Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

Blair Drakencrest had spent six hours breaking a mage with maple syrup, bath salts, and psychological warfare. She was winning. Then he said something that broke her instead.

It started when Damon handed her another bucket.

”HOLD ON!” Marek’s voice cracked at the edges. ”I am bound by a blood oath. I couldn’t tell you if I tried. And even if I could fight it, I would die before the words left my mouth.”

Damon’s eyes flicked to Brennan. Brennan gave one nod. No held inhale. No tell. The bastard was telling the truth for the first time all night and the truth was worse than the lies because it meant the information was locked behind magic that would kill the source before it could be extracted.

”Bullshit. There are things you can tell us that wouldn’t violate a blood oath. You are withholding information.” Blair pulled a vial from her pocket. The one she had confiscated from Marek’s cloak hours ago. She held it up to the torchlight and turned it slowly. ”This vial that I found in your cloak. I don’t know what this is. But you do. And you’ve been very worried about it since I took it. So I’m going to open it.”

”DON’T.”

Sterling’s blade rose from Marek’s neck.

”WAIT.” The word erupted from under the sack like a man grabbing a ledge mid-fall. ”I can’t tell you. But I can tell you who can.”

Sterling held. Damon held. Two men locked in a silent agreement that the next wrong word would cost this mage a limb and neither of them would lose sleep over the invoice.

”Start in Solveil. Though I wouldn’t bring her if I were you. Because she’s a wanted woman.”

”A wanted woman,” Blair repeated slowly. ”For what?”

Marek gave a dark chuckle under the bag. The sound rolled through the burlap with the smug resonance of a bastard who knew something nobody else in the room did and was savoring the last three seconds of that advantage.

Blair’s eyes rolled so hard her ancestors felt them spin in their graves.

”She’s wanted for the murder of Landon Solveil.”

The sentence hit the room like a grenade wrapped in a subpoena. Murder. Landon Solveil. The Luminari king. The king of goddamn light. And the woman sleeping upstairs in silk pajamas was apparently wanted for putting him in the ground.

”Murder,” Blair repeated.

”Oh yes. Your innocent little princess is not so innocent after all. I’ve heard two rumors. He’s either dead or in a coma,” Marek stated, his voice steadying under the bag, like this was leverage.

It wasn’t.

He was sitting in a room full of people who would burn kingdoms for her regardless of her criminal record.

Blair looked at Damon. Damon looked at Blair. The glance lasted one second and contained an entire emergency summit. Blair’s half said what the fuck. Damon’s half said I don’t know. The combined output was two very competent people arriving at incompetence simultaneously.

Sterling watched the exchange happen. The murder charge dropped and her eyes went to Damon first. Before him. His eyebrow moved half an inch, which she misread for something else. Because for him, an eyebrow raise could mean ten different things.

Through the one-way door, Nicholas heard Marek say his mate’s name and the word murder. Every instinct he had rearranged itself in one second. She was asleep. She was innocent. She didn’t do this. The certainty wasn’t hope. It wasn’t denial. It was the bone-deep, blood-level knowing of a man whose matebond had carried every emotion she’d ever felt into his body and not one of them had ever belonged to a killer.

”No. She would never. There’s no way,” he said immediately.

Kael was silent.

”Ashenvale. What the hell is he talking about?” Nicholas asked.

”Not here,” Kael replied.

Griffin looked between them like a golden retriever who’d just been told the park was closed forever. Ryker. Kael. Ryker. Waiting for a just kidding. Nobody kidded.

”What do you mean she tried to murder Landon Solveil?” Blair’s voice was ice and steel and the specific frequency of a woman who was going to get an answer or she was going to get a bucket.

”The details are being kept quiet by Solveil’s Kingsguard. Political sensitivity. Dead kings are bad for morale.” Marek’s head tilted under the sack, settling into the leverage the way a cat settles into a sunbeam. ”What I can tell you is the Commander of the Kingsguard issued a warrant for her arrest. She fled the kingdom. The entire Luminari military apparatus is currently looking for her.”

The room took it in like cheap carpet takes a wine stain. Reluctant. Ugly. Permanent. Someone’s mother was going to notice.

”If Lord Solandris sees her,” Marek continued, ”he will be obligated to turn her in by blood oath, so I suggest you keep her away from him. The Luminari and Solandris have treaties that predate your dynasty’s reign so he will not have a choice.”

He paused. Let the silence do its work.

”Now. Can I go?”

”No,” Blair said, not looking away from Sterling.

”I’ve cooperated.”

”You’ve cooperated the way a drowning man cooperates with water. You thrashed for six hours and then told me something useful because you ran out of oxygen. That’s not cooperation.”

Sterling gave a single nod. Then he held up one finger and pointed at the door. The gesture was clean and economical and communicated get everyone who matters into the hallway now without the prisoner hearing a syllable of what comes next.

Blair moved first. She grabbed Damon’s arm on her way out of the interrogation chamber like a woman collecting the most useful person in the room by the bicep. She had been doing this all night. Damon had been letting her.

Neither of them had discussed it. The discussion would require acknowledging what was happening between them and both of them were too busy committing crimes together to have that conversation.

Sterling watched Blair’s hand close around the wolf’s arm for the fourth time tonight. His arms crossed. The repositioning was involuntary. He was watching something become a pattern and the pattern was becoming permanent and the permanence was becoming a problem he had no protocol for.

Brennan fell in behind them because at this point he had witnessed blackmail, a broken finger, four buckets, and learned his ex’s ex was in some deep shit. He was in too deep to leave and too curious to want to.

The interrogation door closed behind them. Marek sat alone in the dark with a bag on his head and a broken finger and the specific silence of a man who had just dropped a bomb and was now listening for the blast.

The hallway was dim. Torches low. People arranged in a loose semicircle with expressions ranging from furious to calculating to whatever the fuck Griffin’s face was doing.

Blair opened her mouth.

Ryker cut her off with two words.

”War room.”

He said it the way a man says war room when there is no other room large enough for the shitstorm that just walked through the door. His flask was in his hand. His shirt was still inside out. His face carried the specific exhaustion of a High General who had been awake for seven hours too many and had just heard something that added seven more.