Chapter 434: Cranky & Concussed With A Side Of Confetti Hands

The Dragon King’s dragon was a guilt-harvesting, gaslighting, goal-fixated, get-my-way gladiator with a god complex who had switched from growling to whining because whining was historically more effective against Maddox and both of them knew it.

Sterling lay in the infirmary bed and watched the Dragon King of Velkaris argue with his dragon, wondering what the hell happened to his head. He was unaware that his three concussions were crafted by a cranium-cracking, combat-medic who had been giving a sex talk.

Somewhere Kael Ashenvale sneezed.

The door opened.

"There he is," Ryker announced as he entered the infirmary. "Big guy. How’s my favorite dragon doing?"

Maddox looked at him. "No."

"Oh, that wasn’t for you, Commander." Ryker crossed the room and dropped into the chair beside Sterling’s bed. "Sterling. My brother. My partner. My emotionally constipated best friend. Welcome back to the land of the living."

Sterling sat up. The motion was slow and deliberate and accompanied by a spike of pain across all three impact sites that communicated their displeasure in harmony. His hand found the back of his skull. The knots were stacked. Three distinct, palpable mounds arranged in a vertical line like a topographical survey of Kael’s evening.

Ryker held up one finger. "Quick test. What’s my name?"

"Ryker."

"Good. What’s your name?"

"I’m going to stop answering questions now."

"That’s the Sterling I know and tolerate."

Sterling’s grey eyes locked onto Ryker with the flat, unimpressed focus of a man who had been unconscious and was now being quizzed by the loudest person in the building.

Ryker was a flask-gripping, friend-checking High General whose bedside manner consisted of memory quizzes. He raised both hands in surrender.

"Listen, with the way people keep losing their memories around here, and the fact that the mastermind behind all of it turned out to be your ex-fiancée, I am asking a reasonable question. Don’t give me that look."

Sterling blinked. Once. Twice. The information landed in stages, each stage producing a new expression. His ex-fiancée. The woman he had mourned. The woman whose death had turned him into the locked-down, emotionally fortified, feeling-proof bastard that everyone knew. She was alive. She had been alive the whole goddamn time. And apparently she was the mastermind behind the memory loss that had turned three kingdoms into a shitshow. Sterling blinked twice and the blinks contained an entire funeral being exhumed.

Questions were already forming behind his eyes, dozens of them, lining up in disciplined rows because his military brain processed information the way factories process raw material: in order, at scale, and without pausing for feelings.

"What the hell happened in the throne room?" Sterling asked.

"A lot," Ryker replied. "You took the hit for Blair. Dark magic. Went down hard. Then Kael healed you and also gave you two more concussions in the process because he’s Kael and multitasking is his love language."

Sterling’s jaw shifted once. Filed. Moving on.

"Is Blair safe?"

The question came out before the tactical ones. Before the strategic assessment. Before the operational debrief. Is Blair safe left his mouth with a priority that bypassed every other inquiry waiting in line and the priority was loud enough that both men in the room heard it and neither commented on it.

"Yes," Maddox answered. "She’s in Solveil."

Sterling’s eyes sharpened. "Solveil. Why would she be there?"

"She’s leading the legal delegation. Guinevere was arrested by the Luminari Kingsguard and Blair is handling the extraction through their court system."

"Arrested." Sterling repeated the word the way a man repeats a word he understood perfectly and is choosing to taste again because the flavor is producing fury. "You’re joking. They were not permitted to enter Drakencrest?"

"Yes. But they did. They removed Emma for us."

Sterling’s analytical mind was already firing. The concussion was a tax on processing speed but the processor was still operational and the processor was very, very good. His eyes moved to the wall behind Maddox, unfocused, running calculations that involved jurisdiction, treaty law, sovereign immunity, evidentiary standards, and the diplomatic fallout of prosecuting a foreign queen.

Sterling may have been concussed, but he was still a case-building, cold-blooded commanding officer who would declare legal war from a hospital bed with no problems.

"Arrested," he said again. This time the word had changed shape. The fury had cooled into something sharper and more dangerous. "I will bury them. Their Commander. Their court. Their entire legal apparatus. I will take their statutes apart section by section and I will find every crack and every contradiction and I will drive a goddamn dragon through each one until their case collapses under the weight of its own incompetence."

Maddox looked at him. The look lasted two seconds. The look was a king watching his Third come back online and the bootup sequence producing exactly the weapon he needed.

"That’s the energy I need from you. Save that. Right now Blair and the team are collecting discovery and gathering intelligence. When they come back with what the Luminari have, you will take it apart."

Ryker slow clapped. "There he is. Our fearless High Marshal wakes up from being unconscious. Does he ask for a healer? No. Does he ask for water? No. What does he ask for? Reading material. His revenge fantasy is reading. He threatened a metaphorical dragon. Not even his actual dragon. He is going to read them to death."

Sterling swung his legs over the side of the bed. The healer opened his mouth to protest. Sterling’s eyes found the healer with a focus so sharp the protest retreated back behind the healer’s teeth and stayed there.

"Get me the files they have so far," Sterling said. "Everything. Briefs, statutes, case precedent, whatever Blair has already pulled. I want it on my desk before she gets back so I am reading what she is reading at the same time she is reading it."

"He’s back and fully operational. If Sterling says the word ’file’ we know all is well in the world." Ryker leaned back in his chair and let a grin spread across his face that had no business being there given the circumstances and was thriving regardless. "Welcome back, big guy."

"I never left, Ryker. I was unconscious. There is a difference."

Ryker turned to Maddox. "Good news, Commander. They just got back." He did confetti hands. Both of them. Fingers spread, wrists rotating, the full celebration. "The nerds can unite together. Yay."