Chapter 98: Mine. Still Mine. Always Mine. (THOOM.)
Everyone leaned forward, holding their breath. Ryker looked up. Then fixed his face to neutral.
When he broke the wax and unfolded the parchment, he kept the seal hidden under his palm. That told Maddox two things. One: Ryker recognized something. Two: Ryker did not want him or the room recognizing it yet. Both facts were filed and neither was forgotten.
Ryker read it quickly. Whatever was on that page, his face gave nothing more to the room until he folded the parchment and tucked it into his coat. That’s when his face hardened. The man who flipped coins and had been using finger guns lately for some reason unknown to Maddox, had vacated the premises. The shift was tectonic.
The events that followed would be classified, redacted, reclassified, and then burned. In that order.
"By order of the High General, you are under arrest for treason, seditious conspiracy, and acts of espionage against the forty dragon houses and the Drakencrest Crown."
Five hundred mouths fell open. A rider in the fourth row said, "Oh, FUCK yes." Loud enough for his wife to elbow him. A few smiles broke through the jaw drops. The expressions ranged from thank-gods-I-came to I-hope-he-resists.
Dragons at their finest.
Ryker kept reading. Each charge landed heavier than the last, stacking like stones on a man’s chest. Conspiracy to undermine sovereign intelligence. Unauthorized communication with hostile foreign entities. Violation of the Accord of Forty Houses, Article Nine, Subsection Three.
Guards moved through the crowd in formation with the kind of coordination that said standing arrest protocols were built into every event. Dragon lords watching tried to not look impressed, but Maddox saw.
The prisoner held out his wrists, complying and completely calm. The posture of a prisoner who had expected this or a man who had already planned past it. Ryker’s hand twitched. His only tell. Maddox translated it without looking: his High General would not hesitate to cremate this motherfucker.
Full warded dragon-iron cuffs blocked all magic and dragon strength, shift, and flame. The guard locked the first wrist with a click that echoed off the stone.
The second cuff was in the guard’s hand when the prisoner twisted, snapping the guard’s wrist then his neck before the pain hit his body. With one cuff already on, his speed and strength shouldn’t have been possible. That guard was also a full-blown dragon with a shift.
The guard’s body dropped before the snapping sound of his neck registered in the hall.
The next sound was Blair screaming.
Iron links wrapped around his sister’s throat, biting into skin, cutting air. Her hands caught his arm, fingers trembling, clawing, trying to shove it off. Her face went red in under a second.
The traitor had moved faster than any mage Maddox had seen, and faster than 90% of dragons with a shift. The kind of fast that rewrites what you think a body can do and makes you recalculate every threat assessment you’ve run in the last decade.
Blair’s scream was choked into silence.
Gold flame roared around both of them, engulfing the man from every angle, swallowing him in a blaze that should have cooked the meat off his bones.
Unlike earlier, he showed zero reaction to it. The flame blazed brighter around him. But he stood in the center of it like it was rain.
Maddox’s voice dropped into the Draconic register. "Release her."
The chain did not loosen. The man did not flinch. The command rolled off him the way Guinevere’s flame had, which meant this was not a dragon, wolf, mage, or anything nature intended dragon law to rule. The room had a much bigger problem than treason.
"One move from anyone and I open her neck ear to ear," the traitor hissed, lips brushing Blair’s hair. "I want every guard to drop their weapon. I want every exit cleared. And I want the Dragon King to look me in the eye and know that everything he just found tonight, he’s about to lose." He yanked the chain tighter. "NOW."
Maddox didn’t wait. He raised his hand. One gesture. Every guard in the hall lowered their weapons. Every exit cleared. No hesitation. No negotiation. His sister’s life was worth more than his pride, and pride could be collected later with interest.
His voice was calm. "Done. Now take that off my sister."
"Flame-bearer." The word was aimed at Guinevere like a blade that had been sharpened before tonight. "Remove the gold from everyone. Now. You are going to join us. If you try anything, I will kill her. Believe me or don’t, that is your gamble."
The gold wrapping every person in the hall extinguished simultaneously. Five hundred bodies went dark like someone had blown out the sun.
The woman who had been quietly overwhelmed by her own flame, hiding it behind a composure she thought was working and Maddox had seen through ten minutes ago, was gone. What replaced her was furious, and she wasn’t bothering to hide that from anyone.
She didn’t look at him for help or pause for even a second.
Maddox’s mind split into two tracks and both were running at full speed. Track one was his sister, chain on her throat, air running out, every second he stood here doing nothing costing her oxygen she could not get back. Track two was the woman who had just killed his flame on command for a stranger because Blair’s life mattered more to her than her own safety, and she was about to walk toward the man holding the chain like that was an acceptable outcome.
He was already mapping the room. Thirty feet to Blair. Twelve to Guinevere. Four guards close enough to act, all of them disarmed because he had ordered it. Kael was behind him and to the left. Ryker across the hall. Sterling was somewhere in the back, and Sterling in the back of a room was more dangerous than most men at the front of one.
He had options. Every single one of them risked Blair’s throat.
She closed the distance. Fifteen feet. Ten. Five.
CRACK.
The second she was within arm’s reach, the dragon iron around Blair’s throat cracked in half. Guinevere grabbed her by both arms and ripped her forward out of his grip with a strength that had no business living inside a frame that small.
They hit the ground together. The gold roared back to life across the hall, covering every person.
Three men moved at the same time. One target. Maddox arrived first. Dragon King speed. He closed thirty feet before Ryker finished his first stride and before Kael cleared his second. His hands found the man’s skull. One twist. The head was separated from its body.
Ryker hauled Blair and Guinevere off the ground by their arms. Maddox caught Guinevere mid-pull, ripping her from Ryker’s grip and crushing her back against his chest hard enough that her shoes left the stone.
Then he turned her away from the body, putting his back to it. That was not the first date image he was going for.
He pressed his mouth to her head.
Mine. Still mine. Always mine.
THOOM.
Dark magic erupted from the body, blasting Maddox off his feet along with everyone in the room.
