Chapter 422: A Truth They Cannot Unsee

Guinevere walked through the door, mid-conversation with Octavian, the Luminari Master Mage, who was walking beside her with the composed stride of a man who had been flagged down in a corridor by a cuffed prisoner and was treating it as a reasonable interaction.

"I do appreciate you taking the time, Master Mage. I know you have a great deal on your plate and I would not ask if it were not important," Guinevere was saying as they entered.

"Of course, My Queen. I am happy to assist."

My Queen landed on the table like a coin that nobody had put there. Blair’s eyes moved to Octavian’s face. Damon’s followed. Beta Draven’s jaw shifted by half a degree. Briggs looked up from his satchel. Brennan’s frozen smile thawed into confusion, the loudest in the room because Brennan’s face didn’t do subtle. His brow was performing a full investigation while his mouth tried to maintain the smile and the two efforts were producing an expression that looked like a man who had stepped on something and was deciding whether to look down.

My queen was not a courtesy extended to a prisoner. My queen was not a title used by a Master Mage addressing a foreign national charged with the attempted murder of his own sovereign. My queen came from a man who knew something he was choosing to communicate through vocabulary rather than explanation, and the vocabulary was loud enough that five people heard it and none of them understood it.

Kael didn’t react to the title because Kael had been addressed as Young Dragon by the same voice coming out of Guinevere’s mouth and had stopped questioning what Luminari people called things three hours ago. Guinevere didn’t react because every guard in this building had been calling her Your Highness since intake and the elevation to queen registered as politeness rather than information.

"That’s kind of you," Guinevere said, face going red. "But I promise I am no queen. Just a princess."

"For now," Octavian stated.

Kael was too busy to notice that comment, watching both Betas and Briggs sit back down in perfect sync, and worse, Blair descending back onto Damon’s lap without looking up from the document she was reading, her free hand already extending his file back to him before his ass hit the chair.

"This is Octavian, the Master Mage of Solveil," Guinevere explained to the room. "He is the foremost expert on Luminari light."

The Master Mage already knew Brennan and Damon. She did not know they had already met.

Brennan smiled at him and waved once. Octavian did not return it.

"Luna, if I may ask. When did you meet Octavian?" Brennan asked, unbothered by the lack of warmth from this man.

She beamed with pride at Octavian. "He took my crystal image on his first try. But I met him in Lunaris. He set up wards after we were attacked. And he also helped treat a stab wound I incurred."

The room stiffened at ’stab wound.’ The last thing they needed was the prisoner incriminating herself.

Beta Draven shifted forward by one inch. The inch was a warning that Guinevere picked up on immediately because she had grown up watching Beta Draven give cues like that, never to her personally, granted. But she caught it right away and did not respond to it, which Beta Draven took as a sign that she understood him.

She understood the warning. She did not understand why the cue was being given. But that didn’t matter. She trusted this man and proceeded accordingly, which was shutting her mouth.

Beta Draven took over. "Would you be able to activate these for us, Master Mage? Our counsel would greatly appreciate the guidance."

"Of course." Octavian took the crystal from the table. His fingers pressed against the surface and light bloomed from the contact point, warm and gold, filling the crystal from within until the interior was bright enough to project.

An image materialized on the far wall.

Beta Draven’s face drained of color. The blood left his cheeks and his forehead in a single, comprehensive evacuation that started at his hairline and ended at his jaw. He had survived Renwick Lunaris. He had seen assassination attempts, political murders, and executions that would give seasoned warriors nightmares.

None of that prepared him for what he was seeing now. He knew exactly what he was looking at.

Damon had an identical reaction. His face went pale one shade at a time, his amber eyes locked on the projection, processing what he was seeing against what he had been assuming and finding the two incompatible. What he was seeing was not what he expected and telling Nicholas was a conversation he would trade a year of his life to avoid.

Blair squinted at the image. Her head tilted left. Then right. Her eyes narrowed finding it aesthetically familiar for reasons she could not yet place.

Brennan tilted his head the opposite direction. His brow furrow was doing a full archaeological dig. His mouth opened a centimeter, held, and closed.

Guinevere’s face turned the color of a ripe apple. The blush started at her collarbones and climbed her throat and conquered her cheeks and kept marching toward her hairline.

The image zoomed in on Landon Solveil’s neck. Detailed as fuck. Two puncture wounds, small and clean, sitting at the base of the tendon where the blood would be pumping. Teeth did that shit. Obviously.

"Thank you, Master Mage," she said, and the gratitude was delivered in a carefully composed voice.

The composure was doing the work of a dam holding back a reservoir that contained confirmation of a memory she’d been missing, the specific horror of recognizing your own bite marks on a projected image in front of seven people and an attorney, and the knowledge that she was on a ticking clock for feeling a fourth matebond, as soon as he woke.

Kael had said it earlier. She thought she had accepted it. But this made it real.

Octavian set the crystal down on the table and the image vanished. The image may have left but the impression stayed. Burned into every retina for eternity.