprints. Like I’m a common criminal who leaves evidence. Brennan, sweetheart, I taught you better than that. Or I would have, if I hadn’t wiped the lessons every time you got close to learning them." She winked. "A girl has to have hobbies."

"Answer the question," Jaxon gritted, blue magic intensifying.

"Oh, I’m sorry, this is a conversation between adults, Jaxon. Go run along and play Azure magic dress up with the other reject mages," she said without looking away from Brennan. "You look good though. I’ll give you that. Buy me dinner first and I’ll give you a confession."

Jaxon’s jaw clenched. Not out of annoyance. He was about to do something with his magic that took concentration and the longer Emma bickered the better.

Blue chains, thick as a man’s wrist, shot out like snakes from behind him.

They wrapped around her torso in three rotations so fast the links blurred. Her arms pinned. Her dark magic output severed from both hands like someone had cut the power lines at the junction box. The streams she had been maintaining collapsed. Half her offensive capability disappeared between one heartbeat and the next.

"Azure magic isn’t a single discipline, Emma. You should know that," Jaxon said, voice dropping into the register of a man correcting a student who had just insulted his entire department. "Page twelve doesn’t cover page two hundred."

Brennan stopped blasting. Opened both arms wide. Black chains whipped from behind him like living things that had been caged and just heard the dinner bell.

Jaxon blinked at him, surprised.

Black wrapped around blue, two competing disciplines working in tandem on the same target by two men whose only common ground was that this woman had fucked them both and they were done being polite about it.

Emma shrieked.

Brennan winced. Pavlovian. That noise was the noise that haunted his dreams for six months. It bounced off the vaulted ceiling and came back sounding like satisfaction.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?" she screamed, thrashing against the chains. "BRENNAN, YOU PIECE OF SHIT, WHEN DID YOU LEARN BINDING CHAINS?"

"Just now," he said lightly.

White chains erupted from behind Maddox and Nicholas.

Neither of them did a single goddamn thing except stand there with their palms on Guinevere’s back, feeding her energy they couldn’t name from a source they couldn’t locate through a process they couldn’t explain.

The white chains sailed over both kings’ shoulders, luminous and absolute, and wrapped around Emma on top of Jaxon’s blue and Brennan’s black, a third layer, the final lock, three colors of magic binding one woman who was now screaming profanity that would have made a sailor’s mother write a letter to somebody.

Maddox felt it leave through him. Felt the pull. Felt the energy exit his body through his palms and travel into Guinevere and out the other side as something that was categorically different from dragonfire and categorically beyond his understanding.

Nicholas felt the same thing. The same pull. The same exit. The same confusion wrapped in the certainty that whatever was happening, it was working, and understanding could get in line behind results.

Both kings looked at each other.

The glance lasted half a second. It contained a mutual agreement to pretend they knew exactly what they had just done.