Fin’s laugh was ice-cold. "Say that again. Slower. So I can count exactly how many lies just left your mouth."

"You’re right. I was completely out of line, and I owe her a proper apology." Guinevere pressed a hand to her chest. "Truly, Cousin. I mean it."

"I love you, Guinevere. You’re family." Fin’s voice dropped. "But if you go behind my back on Serena, I will burn every bridge between us and watch you choke on the ashes."

"You know, Finnick, you do have an awful lot of rules."

Fin leaned back in his chair, one arm draped over the armrest. Unimpressed.

"You’ve got thirty seconds before I kick you out. Clock is ticking."

"I want to apologize to Serena. Face-to-face. That’s it." She spread her hands, palms up.

"She’s in Drakenfell."

"Then I’ll wait for her to come back."

"Every single door that leads to Serena Frostborne now goes through me." His words cracked like a whip. "When she comes back, if she wants to see you, you will apologize in my presence. You will not approach her unless I am there. Are we clear?"

"Crystal clear, Alpha."

She left his study with perfect posture and a plan.

STEP ONE: wait for the guard rotation. Forty minutes later she stood in front of his chamber doors.

She slipped through the door without a sound. The room smelled like cedar, iron, and that girl. The omega. The scent was everywhere, saturated into every surface. An invasion of her nasal passages. She breathed through her mouth. Adaptation was key.

STEP TWO: dig up evidence.

"Everyone has dirty laundry, Serena. What’s yours?"

She started with the closet larger than most bedrooms.

Fin’s side was exactly what she expected. Dark tunics. Formal coats. Training leathers. Everything pressed, hung at even intervals, and organized with the precision of a man who ran a kingdom the same way he ran a closet. Efficient. Controlled. Boring.

Then she moved to the other side.

Three pairs of riding boots in different shades of leather. A shelf of folded chemises, each one softer than the last.

Dresses. A lot of them. She counted. Then she counted again because the first number offended her. Fifty-three.

Fifty-three dresses for a woman who wore training suits. Fin had filled half his wardrobe with clothes for a girl who didn’t even want them, and that, more than anything Guinevere had seen tonight, made her want to set this room on fire.

Guinevere’s hand stopped on a sage-green gown with gold stitching. She pulled it out. Held it up. It was exquisite. Custom. The next. Ivory silk. Hand-beaded. Worse. More expensive.

"You’ve got to be kidding me, Finnick."

She went through the pockets of Fin’s coats next. Left breast pocket of his formal jacket: nothing. Right: a pressed flower. Small. White. Tucked between two squares of parchment to keep it flat. The kind of thing a man kept because a woman had handed it to him.

Guinevere stared at it for three full seconds, her expression cycling through disgust, disbelief, and something dangerously close to jealousy before settling on contempt.

"A flower. He kept a flower. Finnick Shadowclaw, Alpha King, keeps a pressed flower in his coat like a lovesick page boy." She put it back. "Revolting."

She moved to the vanity. Serena’s side of it was sparse. A brush that didn’t look used. No perfumes, cosmetics, creams or anything that indicated the girl was living in luxury.

That was annoying.

"Where is the dirt, Serena?" She opened a small drawer. Socks. Another drawer. Undergarments. Lace. Silk. Nothing outrageous. Where is the scandal? Damning correspondence. Love letters. Something. Anything.

"Give me one vaguely incriminating item."

The omega’s belongings had the personality of a monk’s quarters and the scandal potential of a library card.

Then she saw the nightstand.

A necklace. Small. Gold chain. Crescent moon pendant.

Guinevere put it on. She pressed it flat with two fingers and checked her reflection in the dark window glass.

The girl had two mates and two kingdoms. One necklace was nothing. The math was fair.

"I think I will keep this, thank you." She adjusted the chain. "You can continue to fuck your way for more."

She turned back to the room. Swept it one final time with her eyes. Not a single piece of usable leverage anywhere in this entire, infuriatingly wholesome collection of belongings.

The omega didn’t have dirty laundry.

The omega had clean laundry, folded laundry, and the most aggressively boring personal inventory Guinevere had ever audited.

Two mates. Two kingdoms. Zero exploitable flaws.

She huffed loudly at the fundamental injustice.

"Fine. Plan C."

✦✦✦

"Serena Frostborne Drakenfell."

She jumped, hand flying to her chest.

"The deal was you were to stay in bed this morning." Gav gave her a flat look. "I warned Dex. If we put the scrolls in the room with her, she will not be able to help herself. And shocker, I catch you with your hand in the cookie jar."

Serena’s guilty face was the least convincing display of innocence since Agnes’s formal apology. Both involved eye contact and neither involved remorse.

"I can’t sleep. And I feel fine, Gav. We are running out of time. And don’t you want to know if I can even read it?"

He crossed his arms, leaning against the doorframe. "By all means. Don’t stop on account of me."

Her fingertips made contact with the edge of the scroll. It pulsed pink once under her hand. It warmed as though it had been waiting a very long time to be touched by the right person.

Lines of text appeared with a voice that filled the room.

To the water, child of the white flame. Below the surface, seventy feet, where the light ends. A dragon sleeps in stone. On its head, what was left for you. You will not be given a second invitation.

The voice stopped. Gav looked at the scroll. Then at Serena. Then at the scroll again. His face said ’no’ before his mouth caught up.

The air split open, pink and gold light bleeding through a seam in reality. As soon as the portal formed, it started to die, shrinking like a held breath being released.

"Don’t."

Serena ran. Silk robe, camisole, shorts, and slippers.

"GOD DAMN IT, SERENA."

Gav had exactly one second to decide between staying in a safe room and following his princess into an ancient magical doorway.

He swore, diving through behind her.

The portal collapsed with a louder-than-usual crack the instant his boot cleared the edge. It sounded like a door slamming shut on his options. Because it was.

Black sand stretched in every direction under a full moon.

"Here we go. Void Glass Dunes again. You are horrible at following instructions."

This location meant her gold magic wouldn’t work. They were in Orosia and the last time they were here, Serena got sucked into a lake.

A low grinding sound rolled under their feet and the ground shook. Not an earthquake. Something underneath them was moving.

"Gav...." she breathed, grabbing his arm.

"What the..."

Twenty feet in front of them a large black object emerged from the sand like a creature surfacing from deep water. Obsidian pillars rose first, then the roof, then the wide black steps, sand sheeting off every surface in dry, hissing waterfalls.

"A temple," Serena said, not looking away from it. "Hyran is going to be so upset he missed this."

"Don’t tell me where-"

Serena was already moving.

"Of course we are. Why would I even ask that?" Gav’s legs started following her before his brain gave them permission.

She entered first. It was dark for one second. Then every surface exploded in gold script. Like the temple was speaking to her in a frequency beneath language.

The gold script on the walls moved when she moved. She stopped. It stopped. She took a step. It rippled outward from her position like a heartbeat traveling through stone. The temple was tracking her.

Gav moved inside next to her. The second he did the floor dropped. No warning. One second stone, the next, nothing. Serena grabbed Gav and tried to fabricate a bridge then a parachute but nothing came.

She braced for impact.

It didn’t come.

Her back hit stone that shouldn’t have been beneath her. The wall was the floor now. The ceiling was where the door had been. The door was gone. The temple had rearranged itself around them like a box turning inside out.

Gav lay beside her, breathing like he had just sprinted a mile. "Great start. Love the vibe in here. Very welcoming."

Then the sound of running water erupted from the walls. And in the span of two seconds, the room began to fill.

It turned pink as soon as it touched her slipper. It was warm, but not comforting warm. Bathwater-that’s-been-sitting-too-long warm.

By twenty seconds it was at her waist. At thirty seconds, the water hit her chin. By forty-five seconds, the ceiling was close enough to touch.

"This is filling very fast, Serena. If you have a plan, now would be the time." His voice was calm. His heart rate was not. The gap between the two was widening at the same speed as the water level.

"I’m working on it. Be patient."

"Take your time, Serena. We have all the time in the world"

She grabbed Gav. Pink light exploded from her palms.

A bubble of air formed around both of them, holding the water back. They fell to the stone, through the pocket of air she’d carved from the surface to the ceiling.

"Fuck that was tall. And since when can you do that?" Gav sputtered.

"Right now. Apparently."

He dragged a hand down his face. "Alright. Talk to me, Frostborne. What can you do?"

"I can make a pink portal back to the front of the temple. I think. But there’s a chance the temple disappears."

"What do you see in here? Usually you’re glowing and possessed right about now."

The look she gave him was worth a thousand words, and every single one of them was a profanity.

Gav raised both hands. "Observation. Not criticism."

"The only exit is across the room. And I am not sure if it’s an exit."

She grabbed his hand. He looked down at it. The argument he had in his mouth died on contact.

"Hold your breath, Gav."

She let the air pocket collapse. The water closed over them.