Chapter 416: Five Sharks Walk Into A Prison

SOLVEIL CITADEL - THE KING’S CHAMBERS

The Master Healer pressed two fingers to the king’s wrist and held them there for six seconds. His brow furrowed. Then unfurrowed. Then furrowed again, which was never a sequence that inspired confidence.

"No signs of improvement," the healer reported, pulling his hand back. "The fever remains elevated. His vitals have stabilized at this plateau, which means his body has accepted the current state as its new normal."

Commander Veyron stood at the foot of the bed with his arms crossed and his jaw in the locked position it had been occupying since a dragon and a wolf had turned his interrogation room into a goddamn sharing circle. His shift had technically ended three hours ago. His sense of duty had overruled the schedule because the Commander of the Kingsguard did not clock out while his king was horizontal.

Octavian leaned against the bedpost, deceptively easy, his mind doing laps while his body pretended to lounge. "The puncture wounds. Where exactly are they?"

The Master Healer gestured toward the left side of Landon’s neck. Octavian pushed off the bedpost and moved to the bedside. His fingers found the spot. He tilted Landon’s jaw to the left, exposing the full length of the tendon.

Skin. Clean, unmarked, glowing faintly with the ambient radiance that every Luminari male carried and that Landon carried more than most.

"Oh." The Master Healer adjusted his spectacles. Looked closer. Pulled them off. Cleaned them on his robe. Put them back on. Looked again. "Well, this is good news. They are gone."

"Gone," Octavian repeated.

The Master Healer straightened, bewildered. "The puncture wounds have fully healed. There is no scarring. No discoloration. No residual tissue damage whatsoever. The entry points have closed as though they were never there, actually."

Octavian looked at the unmarked neck. Looked at the Master Healer. Looked at Veyron, who was standing at the foot of the bed, specifically still, his prosecution’s primary physical evidence freshly missing and his face working very hard to pretend it hadn’t.

"So let me get this straight," Octavian said, his voice finally breaking through days of bitten tongue, the last thread chewed clean through. "He is running a fever. In a coma. And we have no marks on his actual body anymore. The wound that we arrested a woman for inflicting has healed itself off his neck like it checked out of a hotel and left no forwarding address."

The Master Healer gave a slow nod. "Yes."

Veyron’s jaw tightened by one degree. "We took crystal snapshots of the marks. We have them for the court. The puncture wounds were consistent with a rapid-healing entry, which is why we captured them immediately. The physical evidence was documented before it could deteriorate."

"Documented," Octavian repeated, and the word came out wearing a suit it had been forced into. "You have a crystal snapshot of two dots on a man’s neck. That is your murder weapon. Two dots."

"Attempted murder," the Master Healer corrected. "He is alive."

Octavian pushed off the bedside and turned to face Veyron fully. "You are seriously going to push for this to go to trial? That girl. The one you met today. The one who apologized to your guards for running. The one who called your interrogation room a sacred sharing space. You think she is a killer, Veyron?"

The Commander met his eyes without flinching because flinching was a luxury for men who had the option of being wrong and Veyron had decided he did not have that option.

"It doesn’t matter what I think. A jury will decide. The evidence is stacked. She was the last person with him. She fled the scene. Those are facts, Master Mage. Our king is in a coma and someone is responsible for it."

Octavian stared at him for three full seconds.

"You realize that when this goes to trial, the news of his coma gets out."

The sentence changed the temperature of the chamber by three degrees.

"We are on borrowed time with that as it is," Veyron replied. "The staff knows. The healers know. The Kingsguard knows. Every day the silence holds is a day we did not earn and should not expect to keep. A trial puts it on our terms instead of a leak putting it on someone else’s."

"On our terms," Octavian repeated, and the repetition was doing the heavy lifting for every counterargument his mouth was choosing to withhold. "On our terms, meaning we stand in front of every kingdom on three continents and announce that the King of Light is unconscious and we are prosecuting the woman he chose to bond with in public? On our terms, meaning we invite every Luminari political vulture with a territorial claim to start circling because the throne is empty?"

Veyron’s nostrils flared once. "You have a better option, Master Mage?"

"I have several. You have refused all of them."

"Is there a golden mark on his neck like the dragon said there would be?" Commander Veyron asked the Master Healer.

"Oh, that’s right. I almost forgot." The Master Healer gently rotated his king’s head to get a better look. "Nothing that I can see, Commander. But that doesn’t mean it won’t show. Did we get a timeline from the dragon? Were his symptoms similar to this?"

Octavian crossed his arms. "The dragon mentioned being unconscious anywhere from a few hours to a day. But they are a different species, mind you."

The healer gave a single nod. "Male dragons have marked Luminari women before. That is documented. But in no text do these particular symptoms exist. And I have never heard of a female marking a male."

"That part took me by surprise as well," Octavian agreed.

"Is there any documentation on wolf markings and Luminari? Or is it just dragons?" Veyron asked.

"Not to my knowledge."

Octavian dragged a hand down his face. He opened his mouth but before he could respond, there was a knock on the door.

"Enter," Veyron called.

The door opened and an officer stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

"Commander, apologies for the interruption, but Drakencrest has sent counsel for his wife and they are demanding due diligence."

"They did what?" Veyron and Octavian asked at the same time.

The synchronization was involuntary. Both men turned to look at each other, then back at the officer, wearing matching expressions of surprise that neither would later acknowledge.

"As in physically here?" Octavian clarified.

"As in they are standing in the police station, Master Mage." The officer swallowed once. "Five of them. They all seem to know Luminari law and are demanding to see their client."𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ