Chapter 70: Is She A Dragon, Mommy? — Shh, Honey.
RULE 1: Walk into every room like you’ve already fucked everyone in it and they should be grateful.
Renwick Lunaris said that to Cassian once, before a treaty summit when Guinevere was eight and always listening. He also told Cassian that lessons weren’t yours unless you took them.
Fast forward twelve years, Guinevere Lunaris found herself in a negotiation.
The wards hit her the second she entered the throne room. It felt like a weight pressing against her chest and she couldn’t feel her wolf.
The throne sat on a raised dais at the far end. A singular throne. No second chair. Not even a stool. The architectural rejection was thorough.
RULE 2: Keep your legs moving and your face shut. Flinch and they’ll fuck you standing.
The hostages were on their knees chained on the sides of the throne room. Guinevere had seen the same setup in Lunaris. The only difference was their hands were bound behind their backs with dragon iron chain instead of silver. Several were bleeding.
Armed guards stood at intervals around the perimeter.
Ryker was on his knees at the front, a blade pressed against his throat by a man counting down from ten. His wrists were bound behind him with chain thick enough to anchor a ship. Whoever had restrained him had done so with the enthusiasm of someone who had tried a lighter chain first and learned their lesson.
Ryker’s eyes moved from Guinevere to Blair to the box. Back to Guinevere. His expression settled on something that, in a less restrained man, would have been ’you cannot be serious.’
"She’ll show. Grab a child," the man counting said in High Vhenarri, a dead language.
One that her father had made her learn at six years old.
RULE 3: A man talking shit in a language he thinks you can’t understand is whacking his dick like nobody’s home. He doesn’t think you’re watching. Let him finish. Then answer him in it. Watch him try to force his dominance back while his dick is still caught in his zipper.
Guinevere opened her mouth, speaking the same tongue.
"That won’t be necessary."
Every head in the room turned towards her. The man holding the blade to Ryker’s throat looked at her like she was a church girl who just walked into a drug compound and demanded a cut of the turf.
The figure at the center of the room stepped forward. He was dressed in black leather that carried no banner and no insignia.
He studied her for three full seconds. Then he spoke in Vel’khari, a trade tongue that had been dead for two centuries.
He gave his orders casually, the way a man orders a drink. "Seal the doors. Kill the dark-haired woman. The white-haired one is our target."
Two guards moved toward the doors. One drew his blade and turned toward Blair.
Guinevere responded in the same tongue.
"Are you sure you want to do that?"
Eight words. Same dead language. The look on his face was worth every miserable hour she had spent conjugating Vel’khari verbs at nine years old while other children played.
The man stopped. His pale eyes narrowed. The amusement that entered his expression was the kind reserved for things that were supposed to be predictable and had just become interesting.
He switched to Draethic. The oldest of the dead tongues, pre-wolf, pre-dragon, a language that had originated on neither continent and survived only in temple archives and the private libraries of obsessive kings.
"The ward stones will fall within the hour. When they do, the dampening field expands to the outer Keep. We hold this room until they arrive. She’s early, but she will come with us—"
Guinevere cut him off mid-sentence in Draethic.
"Try a new one. You’re zero for three."
The room went silent. The six guards exchanged glances. The hostages stared. Ryker’s eyebrows climbed so high they nearly left his face.
The man switched to the common tongue. "Alright, you have my attention. How does a wolf princess from Nyros end up fluent in three dead tongues?"
The answer was: a childhood with no friends, unlimited library access, and spite.
RULE 4: If you have nothing, make the bastard move three times. Demand the table. He’ll laugh, that’s one. Then he’ll swing, that’s two. Don’t react to either. He’ll swing again harder, that’s three. Now you have his playbook.
"What needs to happen for every person in this room to walk out of it?" she asked.
He laughed. The sound bounced off the obsidian and came back hollow.
"You want to talk terms? Let’s talk inventory first. No flame. No shift. No weapons you brought yourself. No army. No king. One friend with a box." He counted on his fingers. "That’s six problems and zero solutions, sweetheart. But please. Continue."
His hand moved. The blade left his fingers so fast the air whistled.
Guinevere spun. Her right hand closed around the hilt mid-rotation, catching the blade one inch from her ribs. The spin completed, her body facing him, his own blade now in her hand.
The room held its breath.
Without reacting or looking away from her, he began barking orders in Setharii, a tongue spoken exclusively by military command for operational security.
"The wards should be suppressing all wolf abilities. Shifting, speed, reflexes. How is she still moving at that velocity? Check the ward anchors. And where is Lieutenant Voss?"
Guinevere understood every word. This man had just given her his playbook.
And he was either ignorant or that was a slip, because Ryker and any high-ranking officer in the room would absolutely know that language too.
RULE 5: After he shows his playbook, mirror it back to him. Then wait. Watch him repeat the exact same moves without realizing it. Congrats. You now own that motherfucker.
She was going to keep her new blade, thank you. But she had something better to mirror back to him.
She lifted her hand without looking behind her. Palm up. Lazy. The gesture she had seen her father use a hundred times in his own throne room when he wanted something brought to him. The gesture of a ruler who expected compliance and did not watch to see if it arrived.
Blair, thank every god in both hemispheres, understood.
The box opened. The head rolled out. Blair made a sound that was technically a gag and functionally a prayer.
Guinevere kicked the head directly at the man. He caught it like a ball, on instinct, freezing for two full seconds before his brain actually caught up to what he was holding.
Perfect. Time to mirror back the verbal spar he threw earlier.
"He’s here," she said in the common tongue. Then she switched to Setharii, the language he had used to give orders he assumed she could not understand. "Your wards are in shambles outside. Your Lieutenant says hello. And your operational language isn’t operational anymore. Your move."
He looked down at it. His face cycled. Shock hit first, followed by disgust. Outrage came next with a flush climbing up his neck that said this loss was personal. Then his features cleared, landing on intrigue.
He set the head down on the arm of the throne.
Then he pulled a second blade and threw it straight at Blair.
Repeat move. Right on schedule.
Guinevere moved. Her left hand, the non-dominant one, came up and caught the blade by the hilt. The catch was clunky. Her wrist turned a half-second too late, and the hilt rotated in her palm before she locked it down. In a training yard, the instructor would have docked points. In a throne room full of hostages, the turn that preceded it had looked flawless, and the half-second delay was invisible to everyone who was watching because the flourish of the spin covered the fumble.
The man clapped. "Four tongues. One of them pre-continental. Two blade catches. What else are you hiding?"
A fever. A broken heart. A best friend holding an empty candle box behind her.
RULE 6: Power is a costume. Always has been. That’s the whole fucking game. If they believe the bulge, they won’t check what’s actually hanging.
"Take another step and you’ll find out exactly what I’m hiding." Both blades in Guinevere’s hands ignited. She did not do it on purpose or even know it was possible. She rolled with it.
Behind her, Blair hissed, "When the fuck did you learn that?"
Ryker’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
Every eye in the room was on her.
Perfect.
She held the blades in a crossed guard position, low, one angled left, one angled right. Her stance was Nicholas’s. The face was Renwick. The inner-bitch was all her.
No one would have suspected that this was her first time holding dual blades.
The room was getting a show, and she sold it.
A woman with no training, no army, no plan past ’walk in,’ sold a roomful of killers on the idea that she was dangerous.
She was dangerous. Just not in the way they thought.
A child in the front row of hostages tugged on his mother’s sleeve and whispered, loud enough for half the room to hear, "Is she a dragon?"
His mother pulled him closer and did not correct him.
