Chapter 56: That Is Actually Not Stupid (It Cost Him)

Five out of six people in this group were bleeding, unconscious, or carrying someone who was. Sterling was the sixth and the only reason the other five were still moving.

His blade found three fae in the undergrowth in under ten seconds. "Clear."

They continued for a few miles. The only sounds were boots, breathing, and Damon’s occasional cough, each one producing more blood than the last.

"She needs water." Maddox glanced over his shoulder at Damon. "So does he."

"Yeah." Kael didn’t slow down. "If either of them drink the water in this jungle without boiling it, they’re dead. Our fire is dead. Do the math."

Nicholas spoke from behind them. "Her flame works."

Kael stopped walking. He turned his head, looking at Nicholas over his shoulder with the expression of a man who had just been told something useful by a source he found deeply irritating.

"Noted. Her flame is still a screaming, glowing, golden dinner bell." His tone was flat. "And we have nothing to boil it in."

Nicholas’s jaw tightened. "She doesn’t need a container to boil it in. I’ve watched her flame mold to my beta without burning him."

Maddox and Kael’s heads snapped to Nicholas, who realized a second too late that was new information to both of them. Maddox recovered first, looking down at her, then ahead.

"If she can hold water in her palms and heat it," Nicholas continued. "She could purify it without a container."

Kael froze, considering it for three full seconds, which was two seconds longer than he typically gave ideas that originated from people he didn’t respect.

"That is actually not stupid." The admission sounded like it physically cost him. "Good noses. Decent instincts. Reasonable temperaments. If one could mount without it turning sexual—"

The word mount landed like a gauntlet. Nicholas’s eyes flared full gold, his wolf surging hard enough that his upper lip pulled back from his teeth. Damon matched him automatically, because bleeding didn’t excuse him from the job of backing his Alpha.

"Wolves don’t view it the way dragons do, Kael." Maddox’s tone landed like a door slamming shut.

Kael walked right through it. "Interesting. You corrected me like you’ve had this conversation with a certain wolf before." He turned back to the jungle. "Retracted. Wolves are clearly a sensitive subject. I’ll add it to the list."

Ryker saw Kael first and his blade came up. Then he saw Maddox holding Guinevere, followed by Nicholas supporting his Beta behind them.

"Stand down, Ryker." Maddox’s voice carried the weight of a command he did not enjoy giving. "He has forty-eight hours."

Ryker’s blade lowered. The motion was slow, communicating compliance without agreement, obedience without approval, and a promise that the forty-eight hours would be counted to the second.

He and the rest of the strike team had established a perimeter, blades out, backs to a rock formation that gave them a wall on one side.

Kael walked into the perimeter like he owned it. "Lovely setup. Very cozy. I’d have picked a position with two walls instead of one, but I understand you’re working with limited jungle experience. No judgment."

He surveyed the Drakencrest warriors, all of whom were staring at him with expressions ranging from murderous to confused. "Oh, stop it."

Ryker moved towards Guinevere, but halted mid-stride when Maddox’s eyes cut to him.

He understood, and the understanding was a blade he swallowed without flinching, because the man ten feet from them was watching.

Kael rolled his eyes so hard his head moved with them. "She told me you were her friend, Ryker. The cat is out of the bag on that one."

He looked around the clearing then let out a dark laugh. "Gods, the pantomime. This acting would embarrass a first-year diplomat. Maddox, you talk to her like dirt then call her ’baby’ five seconds later. Pick a lane and play the part."

"This—" Kael gestured towards the field. "—is stupid. Even if she were lower than a concubine, your men would interact with her. If she’s dead weight, give her to me. I’ll carry her and get her fever down."

Ryker didn’t look at Kael when he spoke. "Walk towards her, Kael. I dare you. You are injured, and I won’t hesitate."

"There it is. Finally some honesty." Kael gave a slow smile. "One person acknowledges she’s important. Tell me, Second, does Maddox know you’re in love with his concubine?"

"You’re fishing, Kael," Ryker replied, unperturbed. "The only thing I’m in love with right now is the idea of your forty-eight hours running out."

"Jaxon," Maddox cut in. "Check her."

The mage’s hands found her forehead. Hot. His fingers moved to her pulse. Fast. Thready. Running but running.

"She’s dehydrated past the point where the fever matters," he said, voice steady. "If she doesn’t get fluids in the next hour, her organs will start shutting down."

He pulled a waterskin from his belt. Standard issue, Drakencrest military, filled from the supply cache before the portal jump. Clean water. Safe water. The most valuable object in the jungle.

Without a word, Ryker also handed his waterskin to Nicholas for Damon.

Maddox knelt, adjusting Guinevere in his arms. "Guinevere. Eyes open. Now."

His tone was cold and detached. None of his men reacted.

Guinevere’s lids fluttered. The motion was weak, the effort of a body that had been asked to do too many things and was negotiating which requests it could still honor.

She found him. The recognition was slow, arriving in stages, her pupils adjusting.

"Drink." Maddox’s voice cracked on the word.

He tipped the waterskin back against her lips, slow and controlled.

She drank. The first swallow was reflexive, her body seizing on the moisture before her brain finished processing the source. The second was desperate. The third was the swallow of a woman who had been burning alive from the inside and had just felt something cold reach the fire.

The water moved through her like mercy. She could feel it cooling her chest, settling into the places the fever had scorched hollow. A sound came from her throat that was gratitude expressed at a frequency below language.

Maddox pulled the waterskin back before she could drink too fast. "Slow. Small sips." 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Her hand came up, shaking, and wrapped around his wrist. Her fingers barely closed. The grip was the grip of a woman holding onto the one fixed point in a world that would not stop spinning.

Maddox’s jaw tightened, and he pulled his wrist out of her grip without a word.

Her hand fell between them like a dead thing. The golden light inside her chest sputtered and she didn’t try to reach again.

Maddox mindlinked her privately.

Maddox: Gwen, Kael is watching. I’m sorry baby.

Those words weren’t enough and he knew it. Her sadness was gutting him more than the fact she was dying.

She closed her eyes, and continued sipping the water, pretending like she didn’t hear him. She understood, and hadn’t meant to grab him. It was instinct. This was a rough day for her and she knew whatever she mindlinked back would be irrational and something she didn’t mean.

Across the clearing Nicholas’s wolf surged so hard that every head swiveled to him, except for Guinevere’s.

Kael raised his eyebrows then glanced back at Maddox. "You are a dick."

"He’s keeping her alive," Nicholas said flatly. "Argue about his methods when she’s not dying."

The clearing went quiet. A wolf had just defended a dragon king’s treatment of the woman he crossed an ocean for. The logic was airtight enough that nobody, including Kael, had a rebuttal.

Without looking at Maddox, Ryker crossed the clearing. He knelt beside Guinevere, and took her hand.

"Hey, king slayer. You’re going to be fine."

Her fingers twitched against his. The gold light under her skin pulsed once, faint and warm.

"Your hand is really fucking hot though. I don’t know if you’ve heard that yet, but goddamn."

Her eyes opened a fraction. The ghost of something that, on a better day, would have been a laugh.

Then Kael’s blade came out. The motion was fast enough to stop every conversation in the clearing. His free hand rose, palm flat, the universal gesture for silence.

The ambient hum of insects and birds and wind through the canopy had stopped.

A fae boy emerged from the undergrowth, maybe thirteen, his body carrying the gangly proportions of youth. His eyes found Guinevere across the clearing. The gold light pulsing faintly beneath her skin reflected in his pupils, and his mouth opened but he didn’t move or say anything. It looked like he didn’t understand.

Kael’s blade moved without his body turning, without his eyes leaving the treeline, without a single tell that preceded the stroke. The cut was lateral, clean, and the boy’s head left his shoulders before the sound of the blade reached the ears of anyone watching.

The body stood for one full second. Then it folded.

The head rolled twice and settled in the moss, augmented eyes still open, still reflecting gold.

Then it did something no one was expecting. Gold light poured from the mouth like molten honey, crawling across the moss toward Guinevere.

Kael’s boot slammed down on it so hard the skull cracked like an egg. The gold sputtered against his sole then burned black at the edges. It died making a sound no one in the clearing wanted to hear twice.

Nobody spoke. The silence after the kill was different from the silence before it. This one belonged to men processing what they had just witnessed and arriving at different conclusions about the man who had done it.

Ryker’s mouth opened. Kael spoke first.

"Don’t."