Chapter 425: Mr. Sun Unhinged

Landon Solveil walked into the incarceration facility wearing the kind of fury that made stone hum.

The Master Healer had tried to stop him twice. Neither attempt survived contact with a man whose eyes were strobing gold and whose body was running a fever that should have kept him horizontal and was instead propelling him through corridors at a pace that left two Kingsguard officers jogging to keep up.

The intake officer behind the counter looked up.

Then he stood up.

Then he knocked his chair over standing up because the King of Light was standing in his lobby with molten eyes and energy radiating off his skin in visible waves and the intake officer had been working this post for nine years and had never once seen his sovereign inside this building.

"Your Majesty, I—"

"Take me to her."

The officer opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"Take me to her NOW."

The officer moved. He did not ask who. He did not ask for clarification. He did not consult the logbook or the duty roster or the Commander’s standing orders. He grabbed his keys and walked because the voice that had just hit him carried two registers and one of them was his king and the other was something older than the building he worked in and both of them were finished waiting.

Two Kingsguard officers flanked Landon as he followed the intake officer through the processing corridor. The stone lit beneath every step. The wards etched into the walls pulsed as he passed, responding to a frequency they had been calibrated for but had never received at this volume. A crack appeared in the ceiling plaster above the third ward. Then the fourth.

The intake officer walked faster.

???

SOLVEIL - INCARCERATION FACILITY - LEGAL BRIEFING ROOM

Blair was mid-sentence when the world ended.

She had been laying out the defense structure for Briggs, pointing at the case study Beta Draven had provided, connecting it to the crystal evidence, building the argument the way she built everything: methodically, ruthlessly, and with the absolute certainty that she was the smartest person at the table and the table was lucky to have her.

BANG.

The sound was a cannon shot. The door came off its hinges. Metal screamed against stone as the door frame buckled inward, the heavy wood ripping free from its moorings and sailing into the room like a battering ram that had lost patience with the concept of knocking.

Blair screamed.

The sound left her chest before her brain authorized it, raw and involuntary, the scream of a woman whose body understood the threat before her mind finished identifying it. The door hit the far wall and the wall disagreed with the impact and chunks of stone exploded inward.

Damon was already moving.

He had Blair off his lap and against the wall before the door finished its trajectory, his body between hers and the debris, his arms locked around her, his back absorbing the stone dust and the pressure wave and whatever the fuck else was coming through that doorway. His wolf surged behind his ribs so hard his eyes went full gold.

At the same second, the same goddamn second, Guinevere also screamed and her runes detonated.

White lines erupted across her skin with a violence that made every previous surge look like a warm-up. The light did not build. It did not pulse. It screamed out of her body in a flash so bright the briefing room went white and Brennan hit the floor with both hands over his face. 𝐟𝑟ⅇ

She was still on Kael’s lap and his arms locked around her while his body absorbed the flood of energy into himself through every contact point because that was the job and the job had chosen the worst possible second to demand overtime. His runes flared. His teeth clenched. His spine bowed.

Blood hit Guinevere’s upper lip. Both nostrils this time. Two thin red lines running down to her chin and dripping onto the grey jumpsuit. Her hands flew to the sides of her skull because something inside it was building, a pressure behind her eyes and her ears and in the center of her forehead that felt like a balloon being inflated inside a space too small to hold it.

Beta Draven had Briggs behind him. The transition from sitting to shielding had taken him less than a second because years under Renwick Lunaris meant the body learned to protect before the brain learned to think. Briggs was clutching his satchel to his chest and his face was the color of the parchment inside it.

The dust settled.

Kael was panting. Guinevere was also panting. She turned to look at him, face full of concern, and tried to stand. His arms seat-belted her immediately.

"I’m fine," he gritted.

Guinevere blinked through the blood and the tears and the pressure in her skull.

Before she could say anything, Kael cut her off.

"Perspective, honey, someone just blew the door off its hinges. I’m a literal dragon and can handle some light."

A man was standing in the doorway.

The light coming off him was wrong. Too bright. Too hot. The gold pouring from his skin filled the broken door frame like liquid sunrise. His eyes were molten, cycling, flickering between amber and something that burned hotter than amber had any right to burn.

Guinevere’s vision was starting to double. The man in the doorway was splitting into two overlapping images that refused to merge.

His mouth opened and the voice that came out was braided. Two tones. Two registers. One she could almost recognize and one she could feel in her sternum like a tuning fork struck against her ribs.

"Who put her in cuffs?"

The question hit the room at a volume that cracked the remaining plaster on the ceiling. Dust rained down on the table. The crystal evidence pieces rattled in their box.

Guinevere’s vision snapped together. One image. One man. Glowing skin. Golden eyes. Tall. Radiating light and fury in equal measure. She had seen him once before in the brown room. Mr. Sun was his nickname. She didn’t know him. But every cell in her body was screaming that she knew him really well.

His eyes found her face. 𝐟𝑟ⅇ

The blood on her lip. The tears. Then the white-knuckle grip she had on Kael’s arm.

He crossed the room in two strides.

Landon Solveil’s hands closed around Guinevere’s arms. His fingers found the warded cuffs and the sound that came out of his chest was the braided voice at its most violent, both tones fused into a single frequency that vibrated the table and made Brennan’s teeth ache from the floor.

"Get these off her. NOW."