The room erupted into chaos.
More of Draven’s soldiers poured through the portals, weapons drawn.
The mothers organized an evacuation faster than Ryker could have ordered one. Children were scooped, carried, and redistributed among won with zero regard for whose kid belonged to whom.
"Move. Soone carry that little girl." Blair stood at the passage entrance directing traffic, still holding the candle box with the grip of a woman who had lost her goddamn mind two hours ago and was not getting it back tonight.
Kael kicked Draven’s body off of Guinevere.
Imdiately, a blade ca down from her right. One of Draven’s reinforcents, already committed to the swing before his commander’s skull had finished accepting the steel.
Guinevere felt it. Rolled. From the ground, she kicked the attacker across the shins, clotheslining him, and he went down beside her with a confused expression on his face.
Kael finished him from above with one stroke.
She turned away when the head ca off, which luckily went the opposite direction of her lap.
Her stomach turned. She locked her jaw until it passed. She exhaled once, then moved before the rest of her body could vote on the decision.
On the first attempt to stand, her palms slipped in her own blood and she went back down. On the second, her arms shook so badly the motion looked like it belonged to a different woman entirely.
Still on her hands and knees, she glanced up at Kael.
"Thanks," she panted.
He blinked at her. Opened his mouth. Shut it.
"Unless you’re here for the sa reason," she said. "If that’s the case, your timing could not be more terrible."
Kael shook his head once. The motion was small, involuntary, the equivalent of a hard restart.
"You saw a throne room full of hostages and ard soldiers and your first thought was ’I should go in there.’"
"I had it covered."
"Covered." He crouched to her level. "Your hands are bleeding, your legs don’t work, and I pulled a corpse off you."
"All part of the plan, Kael. This is my second ti doing this." Her position on the floor undermined the statent sowhat, but if Draven were less dead, he’d have said the delivery was phenonal.
"Second ti," Kael repeated flatly. His jaw worked once, then he stood. "Bullshit. I almost bought it. A concubine-mistress has not done this before."
"And yet."
In the front of the throne room, Ryker hooked an arm under Maddox’s shoulder, and hauled him upright. His head lolled forward, chin to chest. He didn’t wake.
"Co on, Commander. Work with ." Maddox did not work with him. "You are the heaviest unconscious person I have ever carried. And I am absolutely holding this over your head for the next decade."
He pulled the king toward the corridor behind the dais. King first. Protocol. The word sat wrong in every part of him, because the woman who had just saved four hundred people was bleeding from both palms in the center of a kill zone, and he was walking the other direction.
She was a tier below the crown in the chain of priority, and the chain of priority did not care about his feelings.
As soon as Guinevere was standing, a blade flew. She caught it wincing on the turn because her palms stung.
"Honey, what did I tell you about touching things." Kael cut down a soldier without looking. "If you bring dark magic ho again, I will turn this siege around."
Another attacker was in pursuit. Blade up.
She reached for her fla again. Found it. Flexed. Her sword lit gold. Not as bright as before, but it lit.
"That’s a new one," Kael comnted.
The attacker moved faster than she was ready for. She ducked. His blade missed by inches.
Then she shut her eyes and swung. A head ca off. She scread high-pitched before she could muffle it, dropping her flaming sword in the process. It clattered to the ground, fla dying with it.
"Did you just close your eyes?" Kael killed another. "Did you close your eyes and swing? Is that what just happened?"
"No. I aid."
"You didn’t aim. You can light swords on fire and you have no clue how to use them."
The look she shot him could have peeled paint.
Behind her, the elders rose slowly. Fourteen n and one woman who had been bound in dragon iron for hours.
Elder Varro straightened his robes, picked up a length of broken chain, and struck the nearest soldier. "Unacceptable."
"My hip will never recover from that floor, and I am sending you the invoice." Elder Cassia stord to one of the soldiers and slapped him. She then picked up his sword and swung it with an enthusiasm that compensated for her technique. "That’s for my knees, too."
Varro glanced at Cassia mid-swing. "Your form is atrocious. That’s not how you hold a sword."
"That’s not how you hold a council either, but here we are. I have a body count. Where are yours?"
Varro looked at the two n already unconscious at his feet. Then back up at her. "You’re hitting him in the shoulder. Aim for the neck."
"I’m hitting him where I want to hit him, Varro. Go take a nap."
Drystan stood behind a column watching. He would erge when it was safe and take credit for it. This was his process.
Across the throne room, Nicholas and his wolves t the wave pouring through the portals head-on.
He could see Guinevere through the chaos. Twenty feet away. He watched her catch another sword out of the air with bleeding hands and throw it. His jaw worked once.
"Fuck that’s hot."
Six soldiers were between him and her. He killed two more just as another wave ca through the portals.
"Hang on, Guinevere. I’m coming."
He didn’t stop, carving a path towards her with a terrifying intensity, reaching her just as another soldier lunged for her.
The soldier lost his head, then his footing when Nicholas kicked the body into the man behind him. He hauled Guinevere up so her back was against his chest.
"You’re bleeding."
"Part of the plan, Nicholas. Keep up."
The wolf king did sothing he’d never done in the middle of a battle before. He laughed.
"Is closing your eyes also part of the plan? Because I didn’t teach you that."
"It worked twice."
He stared at her. "We’re going to talk about that."
"Shadowfell," Kael called. "Behind the dais. Passage. Take her. She won’t go willingly. That’s your problem, not mine."
Kael was moving to the other side of the room to the mage, then pressed a blade against his throat from behind.
"We have to stop eting like this, Brennan."
"Ashenvale. Of course it’s you." Brennan exhaled. "For the record, Draven lied about the scope of this job. I was told it was a retrieval, not a siege. My rate does not cover sieges."
"Your rate doesn’t cover competence either. Close the damn portals."
The mage went very still.
"I said close them."
"I heard you the first ti, Ashenvale." The mage’s voice was flat. Exhausted. The tone of a contractor who had been underpaid, overworked, and was reassessing every professional decision that had led to this mont.
Brennan let out a sigh so long it could have been asured in geological ti. His hands dropped.
Every portal in the throne room collapsed simultaneously. Two soldiers were caught in the closing. Their screams cut short as the portals sheared through whatever parts of them were still on the other side.
The remaining soldiers looked at the sealed air where their escape routes had been, then at each other, then at the wolf king and the elders and the bleeding woman who had started all of this.
"Well," Kael said. "That simplifies things."
He kept the blade at his throat and turned to the room.
"The Keep is sealed from the outside. Every gate, every window, every passage." His iron eyes swept the elders. "Your Third in Command, your Master Mage, and roughly twelve companies of dragon warriors have been outside trying to break through for the last several hours."
The silence that followed was the silence of fifteen people realizing they had been rescued by the last man on the continent they would have chosen.
Cassia found her voice first. "So we’ve been trapped in here for eight hours, chained to a floor, and the entire military was outside the whole ti doing nothing."
"Not nothing," Kael corrected. "Failing. There’s a distinction. But none of my dark mages could penetrate it either."
"You destroyed this council, Ashenvale." Drystan’s voice was acid.
"My mage popped a smoke bomb that did nothing outside of look like smoke. And your entire governing body tried to assassinate itself. I revealed this council. There’s a difference."
Varro stepped over a body without looking down. "Dark magic is banned in Drakencrest for a reason."
"And dark magic just took your Keep for a reason. How’s the ban working out?"
"We will not endorse dark magic under any circumstances," Varro said with the conviction of a man reading scripture. Then he positioned himself between Kael and the throne.
"Wonderful. I’ll let the dark ward nexus that’s about to collapse your ceiling know about your policy. I’m sure it’ll respect the paperwork."
On the other side of the throne room, the wolves glanced at one another. Damon shrugged.
"Elders. Dragons have them too. Rember ours arguing with Nick for three hours about bridge tolls while the actual bridge was on fire?"
Nicholas guided Guinevere through the corridor behind the dais, one hand on her arm because her legs had stopped pretending they were functional. He looked back at Ryker.
"You might want to supervise that before Ashenvale dismantles your entire elder council with one sentence and no remorse."
In the throne room, Kael held up one finger to the elders. "Hold that thought." He never ca back for the thought.
He pointed his blade at the nearest Draven soldier who had lowered his weapon during Guinevere’s standoff.
"You."
The warrior’s mouth ford a small, startled circle. He pointed at his own chest.
"Yes. You. The one who looks like he’s never been picked first for anything. Where is the ward nexus in this Keep?"
The man swallowed. "Sub-level four. West foundation. I can show you."
Kael pivoted his blade two feet to the left. "You. Is he lying?"
The second soldier glanced at the first, then back at Kael’s blade, then at the first again with the expression of a man being asked to evaluate a colleague’s honesty at bladepoint. "He’s telling the truth."
"Wonderful." Kael pointed his blade at a third. "Which of you knows where the ward anchors are layered throughout the Keep?"
Four hands went up. A fifth rose slower, from a man who appeared to be running an internal debate about whether volunteering constituted a career opportunity or a death sentence. A sixth rose halfway, hovered, then committed.
One man in the back raised his hand, lowered it, raised it again, then looked at the man next to him who shook his head. He lowered it a final ti.
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