Chapter 693: That’s My Best Friend, You Fuck

Gavriel charged.

His green-wrapped blade arced toward the Dark Fae’s neck. The swing was fast, trained, carrying the muscle memory of a man whose combat scores had been the highest in his graduating class.

The Dark Fae dodged. Smooth. Effortless. His body moving with a fluidity that said he had been fighting Fae opponents for longer than Gavriel had been alive and had stopped finding their speed impressive several decades ago.

Gavriel adjusted. Swung again. Horizontal. Low. Aiming for the ribs.

Dodged.

Third swing. Overhead. Both hands on the hilt. Full power, green magic blazing along the blade so bright the storm clouds reflected emerald.

The Dark Fae lifted one hand. Dark magic wrapped Gavriel’s blade, coiled around the steel, and RIPPED it from his grip. The sword tumbled into the clouds and vanished.

Gavriel’s hands were empty.

He lifted his palms. Willed the green to do something. Anything. A blast. A bolt. A concentrated beam of Fae energy aimed at the smug son of a bitch standing twelve feet from him. He had seen Serena’s pink do this. He had seen Maelor’s green do this. He had seen Hyran throw gold at things with enough force to crack walls.

His green magic hummed. Acknowledged the request. Considered it.

And declined.

Nothing happened. His palms glowed green and the green did nothing except glow. It wrapped his hands and his arms and his body and every dragon on the goddamn battlefield, but the one thing he needed it to do right now, in this moment, on this dragon, with this enemy, was the one thing it had decided was outside its current operating parameters.

Protective magic. That was what his green understood. It protected. It shielded. It wrapped things in containment fields and absorbed detonations and kept people alive. Offensive output was a department it had never staffed.

The Dark Fae laughed.

The laugh was rich. Genuine. The laugh of a man who had just watched his opponent cycle through every option and arrive at an empty register.

"I can feel your emotions, boy. That is how Fae magic works. You are afraid. You are frustrated. You are reaching for a weapon your magic is refusing to become." He stepped closer. "You have no idea how to control it, do you? All that power and no hands on the wheel. A river with no banks. I could drown you in your own magic and you would thank me for the lesson."

The Dark Fae raised both palms. Dark magic pooled between his fingers, dense enough to warp the air around it, the energy building toward a blast that was going to be the last thing Gavriel’s green could absorb.

"Any final words, boy? I will grant you that courtesy. Professional respect between—"

THUD.

Dexmon Drakenfell landed on the storm dragon’s back like a missile with a grudge.

He hit the scales between Gavriel and the Dark Fae at a velocity that cracked three of them on impact, his boots driving fractures through ancient dragonscale, a blade already in his hand that was older than the dragon beneath them and carrying a gold light that burned so hot the rain evaporated before it reached the steel.

The Blade of the First Dragon King. The weapon that had been forged in dragonfire and cooled in the blood of kings and had been given to him by Serena.

The Dark Fae’s palms were still raised. The dark magic was still building. The blast was still forming.

None of that mattered because Dexmon was already swinging.

The blade caught the Dark Fae across the chest. The cut was diagonal, left shoulder to right hip, delivered with the full-body rotation of an Alpha whose combat training had started at age four and whose combat instincts had been refined by a ten-thousand-year-old king living in his body for two days.

The First Dragon King’s blade did what regular steel could never do. It cut through the dark magic the way sunlight cuts through fog, the enchantments on the metal older and stronger and meaner than anything the Dark Fae’s body was running, and the cutting was total.

The Dark Fae looked down at his own chest. The expression on his face was the expression of a man whose calculations had been perfect and whose calculations had failed to account for a variable that arrived from above at terminal velocity carrying a weapon forged before his magic was invented.

"Get away from my best friend, you fuck."

Dexmon said it after the kill. The words were postscript. The blade had delivered the message and the mouth was handling the footnote. Six words, carrying zero dramatic timing and maximum sincerity, spoken by a man whose best friend had been twelve feet from dying and whose response to that proximity had been to jump off his dragon without a plan and arrive with a sword and an opinion.

The Dark Fae’s body hit the scales. Then slid off the dragon and fell into the clouds below, the dark magic dissolving from his flesh as he dropped, the corruption dying with the host the way fire dies without fuel.

Gone.

Dexmon stood on the storm dragon’s back, blade at his side, rain hammering his face, chest heaving. His gold eyes found Gavriel.

Gavriel was on one knee. Blood still running from his nose. Green magic still wrapped around him, dimmer than before, the containment field across the battlefield flickering at the margins. He looked up at Dexmon with an expression that was carrying too many things to name and was choosing to name none of them.

"Thanks," Gavriel panted. The word was inadequate and they both knew it and neither of them was going to acknowledge the inadequacy because acknowledging it required a conversation that belonged in a room with whiskey and locked doors and the absence of a storm.

Dexmon gave a single nod. The nod was acceptance and dismissal and you’re welcome compressed into a gesture that lasted half a second.

He knelt, eyes glowing gold. The corruption from the dragon under them faded as its eyes glowed gold to answer.

Then Gavriel’s face changed.

The gratitude shifted. Something else surfaced behind it, heavier, older, carrying the weight of volcano chambers and ancestor fire and a matebond he had been holding in silence the way a man holds a grenade whose pin is already pulled.

"Dex. I need to tell you something."