Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

Guinevere splashed water on her face and looked up at her reflection. Her reflection wasn’t alone.

She screamed.

Spun. Empty bathing chamber. Spun back.

Gone.

Her hands were shaking and her pulse was a war drum.

”I am verbally processing and am not losing my mind.”

She had woken up in the dark alone with fog in her brain and an icepack on her neck and had come to the bathing chamber to investigate. Now she was hallucinating. Fantastic. Wonderful. A real crowning achievement.

She gently pulled off the gauze that was bandaged to her neck.

Two puncture marks. Neat. Fresh. Bruised.

Between the punctures was a golden dragon mark she had been wearing since the first time she was marked. That’s when she caught movement in the background.

She glanced up.

The jester was standing behind her. It tilted its head and waved.

”To hell with that. Fuck no.” She let out a crazy-woman laugh and did not give a flying fuck because her sanity had left the building.

She closed her eyes. ”Get out of my head.”

Firm. Authoritative. The voice of a woman who was absolutely in control.

She opened her eyes.

It was gone.

She turned and went straight to the closet.

Put on a bralette because, well, priorities. She briefly considered pants. Settled on silk shorts. Cloak. Boots.

”You are scared, Gwen,” she said to herself. ”That was a hallucination. Caused by dragon venom and dark-magic-removal trauma. This is a perfectly logical reaction.”

She stood. Adjusted the cloak. Pushed open the closet door.

The thing was crouched on the ceiling, directly over the bed.

The realization came slow and then all at once: it had been watching her sleep.

It was turning her ice pack over in its fingers examining it the way a child looks at a toy they found on the ground, bells jingling softly.

Its head snapped to her, eyes narrowing, like she’d interrupted it.

Guinevere screamed so hard her voice cracked. Her hands flew to her face.

Every lamp in the chamber shattered simultaneously. Glass rained across the floor in a cascade of sparks and oil, and the room plunged into a darkness that was too thick, too fast, too hungry to be natural.

”I am verbally processing,” it said in her voice, word for word.

Using her own coping mechanism against her was a level of psychological warfare she was not prepared for.

She screamed again and ran out of the chamber doors into an empty corridor.

The guards who were always posted outside were gone. The last time the guards vanished from these posts, the Keep was under siege.

Her blood went cold. No, this was a shift change and she was rattled.

She sprinted through the hall.

”Everything is fine.” Her voice was a whisper. Her heart disagreed violently.

A small boy stepped out from a doorway.

Guinevere slowed. She didn’t recognize him.

”You are the woman they are looking for,” the little boy said.

She stopped. ”I’m sorry?”

He grinned, then started humming a lullaby that her mother used to sing.

Her hand flew to her mouth.

Then he came at her in frames. Standing in the doorway. Then six feet closer. Then three. No movement between positions. She didn’t need to see the fourth frame. Three was plenty.

She bolted.

Pure, animalistic, run-or-die speed through a Keep that suddenly felt like a collapsing room that she was trying to escape before it closed.

The hallways blurred. Left turn. Right turn. Stairwell. Landing. Every corridor was vacant. The war council had everyone she trusted occupied.

Her chest heaved. Her boots pounded stone. Her cloak streamed behind her.

She stopped at a junction. Pressed her back to the wall. Closed her eyes.

You will breathe. You will think. You will find people you know. And ideally, you will find a well-lit, padded room with a bottle of white wine and zero hallucinations.

She opened her eyes.

The hallway was clear. The torches were steady. The shadows behaved like shadows were supposed to: still, flat, and attached to the things that cast them.

She exhaled, pushed off the wall and took three steps.

The thing dropped from the ceiling, and crawled towards her backward, spine bent wrong, head rotating to keep its eyes on hers.

The scream that came out of her cracked the nearest torch sconce. She barely noticed.

Guinevere: Jaxon are you in the council meeting?

Jaxon: Yes, what’s wrong.

So calm. The question of the hour she didn’t know the answer to. She was going mad, or she was being hunted by a ceiling demon in her pajamas.

The thing moved towards her. She scrambled backwards and collided with something solid.

An arm came up. White light erupted from the palm, a concentrated pulse that hit the creature dead center and shoved it backward through the corridor like a hand sweeping crumbs off a table.

The thing shrieked. The shriek died mid-note, swallowed by the white light, and the hallway fell into ringing silence.

She spun around.

A man stood behind her. His hand was still raised, the last traces of white light dissolving from his fingers. His expression was the expression of a man who had seen worse and been annoyed by better.

”Y-you saw it too?” She was so grateful that she could cry.

”Yes, girl.”

Validation. Sweet, beautiful, third-party validation.

”You have been exposed and they will keep coming back.”

”Ex-p-posed?”

”Yes.” He lowered his hand, and his eyes moved over her with the brisk, unsentimental assessment of a field commander evaluating a soldier who had stumbled into his camp. ”You will see it until every last shard is purged, and based on what I’ve just witnessed, you have several remaining.”

Guinevere straightened.

”Thank you. I apologize for the—”

”Do you plan to apologize for being hunted, girl? Save the princess manners for the court. They are useless here.”

She closed her mouth. He had a point. She didn’t know why she did that.

He reached inside his coat and produced a letter. He held it out to her the way a man holds out medicine: without ceremony and with the clear expectation that it would be taken.

Her father’s seal.

The wax was unmistakable. The Lunaris crest, pressed deep, the wolf and crescent moon.

”I’ve been trying to get this to you without an audience.” His tone carried the impatience of a man who had been waiting for the right moment and was irritated that the right moment had involved a hallway exorcism. ”Your father is here.”

The words hit her sternum.

”My father?”

”Yes, girl. That is what I said, and I dislike repeating myself.” His eyes held hers with a steadiness that bordered on aggressive. ”His presence at this summit is unofficial. He does not wish it announced. This needs to stay confidential. Do you understand?”

”Have we met before this summit?” Guinevere looked at him, and the familiarity was there, tugging at a memory she couldn’t quite reach.

”Yes.”

He didn’t elaborate. The single word sat between them like a locked door he had no intention of opening.

Guinevere looked at the letter. Then at the hallway behind her, where the thing had been. Then at the man, who had just saved her.

She should mindlink Maddox. Or Sterling. Or Kael. Or Blair. Or literally anyone.

In theory, yes. Absolutely. The logical, responsible, well-advised thing to do was to reach through the mindlink and say: This man just blasted a shadow creature off of me in the west corridor and also my father is apparently at this summit and also I am in my pajamas.

But her father didn’t want his presence to be known. Fine. She could work with that.

Was her loyalty with Renwick Lunaris or with Maddox Drakencrest?

Her loyalty was with Maddox. Period. Full stop. No debate. But she didn’t want outright betray her father either. The two weren’t mutually exclusive.

Jaxon: Is everything alright, Guinevere?

Maybe it was bad judgment. Maybe it was the residual terror of being chased through her own home by a thing that wore children’s faces. Maybe it was the fact that this person looked very familiar and had just saved her life.

”Okay,” she said.

She pulled up her hood.

Guinevere: Yes, apologies. Everything is okay. It can wait until tomorrow.

Guinevere Drakencrest, Wife to the Dragon King, followed a stranger out of the Keep in silk pajamas, a cloak, and boots, because every decision she had made today was worse than the last and she was committed to the pattern.

Her hands were still trembling when she stepped through the outer doors.

The night air hit her face.