Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

”Commander, you arrested the future High Queen of Velkaris without her legal representation,” Blair stated, and her voice hit the room at a register that was equal parts courtesy and murder. ”You transported her across sovereign borders in restraints. You processed her without counsel present. You interrogated her without an advocate in the room. And you are now standing in your own station telling her legal team that OUR entry is the criminal offense worth discussing.”

She took one step forward. One.

”We can spend the rest of the evening talking about wards. I would love that. I have time and I have opinions and I promise you, Commander, you do not want to hear all of them.” She tilted her head by one degree. ”Or we can acknowledge that the Seventh Amendment of the Luminari Charter of Justice guarantees immediate counsel access to any sovereign detainee, that your twelve-hour window for pre-trial discovery began the moment she was processed, and that you are currently six hours into that window with zero documents filed and zero counsel admitted. Which means you are the one out of compliance. Not us.”

The station was quiet. The officer behind the counter had stopped breathing. Octavian’s lips pressed together in the specific compression of a man holding back something that would end a professional relationship.

Veyron looked at her. His jaw worked once. The work was the work of a man running the math on the argument she had just made and finding no errors in it, which was worse than finding errors because errors could be exploited and accuracy could only be conceded.

”Fine,” he said. ”Follow me.”

He turned and walked toward the corridor behind the intake desk. Octavian followed. The five of them fell in behind. They had just won the first round and were choosing to be gracious about it, which from this group meant nobody said a word for approximately four seconds.

They passed through a processing area.

Blair’s eyes found them first. Crystal plates arranged on a shelf behind a workstation. Glowing. Each one contained an image captured in light, suspended in the crystal like a photograph frozen in amber.

Mugshots.

”Brennan, look at this,” Blair breathed before catching herself. Her mouth closed. She blinked. The name had come out on reflex because Brennan was now the person she narrated her discoveries.

Her eyes moved across the crystal mugshots. Each face was captured in perfect clarity, the light-based imaging producing a fidelity that made portrait paintings look like cave drawings.

She clapped.

One clap. Sharp. Involuntary. The sound bounced off the corridor walls and Veyron’s shoulders rose by half an inch without him turning around.

Brennan looked at the mugshots. Looked at the crystal plates. His eyes went wide, the kind of wide that happens when he encounters technology he wanted to take apart and put back together and possibly steal.

”Blair,” he whispered from behind her. ”The imaging is crystal-based. No paint. No sketch artist. One pulse and it captures a full likeness.”

”I know,” she whispered back.

They both clapped at the same time. The synchronized crack echoed down the corridor like a gunshot with good intentions.

Veyron stopped walking. He did not turn around. His back was to them and his spine was very straight and his hands were clasped behind him and the clasping was doing the job his mouth wanted to do.

Octavian glanced over his shoulder at the two people clapping at his kingdom’s criminal processing technology with the delight of tourists at an exhibition, and the look on his face carried the specific exhaustion of a man who was beginning to realize that the woman in the cell and the woman in the corridor had more in common than a legal relationship.

They continued walking. Blair’s eyes found the fingerprint station next. The glowing plates. The crystalline interface. The residual light from a recent scan still fading on the surface of the eighth plate in a row of eight, which was four more plates than any station should need for one person and Blair filed that information without comment.

Her hands came together again.

”Princess,” Damon said, catching her wrist gently before the clap could land. ”We are in a police station. Representing a prisoner. In front of the man prosecuting her.”

Blair looked at him. Looked at the fingerprint station. Looked at the eight plates.

”Fine,” she conceded. ”But we’re coming back to this.”

”After the discovery,” Damon said.

”During.”

”After.”

Veyron opened a door at the end of the corridor and held it. The room beyond was windowless, lit by a single overhead fixture, furnished with a table and chairs and the permanent aroma of conversations that nobody wanted to have.

”You will wait here,” Veyron said. ”Your client will be brought to you.”

He closed the door behind them.

Beta Draven looked at the table. Looked at the chairs. Pulled one out and sat with the unhurried composure of a man who had sat in worse rooms for worse reasons and had walked out of every single one of them.

”Well,” he said. ”That went better than I expected.”

???

LUMINARI PRISON — MAXIMUM SECURITY YARD

The guard appeared while Guinevere was reading the last Chapter of the merchant’s journey. The merchant had just opened the door inside the mountain and found a room full of mirrors, each one showing a version of himself he hadn’t met yet, and thirty-one inmates were holding their breath.

”Drakencrest. Ashenvale. You have visitors.”

Guinevere looked up from the book. Looked at the guard. Looked at the thirty-one men sitting on stone in concentric rows who were now looking at the guard with the collective hostility of an audience whose show had just been interrupted by management.

”Can she finish the Chapter first?” the tax evader asked from the second row.

”No.”

”It’s four pages,” Kael said from the back wall, arms crossed, vine still on his shoulder. ”You’re going to make thirty inmates angry over four pages.”

The guard looked at the yard. Thirty faces stared back at him. Some tattooed. Some scarred. All of them deeply invested in what was behind the door inside the mountain and none of them pleased about the interruption.

”Two minutes,” the guard said.

She finished the Chapter. The merchant stepped through the mirror and found himself standing on a shore he had never seen, holding a compass that pointed in every direction at once. She closed the book on that image and let the silence hold for two seconds because she understood pacing and endings and the difference between a stop and a pause.

”I’ll be back,” she said to the yard.

”You better,” the old man from the bar said, adjusting his position on the stone like a man settling in for a wait he was willing to endure.

She set the book on the bench. The two gang leaders immediately stood up, crossed the yard, and sat beside it with their arms crossed like bouncers guarding a VIP section that contained one piece of literature.

Kael watched the men assume custody of a library book with the territorial energy of cartel bosses protecting a shipment and decided this was the most functional prison on any continent.

The guard led them through two corridors, down a staircase that did not play music because Guinevere’s cuffs had been warded with something stronger since the last walk.