Chapter 270: Sure Guinevere You Sleep-Stripped

The Master Mage was wrong. He had to be wrong. Because if he was right, then she had a fated mate she didn’t remember and, worse, she was hurting someone she wanted to protect.

"I would be happy to provide resources and instruction," Octavian replied. "But your light needs King Solveil’s to stabilize. You cannot do it without him and it will take several days at minimum. The dark magic is so deeply embedded in your light channels that education alone is insufficient. Every time your light surges, the infection feeds on the excess energy and grows."

"What will the King of Light do?" she asked, keeping her face neutral enough to play poker with.

"You are his fated bond. When you first met him, his light entered you. Earlier this week, that is. He found dark magic then, but there was clearly some dark magic that he missed."

He delivered the news like a guy telling you the sky is blue right before walking away from an impending explosion.

Behind her, Kael’s emotions shifted. The anxiety was still there, but something harder moved underneath it. She felt it land in her chest before she could name it. Possessiveness, but not the kind she’d felt from him before. This was darker.

Guinevere blinked three times. If Kael was her chosen mate, then Nicholas had to be her fated. It was one of them without question. She was certain of it.

Nicholas, the man her wolf gravitated towards for some reason. The king who wouldn’t look at her in that council chamber but had come up to her chambers to personally apologize. He went out of his way to do that and she appreciated it.

But she was certain that something happened after he apologized. Her mind was fog for some reason but it felt really fucking important. She couldn’t shake it.

One thing at a time.

"King Solveil sounds like a fine ruler of your people," she said. "But I think you are mistaken that I am his fated mate. I’m not the woman you are looking for, but I appreciate your flattery."

The silence was so loud she could hear the torches burn.

Her wolf chose this time to chime in.

We mated with mate.

Her blood ran cold. Absolutely not. She would remember something like that. Wouldn’t she?

Nicholas? Is that who we mated with?

No, her wolf was meaning Kael, right? Wrong. Her wolf corrected the record.

We mated with the wolf king too. He is our fated mate.

Her wolf stayed silent through a cloud-landing and hallucination-ghosts, and the thing she chose to break her silence with was ’by the way, we fucked the wolf king.’

"The Young Dragon’s light is also dependent upon your stabilization," the Master Mage said, cutting through the silence and answering as if Guinevere hadn’t just gently informed him he was wrong.

"My light is fine," Kael said, voice flat. "Focus on hers."

Octavian turned to him.

"Young Dragon, you were born with the light. You have always carried it. Your manifestation was incomplete, dormant since childhood, but the signature has been present in your bloodline since before your birth. When she saved your life, her light imprinted on yours. She relit something that had been cold. Your light is functioning now because hers told it to wake up. Every fluctuation in her system echoes in yours because the two are linked at the root."

Guinevere’s head felt light in a way that had nothing to do with blood loss.

She didn’t remember saving him. Kael had mentioned coming back from the dead, and she had assumed he was being dramatic because that was his factory setting.

Maybe he was being literal.

From the bed, Kael began asking Octavian questions that she could hear but couldn’t fully track. His voice had shifted into a register she recognized from the battle, the commander voice, precise and pointed.

He was grilling him on imprint mechanics, light-channel dependency, and whether he could stabilize her. Every question stacked on the last one with the cold efficiency of a man who already knew the whole map and was just pinpointing the exact patch of shit he needed.

She understood almost none of it. The vocabulary and concepts were foreign to her.

But the things weighing on her were simpler and dumber: she had apparently fucked Nicholas Shadowfell. There was no way. Her wolf was dead wrong because she’d woken up in the Kingdom of Light with stranger. Not with Nicholas.

She actually wondered, for a second, if that man was King Solveil. Then she shook her head and the thought died under its own absurdity.

Why would the King of Light be at Greyhall Crossing?

Kings managed kingdoms, sat on thrones, and dealt with actual problems. They didn’t lurk in guest bedrooms at wolf summits.

She had probably passed out at Greyhall, fallen through one of those white-light cracks, and landed in a stranger’s bedroom by accident.

Her clothes must have come off during the fall.

Or maybe she’d undressed herself while asleep. People did things while unconscious all the time. Sleepwalking was a documented phenomenon. Sleep-undressing was likely the issue.

Perfectly logical.

She got to her feet, intending to splash cold water on her face in the bathing chamber because her head was spinning like a drunk and cold water was always a reliable system reboot.

She made it three steps before she froze.

White runes were carving themselves onto her skin. She could feel them forming on her forearms, her neck, and spreading across her chest.

The timing was not ideal. Terrible actually, to the point where she wanted to laugh.

One glance over her shoulder and the laugh was gone.

The Master Mage, the healer, and Kael were all looking at her.

The expressions on their faces were the kind that preceded very bad conversations. Octavian’s was fascination. The healer’s was professional alarm. And Kael’s was something she couldn’t name but could feel through their connection like a hand closing around her heart.

Then she saw the runes carving onto Kael.

Her hand flew to her mouth. It finally clicked. She thought he had given her this, but it was the other way around.

White lines crawled across his chest above the bandages, mirroring hers, spreading in the same patterns at the same speed. His light was responding to hers, pulling from the same source, and the source was her, and the source was unstable, and she was watching her own malfunction write itself across his body.

Her lungs locked.

The fluctuation the Master Mage had warned about was happening right the fuck now, written across both their bodies like a ticking bomb.

Kael was already out of the bed and moving towards her. His face had abandoned every expression except one, and that one was aimed entirely at closing the distance between them.

"Guine—"

CRACK.

White light swallowed the room.