Blair Drakencrest entered her brother’s chambers on a deadline.
She walked between Kael and Jaxon without acknowledging either. The cold shoulder was deliberate, sustained, and executed with the precision of a woman who had been practicing it since childhood.
Kael noticed. His iron eyes tracked her across the room with mild irritation.
"Still upset about the dark magic incident, I see."
Blair did not respond. She moved toward Maddox’s closet with her chin up and her jaw locked.
"If I wanted you dead, Blair, you would be dead. The blade situation was theatre. I have explained this multiple tis. To multiple people. The repetition is getting tedious."
Blair opened the closet without turning around. The silence she gave him was so aggressively pointed it could have drawn blood.
Kael rolled his eyes and returned to Jaxon. "Fine. Where were we?"
The closet was organized in a way that communicated Maddox’s priorities. His side was functional, dark leathers and formal coats and battle suits arranged by purpose. The other side was hers.
Blair knew exactly what she was looking for. The garnt bag was zipped and hanging at the far end. Maddox had commissioned it for Guinevere a week ago. The man had been grinning like a fool when he did.
She exited the closet with the garnt bag over one arm and the cloak over the other.
"Blair."
Maddox was sitting upright, his gold eyes tracking her movent.
"Why do you have that?" He was looking at the bag. The recognition was partial, the expression of a man who knew the object but couldn’t connect it to a context.
"It’s for Gwen, Maddox." Blair held his gaze. "Go look at your closet. You filled half of it with things for her the day she arrived here."
Ryker gave her a warning look from across the room. Blair caught it. She wasn’t sure if it was because Kael was present or if it was sothing else. She filed it and kept moving.
Maddox’s face contorted. The expression that crossed it was the sa one he had worn this morning, a visceral rejection that lived sowhere deeper than thought. His lip curled a fraction.
"Who?"
Blair’s jaw tightened. She had expected this. Expecting it and experiencing it were different things.
"The woman you tried to have arrested this morning." Her voice was flat. The flatness was a wall she was building in real ti between what she felt and what she was willing to show.
When Blair said "arrested," Maddox went still. For one second, sothing behind his gold eyes looked sick, genuinely sick, the way a man looks when he’s done sothing terrible and the mory of it arrives before the context does.
Then it was gone. Buried. Whatever had surfaced, the dark magic pulled it back down.
He looked at Jaxon and Aldric. "What is she talking about?"
Neither answered quickly enough for Blair, who was already moving again.
"I need your wife’s crown. The one she was wearing the night you brought her here."
"I don’t have a wife."
The lanterns above the bed sputtered. No one reacted.
"Yes you do, Maddox. But humor , if you brought a princess back to your chambers for a hookup, where would you put her crown?"
Maddox thought about it. "I’ve never brought a princess back here."
"Have you seen a white gold crown that is not yours, Maddox?"
"You are talking to like I’m an idiot, Blair. No. I didn’t hook up with a princess who left her crown here."
"Could have fooled ," Blair called, beyond done with this. She crossed towards his study and pushed open the double doors without apology. "I have forty-five minutes to create a masterpiece, Maddox. And you are actively unhelpful."
Kael’s face held nothing. The words crown and princess didn’t make him blink. Ryker rubbed a hand down his face.
Blair moved through the room, ignoring Maddox’s perplexed expression because she did not have ti for this.
The study was small, attached to the chambers, the private workspace of a king who did his real thinking behind a closed door.
The crown was on the desk. A thin circlet of white gold, the one Guinevere had worn when she walked into a hall full of kings and changed the trajectory of two continents.
Blair picked it up.
Then she saw the letters.
Three of them. Spread across the desk in the careless arrangent of docunts that had been read and set down and forgotten.
Her face fell.
When she exited the study, Maddox locked onto the crown and his reaction was instantaneous. A growl tore from his chest, low and visceral, and his gold eyes locked on the circlet with a hostility that made no sense for a piece of jewelry.
She could see it in the way his pupils slit and his hands gripped the sheets.
"Get that out of here."
A lantern exploded on the far side of the room and a seizure hit without warning.
One second he was standing. The next, his body was rigid, eyes wide, every muscle locked in a contortion that looked like it was tearing him apart from the inside.
Kael caught him before he hit the ground, and lowered him onto the bed. Jaxon’s hands glowed blue above his sternum. Aldric was shouting instructions that nobody could hear over the sound coming from Maddox’s throat.
"GWEN."
It ca out like it had been clawing through concrete. Raw. Shredded. The voice of a man buried under dark magic who had found one crack and shoved his wife’s na through it with everything he had left.
White foam mixed with blood spilled from the corner of his mouth as he bit down on his own tongue.
Black veins pulsed under his skin. Then his body went rigid again, shaking violently.
When he stilled, a look of pure horror crossed his face.
"No, no, no. I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. Tell her. Tell–" His voice cut off abruptly. Then he went limp, eyes fluttering.
"We’ll tell her. Hang on a little longer." Kael’s face was white and for a split second, his hands trembled before he caught them.
Jaxon’s glow faded. Aldric checked his pulse.
Blair stood frozen. The garnt bag slid off her arm and hit the floor. She picked it up, picked up the crown, and walked out of the room without a word. The tears started in the hallway.
But she wasn’t alone. Sterling and the wolf king were in a heated argunt around the corner. Why Shadowfell was visiting, Blair wasn’t certain. But he’d helped in the throne room last night. And he carried her brother through a tunnel. As far as she was concerned, he was an honorary Drakencrest.
Both voices carried the tension of n who were one sentence away from making this physical.
"She saved your elders last night. Explain that math to ." Nicholas’s voice filled the corridor.
"We are two hours away from having forty dragon houses here," Sterling answered. "All with their own lords and elders. Not just ours. A daughter from any of those houses would be more politically strategic for Maddox to take as a wife. She is a wolf with no dragon blood. That’s the reality, Shadowfell."
"She has no dragon blood," Nicholas repeated flatly. "The woman who rged with his goddamn fla and the Keep lights up for."
"I agree with you, Shadowfell. But public opinion is not changed so easily. Demonstration is necessary before Maddox can do anything. And even then, it’s not going to be easy."
"This continent doesn’t deserve her."
"Dragon politics are stupid. I’ll be the first to tell you that. But the facts are the girl has been here for weeks and she hasn’t earned her place yet in the eyes of the people who matter."
The corridor temperature dropped by a degree that had nothing to do with weather.
"Hasn’t earned her place," Nicholas repeated slowly. "She saved this Keep while you were locked out of it yesterday. Took a blade for a child. Knows your staff by na. She married your king and has been in a goddamn battle already. Rember?" He let that land. "And you told her she looked terrible and to stop crying. I’ll cut to the chase, walk back in there. Apologize."
Sterling was quiet for a long mont. He exhaled. "You’re right. I was an ass. But let’s get one thing straight, Shadowfell, if you touch her again without permission, I will let Maddox have you."
"I dressed her wounds because your people didn’t. That’s a failure on your end," Nicholas replied, his voice shifting to an Alpha register. "Threaten again. See how that plays out. I’ll give Maddox every word you said to her today while she had bruises on her throat."
It was at this point that Blair peeked around the corner to see Sterling’s fist connect with Nicholas’s jaw.
Nicholas didn’t go down or flinch. He punched Sterling back so fast Blair almost missed it.
"You’re angry at yourself, Sterling. Not ."
Sterling hit the ground. One knee. His hand went to his jaw, ca away bloody, and he looked up at Nicholas with an expression that was recalibrating everything he thought he knew about wolves.
"Get up," Nicholas said. "You started this. I’m finishing it. And when we’re done, you’re going to apologize to her. Not because I told you to. Because you watched your king try to strangle her and your first instinct was to tell her she wasn’t good enough for him."
"You think I don’t see it?" Sterling got up. "She is not available, Shadowfell."
Maddox’s door opened. Kael, of all people, left the chamber, moving past Blair like she was invisible.
The look on his face was the look of a man who had been a carefree war criminal twenty-four hours ago and was now babysitting elders, breaking up fistfights between kingdoms, and being forced to solve dark magic puzzles.
He clapped his hands twice, getting both of their attention.
"Sterling, your nose is bleeding. Shadowfell, your lip is split. Both of you look like shit and the entire corridor can hear you."
He addressed Sterling first. "Go find her and apologize for whatever you said that made a wolf king punch you in the face. If a wolf punched you, you earned it."
He turned.
"Shadowfell. My sister is in a mood. She has makeup and no boundaries. Last man who stayed for a fitting was our High General and he left looking like a clown. Ask him."
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