Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

Roger led them past a wall of light that climbed towards a ceiling no one in Drakencrest had the budget to imagine, and the group trailed behind in a loose column until a figure rounded the corner ahead and brightened at the sight of them.

”Young Dragon.” Octavian spread his arms wide, the Master Mage of Solveil greeting Kael the way a man greets a friend last seen across a card table. ”I had a feeling the quiet would end the moment you returned.”

Kael’s mouth tilted into the smirk that had gotten him into and out of equal trouble his whole life. ”Octavian. Tell me you missed me. Lie if you have to.”

”I rarely have to lie.” Octavian clasped Kael’s forearm, then turned towards the two crowned men and the warmth reorganized itself into something cooler and cleaner, weighed out like a measured dose. He offered them the shallow bow of formality. ”King Drakencrest. King Shadowfell.”

Maddox’s gold eyes assessed him. Nicholas gave the kind of greeting that was more inventory than courtesy, and neither king warmed, because warming was a luxury reserved for men whose wives were in the building and accounted for, and theirs was in the building and sitting with somebody else.

Behind the kings, Ryker and Sterling watched Kael receive the warmest greeting anyone in their group had gotten all evening, including from each other.

”Fun fact. We worked with that man for over a day searching for Guinevere. Side by side. In the field. Before he had ever met Kael,” Ryker commented.

”I am aware.”

”He just greeted Kael like a long lost brother and me like a coat rack.”

”He didn’t greet Brennan either,” Sterling offered.

Ryker crossed his arms, which shifted his assets slightly, seen by Octavian and Roger in the front of the group.

”They’re here for Her Majesty,” Roger explained to Octavian, hands folded behind him with the bearing of a newly promoted man who was determined to keep his professionalism and not react to the glowing spectacle.

”Ah.” Octavian’s gaze swept the odd procession, landing briefly on a glowing crotch, a pair of festive breasts, and a mage cradling a children’s toy like a talisman from a lost civilization. He chose, wisely, to comment on none of it. ”She is with King Solveil in his private courtyard. I left them only moments ago. Her light hasn’t flared once since she arrived, settling against his like water finding its level, and he is responding remarkably well to her voice.”

The calm part of that was a goddamn knife in the chest of every mate walking towards that courtyard because the calm meant she was better here.

Maddox’s dragon made a sound beneath his ribs that translated to several felonies.

”I’ll take you down myself.” Octavian was already turning. ”Follow.”

He led them off the main corridor into King Solveil’s private wing, where the architecture stopped pretending to be modest. Every surface breathed light. The floor warmed underfoot. Veins of gold threaded the white stone overhead and pulsed in a slow tide that made the whole wing feel like the inside of something alive and content.

Brennan’s head rotated to drink all of it in, a swivel slow enough to nearly unscrew him from his shoulders. ”This is beautiful. Genuinely. The lighting alone. If my chambers looked like this I would weep every morning and bill it as a spa.”

He was the only son of a bitch in the hallway with the balls to say what every single one of them was thinking.

No one answered him. The light kept glowing. He kept being the only honest man in the hall.

Octavian stopped at a door and opened it onto a sitting room, and beyond that a second door framed a wedge of courtyard where two silhouettes glowed against the dusk.

Brennan drifted towards the far door.

Ryker’s hand landed on his shoulder and reeled him back like a fish that had wandered too close to the dam. ”Easy. Let’s let them handle this one.”

”Oh, good idea.” Brennan agreed with the full-body relief of a man excused from chores. ”They do look angry.”

The observation carried. It carried across the sitting room, through the far door, and into the courtyard, where every man with a grudge received it at full volume.

DING.

The ball hit the stone and returned to Brennan’s palm, chiming into a silence that had just acquired weight.

Ryker closed his eyes a long moment. ”Inside voice, buddy.”

”That was my inside voice.”

”Then we have a bigger problem than I thought.”

The three of them peeled off into the sitting room while the kings and Kael filed toward the courtyard. Ryker dropped into a chair built from pale wood and cushions that glowed faintly along their seams. Sterling lowered himself into the one beside it with the careful choreography of a man managing injuries he refused to admit to, the ball in his trousers pulsing a cheerful violet with every adjustment. Brennan claimed the remaining seat and held his ball in his lap like a man at church.

A servant appeared in the doorway.

She was stunning, moving into the room with the easy grace of someone raised in a place where the walls applauded you for existing. ”Can I bring you anything?”

”Juice,” Brennan replied, beaming up at her. ”Please. Whatever glows the most.”

She covered her mouth and laughed, a soft and delighted thing aimed straight at the mage with the blue ball.

”Right away, cutie.”

She dipped into something like a curtsy and turned to go.

Ryker’s soul left his body for the third time tonight because Brennan was doing it again and didn’t even know he was doing it. He blinked twice. The second blink changed nothing. His eyes stayed glued to the empty doorway she’d vanished through.

”It happened again,” he informed the room.

”What did?” Sterling asked.

”Brennan’s mating call to the Luminari.”

Sterling followed Ryker’s stare to Brennan, who was turning his ball over with the serene oblivion of the truly unbothered, a man blind to the fact that he was the main course.

”Our ex-”

Ryker cut him off. ”Don’t say it.”

”It’s true.”

”I don’t see you making them laugh.”

The servant returned with Brennan’s juice. The juice glowed. The straw spiraled. There was a fruit wedge on the side of the glass. Brennan beamed.

Sterling straightened in his chair. ”I’d love one as well.”

The woman paused, glancing over at him. Her eyes landed on the glowing bulge first, then moved to the knots on his head. ”Oh you poor thing. Your head, would you like some ice for that as well?”

”That would be nice, thank you,” Sterling replied.

She straightened the pillow he was leaning on. ”Were you in a fight?”

”Something like that. I was protecting someone.”

Her eyes softened immediately.

”Sit back. Don’t move.” She held up one finger. ”If I come back and you’ve moved, I will be upset.”

”Understood.”

”Promise me.”

”I promise.”

”I’ll take a juice too,” Ryker cut in.

She tore her gaze away from Sterling to look at him. She gave a single nod with zero warmth and turned on her heel.

Ryker absorbed it. Held it. Turned it over inside his skull.

”Sterling.”

”Yes.”

”I just got customer-serviced.”

”You did not. She is just very busy.”

The woman returned forty seconds later a compress wrapped in glowing cloth and a small plate of something that looked like cookies.

She also had Sterling’s drink, glowing with a straw and a small fruit wedge on the rim along with Ryker’s, which was naked and not glowing.

”Brennan and you got glowing spirals. I got a STICK.”

”It’s a straw, Ryker.”

Ryker’s eyes moved towards the door that Maddox had disappeared down. ”Quick over-under. How many minutes before a fight breaks out?”

Before Sterling could respond, the door opened. Octavian power-walked through it like he was being chased by Satan. Zero people were behind him, which meant he had dropped them off and bailed.

”That answers that,” Ryker said, raising his stick straw in a toast.