Chapter 148: We Say No To That, Gramps
"You dragons are all insane." The King of Light said it standing in the entrance of a Solandris tent, surveying the drunks, the dice games, and topless women, while a glowing girl was carried through the dark by a light bearing dragon who had just told an Alpha wolf "we are going to say no to that, gramps."
To get there, we need to rewind five minutes.
Guinevere’s flame had just rejected a divine king’s claim and she wasn’t sure if it was Maddox who had done that, her subconscious, Kael somehow, or if she was losing her goddamn mind.
"She is," the King said, answering a question the room had half-forgotten was asked. "But two things are wrong. One just blocked me, that I do not recognize. The second..."
His voice trailed off, eyes narrowing a fraction.
"Dark magic sits in her but the spell and symptoms project into another. What she suffers, someone else wears. Has she or someone in her circle had a difficult time remembering things?"
Guinevere turned that statement over once, and the floor of the tent dropped out from under it, because she knew exactly whose mind had been going wrong. She looked at Kael. Kael was already looking at her. The same name landed behind both their eyes at the same second, and neither of them said it.
"No, I’m fine," she answered, voice calm.
"The dragon king has something wrong with his memories, to my knowledge," Lord Solandris said. "She will not say it to protect him, but that is the situation."
"It is not in him. It’s in her," the king said. "Very cleverly done, because if I hadn’t just pushed light through her, I would have never felt it. It’s undetectable outside of that method."
"I think you are mistaken," Guinevere said. "I hold no light. But I do appreciate you pulling that shard out of me, King of Light."
"Call me Landon." The King looked up, and the softness in him hardened at the edges as it swept the table. "That goes for her alone."
"Landon, then." Guinevere inclined her head with the polished warmth of a woman ending a dinner party she was never invited to. "Thank you for your concern. I should be on my way. My husband is looking for me as we speak, and I have no interest in keeping him worried."
"Husband," Landon repeated, as though the word had a texture he had never tasted.
"Yes. I am married. I did try telling them, repeatedly, throughout the entire abduction."
"She has been married less than three weeks," Eron corrected her sourly. "One of those weeks, the Dragon King did not know who she was."
"Yes, but nonetheless, I am still very married." Guinevere spread her hands. "I am sorry I am not the woman you are looking for, Landon. Truly. But I am certain she is out there somewhere, blessedly unabducted, wondering why nobody has come for her yet."
Landon looked down at her, and something in his radiant face went fond, the indulgent amusement of a being watching a kitten hiss at a war.
"You judge me for them." He tipped his chin at the table, at Marek. "You do not know me at all."
The warmth flooded through her again, faster this time, a tide with no interest in her opinion of it. Her flame reached up to smother it and arrived a breath too late. She blinked hard, trying to press the sensation down with will alone, unaware that her hair had gone luminous white and her eyes with it, her skin answering in a slow bloom of gold.
"Landon, I am sure you are a perfectly lovely person," she said, still blinking, still glowing like a lamp she could not find the switch for. "Perhaps next time our paths cross, it will be under circumstances involving less abduction, less dark magic, and considerably more free will."
Guinevere looked around the ring of faces watching her glow like a lamp they intended to keep, and decided the evening needed a full stop.
"For using dark magic, spying, and not apologizing," she said, not looking at anyone.
She picked up her whiskey, stood, then pitched the entire thing into Marek’s face.
The whiskey caught the white-gold light coming off her skin as it flew, so the last thing anyone saw before it hit was a glittering arc of top-shelf liquor sailing directly into Marek.
The mage sputtered, blinked, and dripped.
The tent went dead silent. A Beta, a Wolf King, two Solandris lords, a literal god of light, and a very loud light bearing dragon were frozen at the sheer sight of a girl in her pajamas baptizing a master mage.
"Now that is settled," she put the glass down on the table and took one step toward the exit.
Nobody stopped her.
She could not believe it. Genuinely could not. These people had thrown demons at her head, cuffed her in silver, read her a five-term contract at knifepoint, and now she was three feet from the flap and the entire tent had apparently decided the honor system was in effect.
Well. If they were going to be idiots about it.
She bolted.
She hit the flap at a dead sprint and burst out into the cold night of Diplomat Row, glowing head to toe, running like a woman who fully expected to be tackled in the next half-second and was delighted beyond all reason to discover she was not.
Behind her, the tent held one full second of pure, collective, whiskey-scented disbelief.
Kael was the first to recover.
"DOWN, ASHENVALE OR I WILL BURN YOU, YOU ARROGANT BASTARD."
Kael was through the flap before Eron finished the threat, following a running glowstick that had every head turning as she ran.
Renwick was running at Alpha speed with three dragons behind him.
"Daughter." His voice tore through the night. "Return. Now."
Guinevere’s muscles obeyed before her mind could vote. Kael was already ready for it, catching up to her at that moment. He hooked an arm around her waist, picking her up.
"We are going to say no to that, gramps," he called as he threw Guinevere over his shoulder.
The King of Light stepped out of the tent after them and took in the full glory of Diplomat Row: the drunks, the dice, and topless women.
"You dragons are all insane."
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