Chapter 391: Exactly What I Said, Young Dragon

"Fornicate," Maddox repeated from behind Guinevere, where he was still kneeling. His brow furrowed. "Kael, that is a word the Elders would use. You sound like Elder Varro at a council meeting."

"I sound like a man with standards, Maddox. Standards that prevent princesses from being defiled in storage closets by enemy wolves during active magical engagements. You’re welcome."

Blair stormed out of the closet.

The storm was literal in energy and metaphorical in weather system. Her boots hit the obsidian with the force of a woman who had been talked about in her absence and was here to correct the record with extreme prejudice.

"HE DID NOT TRY TO FORNICATE WITH ME."

The sentence echoed off the vaulted ceiling, the stone columns, the impaled portrait, and the unconscious woman wrapped in chains on the floor, and came back sounding like a declaration of independence.

Kael whipped around. "YOUR TONGUE WAS IN HIS MOUTH."

"EXACTLY." Blair closed the distance with three steps. "MY tongue. IN HIS mouth. I ATTACKED him. He was standing there. I walked over. I grabbed his shoulder. I put my face on his face. He was a VICTIM, Kael."

"What the actual hell is going on?" Maddox asked, standing up, looking between his siblings with the bewildered expression of a man who had missed three episodes of a show and was trying to piece together the plot from the screaming.

Ryker exited the closet last.

Sterling Emberfell was being carried bridal-style by Ryker, which would have been humiliating for both of them if Sterling had been conscious to object and Ryker had been sober enough to care. The Third in Command’s head hung back at an angle that displayed two large, purple, deeply concerning knots stacked on top of each other like a topographical map of Kael’s parenting decisions.

"There’s a lot to unpack," Ryker said, adjusting Sterling’s weight with the casual competence of a man who had carried unconscious colleagues before and considered it part of the job description. "Most of it is Kael’s fault."

"HOW IS ANY OF THIS MY FAULT?" Kael’s voice hit a register that only dogs and dolphins should have been able to hear. "I was HEALING Sterling. I looked up for TWO SECONDS and my sister was committing a felony on a wolf’s face. I was the only person in that closet making responsible decisions tonight."

"Whatever it is, I don’t give a flying fuck. Table it," Maddox said, with zero warmth in his voice.

He was staring at Emma’s unconscious body the way a man stares at a bomb that has been temporarily defused and is still ticking. His jaw was working. His gold eyes were calculating. The math behind them involved variables that included political fallout, intelligence extraction, continental security, and the fact that this woman had been inside his Keep for seven weeks, reorganized his bar cart, slept with his Third in Command under a fake identity, and had potentially destroyed his wife’s memory while leaving love letters on his desk.

The math was ugly. The answers were worse.

"It’s your Keep, Drakencrest. But I strongly advise we kill her," Nicholas said, voice carrying the diplomatic courtesy of a king deferring to another king’s jurisdiction while making it abundantly clear what his stance was.

"Seconded," Kael agreed without hesitation. The word left his mouth the way a man stamps a document he has already read. Done. Approved. Move the body.

Ryker looked at Maddox. "What will it be, Commander?"

Maddox did not answer immediately. The silence that filled the gap was the silence of a king weighing two terrible options against each other and finding them equally heavy. She had information. She had the architecture of whatever had been done to Guinevere locked inside her skull like a blueprint in a vault. Killing her meant killing the map. Keeping her meant keeping a woman who had infiltrated his security, disabled his Third, paralyzed every person in this room, fought off five combatants simultaneously, and treated the entire evening like a social outing she was already bored of.

Every second she breathed was a liability. Every second she did not was a lead they would never recover.

His mouth opened.

Guinevere’s eyes ignited gold.

The green vanished. The gold flooded back in with the abrupt, total authority of a tenant reclaiming a property she had only briefly vacated. Her spine straightened. Her chin lifted. The posture shifted from a woman on her knees catching her breath to something older, taller, and profoundly uninterested in democracy.

"Her body is cursed," she said, and the voice that came out was the voice that had been steering her all evening. Calm. Ancient. Bored by the concept of murder as a solution. "You will be unable to kill her without killing yourselves. The curse is reflexive. Whatever death you deliver will mirror back through the caster. The Luminari will be able to dispose of her."

The room processed that.

A look was exchanged. It started with Maddox and traveled to Nicholas and continued to Kael and kept going through Jaxon, Brennan, Ryker, Blair, Griffin, and the unconscious Sterling, who would have participated if his eyes had been open, and the look contained a single, unified sentiment that could be summarized as: she did not say that.

Possessed Guinevere caught the look. She did not appreciate it.

Her gold eyes swept the room with the measured displeasure of a woman who had just saved every sorry ass in this throne room and was being stared at like she had interrupted a staff meeting without knocking. Her chin lifted another degree. The degree was a warning.

"They are on their way here now to take her," she continued, as if the staring had been a brief inconvenience she was choosing to overlook because she had places to be and peasants to manage.

"What do you mean they are on their way?" Kael snapped.

Possessed Guinevere looked at him. "Exactly what I said, Young Dragon."