Wolf Princess Sold to the Dragon King

Blair-O-Meter: Psycho-Bitch.

There were four levels to the Blair-O-Meter, and being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night for her idiot brother had launched her straight into the danger zone.

She had threatened to push Kael down a stairwell exactly six days ago. The universe with its fucked-up sense of humor was now making her save the bastard with her own blood.

She shoved through the door of a room she hadn’t set foot in since she was a child.

The quarters were exactly as hideous as she suspected, which was to say exactly as ugly as Maddox’s. Two brothers. One terrible aesthetic. Zero self-awareness between them. She had spent her whole life adjacent to it and it never stopped offending her.

Ox-blood leather chairs. Ugly-ass curtains. A bearskin rug with the goddamn head still attached. Blair and the rug locked eyes for a moment. Kindred spirits, the two of them. Both dead inside, both trapped in this room.

The only difference between Maddox’s and Kael’s quarters was the sheer number of books. Kael had built-in bookshelves climbing every wall, floor to vaulted ceiling. Usually the loudest man in the room was the dumbest. But Kael Ashenvale was the rare exception: the loudest man in the room was also the smartest, and he knew it.

She glanced down at him. He was lying on the bed, eyes closed, brows knit with a pained expression on his face. His skin had turned a sickly grey and his chest rose and fell in the hesitant, shallow way it did right before it threatened to quit. She wondered how someone so annoying had the nerve to look this pathetic.

Aldric knelt over him with both sleeves shoved up, magic pouring from palms into his chest. The healer hadn’t looked up when she entered.

”Congratulations, Princess, you’ll win best sibling of the year.”

”Low bar,” Blair replied, dropping into a chair beside the bed like a hostage who had accepted her fate. At least the chair was ugly enough to match her mood.

She shoved her robe sleeve up her arm. ”What did he do this time?”

”Died a little.” Aldric found her vein on the first pass and slid the needle home clean. ”The getting-better part is still pending.”

”Died a little,” Blair repeated. ”Did he tell you that?”

”He did,” Aldric confirmed.

”Dramatic per usual then,” she sighed.

She watched her blood climb the tube, dark and fast, into a vial that filled in seconds under Aldric’s grip. He capped it quickly and hooked it into Kael’s line.

Her blood started its descent toward the brother she’d sworn a week ago she’d cheerfully push down a stairwell.

Kael stirred.

His eyes cracked open a slit, because even three-quarters dead the man had radar for an audience.

”Blair.” His voice was a wreck, all gravel. ”You came. Knew you’d cave.”

He was goddamn grinning. She wanted to smack him.

”I have a thing for not filling out the paperwork when a royal dies in an ugly bedroom.” Blair kept her voice bored and her eyes on the tube. ”Don’t flatter yourself, Ashenvale. I’d donate to a houseplant if the healer asked nicely.”

His lids sank. ”I have that.”

”Have what?”

”That robe. We can match.”

”You’re delirious,” Blair informed him. ”You and I will never match.”

She reached over and flicked the line to keep it flowing, because Aldric had turned to grind something in a bowl and the flow had stuttered.

”God, my chest hurts. What’s that from?” Kael rasped.

”The dying part, allegedly,” Aldric replied over his shoulder.

”Shut up and drink my blood, you drama queen,” Blair snapped.

Aldric turned, saw the blood bringing color back to Kael’s lips, and let out the most microscopic exhale of relief. Blair noticed but did not comment. Obviously her blood was working. Kael had just been throwing a near-death tantrum and had accidentally worried the healer in the process. She would be yelling at him for that as soon as Aldric left.

”He’ll hold now,” Aldric commented. ”Barely. He’ll need Maddox’s too. But this buys us some time.”

”How much time?”

”An hour or so.”

Blair looked down at Kael, at the grey draining slowly out of his face, at the man who had been her problem for weeks and had chosen tonight of all nights to become her responsibility, and she made a decision she also intended to deny later.

”I’ll stay with him.”

Aldric didn’t argue. Arguing with a Drakencrest was a hobby for people with time.

One of Kael’s eyes cracked open, peeking.

”Staying,” he mumbled. ”For me.”

”For the paperwork.” Blair settled back in her chair. The leather creaked as she did. ”Where are your goddamn pillows? I see only two. That’s it. Also your rug is judging you.”

”His name’s Gerald.” Kael’s voice was a thread. ”Be nice. He’s family.”

”Of course you named the dead rug.”

Gerald the rug continued his silent judgment. In her mind, Blair gave him the middle finger.

”You like the chairs too?” His breath dragged. ”They match.”

Blair glanced at the brown chairs. Then the rug.

”They’re two feuding browns and you know it. One’s mud. The other is manure.”

That’s when Blair noticed the crime scene: brown comforter, brown lampshades, brown sheets, brown wall hangings, brown vase, brown nightstands. Even the goddamn candles were brown.

It dawned on her in a moment of pure, soul-crushing horror that Kael Ashenvale had tried to design this room and actually thought it looked good. He thought he was flexing right now, defending a room that consisted entirely of competing shades of shit.

”It’s called a palette, Blair. You’d have to have taste to understand, and you have opinions, which is a different thing and a lot louder.”

”You’re right, they’re loud opinions,” Blair said. ”Here’s another one, free, because you’re dying and it’s a special occasion: if you ever bring a woman in here, she’ll take one look at this room and run for her fucking life. I’m the only person who loves you enough to tell you that.”

”Hear that, Gerald?” Kael murmured. ”She said she loves me. I’ll take it.”

She rolled her eyes at the ceiling and stayed exactly where she was in a room that had somehow gotten uglier since they were children, surrounded by more books than any loudmouth had a right to own.

Some men die in glory. Some die in battle. Kael Ashenvale had chosen a bedroom decorated entirely in competing shades of shit, and Blair was expected to have feelings about it. Well, too bad. She didn’t.

She stayed for now because planning funerals was a bitch and she hated that more than she hated Kael.