Chapter 290: Big Nick Energy Heeled Like A Good Boy

The tree had handled everything except a warning that Nicholas Shadowfell was about to stand up which meant she was about to witness a physics-defying dick-display of a wolf king.

Their clothes were laid out beside the pool. Folded. Dry. Sorted. Stain-free. It was better laundry service than most kingdoms.

Nicholas Shadowfell stood and stepped out of the pool.

Guinevere’s face heated at a rate that suggested the water around her should have started bubbling. It didn’t. Close, though.

Up until this point, she had been body-blocking his dick, and now it was exposed, fully operational, and standing at full mast.

She forced her eyes off him and onto the wall. The wall was safe. A perfect, judgment-free gentleman who would never once mention that she’d just been staring at a shameless wolf king’s ding-dong.

Nicholas handed her shirt down to her so she wouldn’t have to climb out naked. Chivalry wasn’t dead. She appreciated it more than he probably realized and would remember the gesture fondly for the rest of her natural life.

She dressed with her back to him at a speed that suggested the building was on fire, which it wasn’t, but she had used up her nudity quota for the evening.

Clothes on. Boots on. Dignity gone. This was fine.

"Now what, Lunaris?"

He asked it like a man handing over tactical control with zero ego. A king. Following her. This was also fine.

"Working on that part," she answered, reaching for the wooden wall.

The second her fingers made contact, runes flashed up the surface and a seam appeared, forming a doorway.

"Neat."

She meant it. It was neat. But first, she needed to contain the glow.

She wrung out her hair, then tucked the wet, dripping rope of it into her shirt like a woman who had already accepted the shirt was collateral damage.

Nicholas looked at her. Then at the hair. Then back at her face.

"Is that supposed to be your disguise?"

"Yes. My hair glows sometimes."

Nicholas Shadowfell cracked up for the second time. The laugh arrived like an uninvited guest who’d already been here earlier, catching him mildly off guard.

She smiled, unable to hide it. This serious, commanding, unreasonably attractive, freshly-resurrected Alpha was laughing and she liked it entirely too much.

They exited the glowing chamber into a corridor made of the same wood, which tracked if they were in that giant tree she saw while free-falling during her police chase.

She grabbed Nicholas’s hand and pulled him through the corridor.

Footsteps echoed from ahead.

She yanked him into an alcove until they were wallpapered fully, facing one another. She had manhandled him like a bouncer moving a drunk and he grinned like a drunk who found the whole thing entirely too entertaining.

Her eyes locked on the corridor waiting as the steps grew nearer. Very focused.

So what did Nicholas do?

He leaned in and kissed her ear, then her neck, like the concept of ’stay quiet and still’ was optional for him. The hard line of his cock pressed into her without apology, impossible to overlook, and he showed no interest in hiding it.

Two figures passed without looking. She held her breath until they were gone. Espionage was easier this round, but also very hard to concentrate on.

She stepped out of the alcove, completely missing the pouting look on the cockblocked Alpha’s face because she already had his hand and was towing him down the next hallway.

By the time she looked back, the pout was gone and something worse had replaced it.

"Where are we going?" he whispered, grinning at her like a man who was having the time of his life being led through a tree by a fugitive.

He fully planned on telling her that he knew Landon Solveil. That he knew their Master Mage. That this entire covert operation was unnecessary because he could walk through the front door of the Citadel and be received as a visiting king. But she was so focused and he could feel her determination bleeding through their matebond.

His mate was adorable in full mission mode and he wanted to watch for a little longer.

He would tell her. Eventually.

"To the bottom of this place," she replied. "Or to their Master Mage if he’s here."

"You know their Master Mage?"

"Yes. I met him. Though I think he might be confused on a few things."

She pulled him through a doorway and Nicholas’s jaw dropped.

The giant tree was, apparently, just a small part of Solveil. Ahead of them, a city sprawled across white stone, bright as the moon. Everything was goddamn glowing. The plants. The fountains. The stone walkways.

Gold orbs floated down around Guinevere like the air was producing them specifically for her. They drifted toward her hair, which was glowing again, both above and under her shirt.

She was beautiful.

Nicholas forgot the glowing city and the fact that he was standing on a tree branch. All of that was background noise because Guinevere Lunaris was standing in front of him.

She turned, caught him looking, and misread it completely.

"Don’t worry. I thought I had somehow gotten Dark Fae blood in my mouth the first time too."

She gave his hand a squeeze and was already leading him down the stairs.

Her eyes found a palace on the opposite side of the city. The location of the Master Mage. Smart. And that also worked with Nicholas’s plan.

They moved through a city street, or more accurately, she pulled him. He let her because he liked it, which was slightly fucked, but he had already decided he did not care.

It took a grand total of thirty seconds for Nicholas to understand that she was a one-woman parade and the city was providing the floats.

Every surface her boots touched lit up beneath her while fountains they walked past surged higher. Plants along the railings leaned towards her, botanical groupies turning like she was the sun.

Stealth? Never met her.

The ground was glowing, the plants were genuflecting, and her stealth operation had devolved into a shit-show of sparkle-soaked self-sabotage and Nicholas was enjoying the show.

On the flip side, he could understand that this was a glowing, unmistakable, law-enforcement-friendly trail.

But, she didn’t need to worry about that.

There was no universe in which local law enforcement gave a single shit about her accidental trespassing. She had probably bolted from security guards, not police, and the "shooting" was something else entirely that she was confused about.

Nicholas didn’t say any of that out loud. But, if there was one thing he was certain about, it was that no police officers would shoot at an unarmed woman who was lost and afraid.

Landon Solveil was the kind of king who would make damn sure of that.